Ethical Analysis: Case Study On The Dilemma Of Customer Leads

Ethics Assignment

The aforementioned case study for ethical analysis focuses on the dilemma of employees confronted in a situation to meet bonus-compensated monthly quotas by forwarding customer leads, which have not been thoroughly reviewed as benefiting the company, and falsely reporting the number of customer leads, to account executives. To test for the presence of an ethical issue, an employee, deciding to intentionally forward unproductive customer leads and report an exaggerated total of customer leads, can hypothesize if their superiors will approve of their actions or terminate their employment, if brought to their attention. Since there is doubt and uncertainty, the employee has been faced with an ethics issue that requires scrutiny.

However, one could argue that the company has the right to veritable information. Information is an important right because it serves as the foundation for decision-making. When an employee provides misleading information, the company 's decisions are not warranted and unexpected consequences may arise; account executives contribute to a company 's sunk costs expending time on unproductive work. However, there is no flagrant disregard for human rights observed; therefore, no significant insight is gained by using the rights approach for this

Using five approaches (Utilitarian, Rights Justice, Common Good, and Virtue), the ethical outcome of employees gaining bonuses and the misrepresentation of customer leads to account executives were studied to aid in decision making. The primary goal of any company is to maximize profits by optimizing revenue in any given time; similarly, the primary goal of any employee is to maximize earned income in any given time. When both the employee and company mutually benefit, an optimal efficiency will be reached and, in turn, lead to integrity, growth, and motivation in a business. Short-term bonuses should not influence employees to risk their long-term relationship with a company. As a result, the utilitarian approach conveys the most convincing argument for the employee to not deceive his monthly quota and to diligently investigate customers leads prior to referring them to account executives. Additionally, the current incentive policy needs to be changed to hinder the opportunity for employees to deceive customer leads. For example, the company should reward bonuses to employees for successful customer leads, but not for any general customer leads encountered in daily business activities. Alternatively, the company can eliminate bonuses and instead allocate company shares to outperforming employees to instill both a sense of responsibility and shared ownership in the