Ethics and Integrity in Business: Navigating Ethical Risks and Transgressions in the Workplace Case E

Case E: Accurate Representation of Facts/Data for Decisions

Through great performance and leadership behaviors, which continued to include role-model integrity and ethics, Andrea received yet another promotion. But this one was in a challenging area and involved a project that was not meeting its objectives. The company believed Andrea had what it takes to motivate the team, work through the technical issues, and establish a plan to get the project back on track.

Her boss in this role was Mike, a more senior employee whose career had been advancing rapidly but had recently slowed. He was still very driven and sometimes a bit gruff and intimidating. As a result, Andrea felt somewhat uncomfortable approaching him at times, particularly during high-stakes and stressful situations.

Andrea began the assignment by diving into the project details as well as learning the strengths and opportunities of all of the team members. She was immediately impressed by one of the staff scientists, named Seth, who was an excellent researcher and presenter with 23 years of experience at the company. Seth was knowledgeable and patient, and spent a lot of extra time helping Andrea learn the details of the project. Andrea considered him to be her top aide in this new department, and she developed a relationship of mutual trust and respect with Seth.

In one of the tasks, Seth and the rest of the team performed some detailed analyses of a critical technical issue, and they reviewed the results in detail with her. The data suggested the project would not succeed and therefore should be put on hold or perhaps even cancelled. Andrea had high confidence in her staff, particularly Seth, but given the high stakes and high-profile nature of the project, she elected to present the results to Mike by herself in a private one-on-one meeting.

Andrea was anxious and uneasy about the meeting but put her concerns behind her and assembled the data to drive the discussion. She then met with Mike and presented her report flawlessly.

Mike was visibly frustrated, didnt agree with her findings, and asked her to interpret the data in a different way. Andrea believed that the way she was being asked to interpret the data was not accurate and would misrepresent the facts.

Andrea was numb. The pressure on this project was intense; failure would certainly mean lost market share for her company, not to mention the potential dissolution of her department. If this happened, Andrea expected that she would likely be reassigned to another project, but others in her department, including Seth, might lose their jobs.

Question:

As a manager, analyze and critically examine the case study