Use the five-step decision-making process discussed in Chapter 1 to analyze the following situations and recommend a course of action.
Your organization is preparing to submit a bid for a multimillion-dollar contract in South America. The contract is extremely important to your firm and would represent its first contract in South America. While meeting with your South American contacts, you are introduced to a consultant who offers to help your firm prepare and submit its bid, as well as to negotiate with the prospective customer company. The consultant is quite impressive in his knowledge of local government officials and managers and executives at the customer's company. The fee requested is only 1 percent of the potential value of the contract, but it is unclear exactly what the consultant will do. Later that day, your local contacts tell you that the use of such consultants is common. They say that they are familiar with this particular consultant and that he has a good reputation for getting results. Your company has never worked with such consultants in the past, and you are uncertain on how to proceed. What would you do?