Introduction

Martha McCaskey, who had been working for Seleris Associates, a medium-sized consulting firm based in Chicago, for 18 months in the Industry Analysis Division (IAD) faced a difficult situation. Having been assigned the role of project leader in a study to be conducted for one of Seleris’s most lucrative clients, McCaskey was assured that, upon successful completion of the project, she would be promoted to group manager. Seleris’s client, a semiconductor manufacturer based in California, was trying to identify the cost structure and manufacturing technologies of a new chip produced by one of its competitors. Martha McCaskey was challenged with the task of obtaining sensitive information from Phil Devon, a consultant in southern California, who had recently been involved in the design and start-up of a plant for a European firm. If successful in obtaining such information the marketing manager, in charge of the Silicon 6 project, proposed to double the original fee agreed upon. The marketing manager also stated that he had 10 more equally lucrative projects like the current one.

Problems faced by Martha McCaskey

Martha McCaskey had serious doubts as to both the propriety of asking for such information and Phil Devon’s motivation in so eagerly offering to help her. McCaskey had two options. With the additional funding available from the client, she could have Phil Devon provide analysis of several alternatives for manufacturing state of the art chips, including the one used at the competitor’s Silicon 6 plant, such as to avoid suspicion. The second option was to hand over the assignment to Chuck Kaufmann, a senior associate, who handled many of the division’s projects which required obtaining information that a competitor would deem as proprietary. Regardless as to the decision, Martha McCaskey felt, that no matter which option she chose, completing the Silicon 6 project would compromise her values. Evidence of this can be seen when she states ‘this is a guy who’s trying to do good in the world. How can I be doing this? I have an EE degree from CalTech, an MBA from Harvard, and here I am trying to sleaze this guy’. McCaskey had wondered ‘where do you draw the line on proprietary information?’ McCaskey questioned if she was about to engage in a ‘gentleman’s industrial espionage?’ Until the present task she had always maintained a high level of integrity in her work. McCaskey argued if the next step to success would require her to ‘play the game the way everyone else did?’ This brings to mind Friedman’s (1970) view that a firm can use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game. However Friedman (1970) believes firms must engage in open and free competition without deception or fraud. In Martha McCaskey’s case she would have to deceive Devon to obtain the necessary information. Another issue McCaskey is dealing with, which Bagley (2003) addresses, is the tension between ones responsibility to maximize shareholder value and their responsibility to behave ethically.

Martha McCaskey’s assessment of the situation

We do agree with McCaskey’s assessment of the situation as she is in a position where she does not want to compromise her own moral values but at the same time she does not want to disappoint Malone and Richardson as McCaskey has always produced a high standard of work in the past. McCaskey also wants to do what will benefit the corporation as a whole because the client had promised Seleris 10 more lucrative projects if they came through on the current one. So the argument of utilitarianism comes in to play here, ‘seek the greatest good for the greatest number’ (Goodpaster, 1983: 6).

How did McCaskey end up in this situation?

Martha McCaskey ended up in the current predicament because the moral and ethical constraints that govern Seleris and herself are different. Goodpaster and Matthews (1982) claim that corporations should be expected to display the same moral practices as people. It is clear that Seleris is governed by Richardson’s ethics of maximising profits by any means, so long as he doesn’t get caught. McCaskey on the other hand was more concerned with maintaining her integrity. A good point is made by Dunn (1991) that because the corporation only acts through those who act for it, it is the latter that has to assume moral responsibility for the corporation. In this case, because Seleris acts through the senior vice president, Ty Richardson, it is his moral values that are being spread throughout the organisation. Richardson’s values are conflicting with McCaskey’s moral values and this is the primary reason McCaskey could not go through with obtaining the proprietary information the first time and is in the current predicament.

Forces which contributed to the current predicament

Personal

Martha McCaskey did not want to compromise her own moral values and this is one of the primary personal forces which contributed to her current situation. However, up until the Silicon 6 project McCaskey had always managed to maintain a high standard in her work and this clashed with her moral values.

Organisational

One of the organisational forces which led to the current situation was the tight standard, increased workload and performance expectations for IAD projects. This force had placed pressure on McCaskey to obtain the proprietary information from Devon, but it clashed with her own moral values and led to the indecisiveness, thus the current dilemma. Also Richardson in his talk on ethics brought in the argument that ‘we do not do anything unethical’. This brings in Gellerman’s (1986) argument that there are four rationalisations which people have relied on in the past to justify questionable conduct. In this case, the belief that obtaining proprietary information is not ‘really’ illegal or immoral. This belief has been imposed on the staff and it impacted on McCaskey’s situation as she was torn between following her own moral values and completing the Silicon 6 project. We can also introduce the concept of the ‘corporate veil’; that the corporation shields individuals from personal legal liability for actions taken on behalf of the firm (Dunn, 1991). With this in mind, it can be argued that McCaskey was assigned to the Silicon 6 project because Richardson and Malone felt that they were within the corporate veil. Gellerman (1986) also argues there is a belief amongst top managers that if lower managers achieve results by any means possible, then their actions as to how they obtained the results will not be questioned. We get a sense of this with, group manager, Bud Hackert, who prided himself on his ability to get the job done, ‘no matter what it took’. This force had played a part in McCaskey’s current situation as up until now she had always met the goals set by Richardson and Malone, except in previous cases she did it without sacrificing her integrity.

Environmental

The industry McCaskey is operating in is quite demanding as she had to obtain sensitive information about competitors and she mentions ‘people making chips are very secretive’. Taking this into account it was very difficult for McCaskey to obtain detailed information regarding manufacturing costs and costs associated with the new computer chip for the Silicon 6 project. From this case we also get a sense of achieving results ‘by any means possible’.

Being in McCaskey’s shoes

If we were to be Martha’s situation, we would have to stop working for Seleris and start looking for a new job. To explain how we got to this conclusion, we need to first approach the Teleological framework of the general ethical frameworks for management.

Consequentialist/teleological
Ethical Egoism

According to Friedman (1970:126):

‘There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.’

If we translate Friedman’s (1970) view to Seleris’s working environment, this sort of ‘goal-over-all’ position would suit better to anyone in the ‘old guard’ (surely Hackert and Malone) than it would suit McCaskey. Martha was feeling uncomfortable half-way through the interview with Devon and she barely made it through lunch.

Following other authors we get a similar conclusion. Goodpaster (1983) implies that every man should be out for themselves and should only be concerned with promoting themselves for the greatest balance of good over bad results. In the Silicon 6 project, a possible bad result to be considered is if McCaskey meets with Devon, there is a possibility that Devon could lead Martha on to find out whom she was working for. Given Devon’s prior employment at the target company, it could also result in a negative outcome for him. Although it is a consideration to be made, we can only suggest that the marketing manager’s doubled payment and the further 10 lucrative future projects would be given preference, in the search for the greatest balance of good over bad results.

Utilitarianism

We jump now to the opposite side of the Teleological framework to analyze the case from the perspective of the ‘principle of utility’.

According to Bentham (1823: 1 http://www.constitution.org/jb/pml_01.htm ):

‘That principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words, to promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.’

Further developed by other proponents of utilitarianism, this first principle lead us to widen the spectrum of the implications of those actions to the widest community; therefore we now need to consider, not only the Silicon 6 project and its agents, but also Seleris, its stakeholders, the industry Analysis Division, its environment, the target company and even the consumers and agents interacting with them all.

At this stage, from the individual point of view, there would be too many individuals’ personal values at stake for us to say that what it is best for all is to fulfil the Silicon 6 project. Given that Devon is acting on good faith, his happiness, together with Martha’s, will not be promoted in many ways. We could even say that Seleris’ associates would also have their happiness diminished after Martha’s work promotion, given that she has recently joined the company.

At a company level, opposed to Seleris’, the target company’s interests would be clearly affected by this action, and we would neither find a clear increase in happiness for the widest community.

This ongoing debate can only confirm Sidgwick’s (1966) Dualism: a view that emphasizes competitive markets, is now confronting a more supportive view towards utility maximization (Sidgwick, 1966 cited in Goodpaster, 1983). However, even when there is a clear economic benefit towards Seleris and its shareholders (in the probable case that the Silicon 6 project would reach a positive outcome), we cannot ignore the dangerous possibility of Devon giving away the project’s implications. In such a case, Seleris would then lose one of its oldest clients in the high-tech electronics field. This outcome could also have further implications as shareholders tend to refute unethical practices and they will very probably have a radical reaction if any of these suspicious practices on proprietary information came to light.

On the other hand and as previously stated, it is very unlikely that any individual (other than those getting a profit out of the Silicon 6 project) would be driven towards a maximized utility in the completion of this project.

Non-Consequentialist/Deontological
At this point, we were already thinking that completing the Silicon 6 project would not be a good idea. However, the analysis of this case would lack theoretical consistency without a second viewpoint based on deontological frameworks. As we jump into the deontological frameworks it is vivid how much in danger our integrity would be in the shoes of Martha McCaskey.

Existentialism

Taking into consideration all the normative frameworks, we wanted to make a first stop at the existentialism framework. In doing so, we have encountered its application in this specific case to be quite constrained. A first problem with the idea of existentialism is that it is certainly a complex process to define or categorize existentialism concisely. According to the philosopher Walter Kaufmann, ‘existentialism is not a philosophy but a label for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy’ (McDowell, 1983: ? http://www.greatcom.org/resources/handbook_of_todays_religions/04chap04/ ). It is hard to find a compounded frame of principles that could realistically apply to McCaskey case in the existentialism framework.

Contractarianism

Instead, we have decided to take a closer look at the contractarianism framework to assure that we have as many different positions as we possibly can, with the higher number of different interests being considered. Many authors have come to illustrate contractarianism with the banner of fairness. When it comes to applying these concepts to the McCaskey case, Rawls (1971) gets accurate enough with his own perception of a hypothesis of free contract on the political and economic arrangements that will govern us. Under this hypothesis Rawls (1971) suggest that the person would, in this case, choose two rather different principles:

‘the first requires equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties, while the second holds that social and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society.’ (Rawls, 1971 cited in Goodpaster, 1983:9)

This time, we have integrated Seleris and pretty much everyone else in the picture. Adapting the first principle to our case, we could say that it is understandable that managers would delegate activities on employers as long as it benefits the organization. The organization is clearly reaching economical benefits, but are we really seeing an equal distribution here? Why are some associates leaving the company while Rendall kept doing all the work involving proprietary information? Is the company trying to impose these unwanted practices among the associates and/or create a new Rendall out Martha? These facts imply that there is a practice that does not look like something beneficial to the rest of the associates but more importantly, according to the first principle, proprietary information tasks are not equally distributed among associates in the long run.

If we take into consideration the second principle, a very similar question arises, the Silicon 6 would clearly benefit Seleris and its managers, its shareholders, it would also benefit Martha economically and even improve her position in the organization (although it is also putting her values in jeopardy more than she wanted to). Nevertheless, how would this truly benefit the less advantaged members, like the clerical staff or the rest of the associates? If we are to analyze the organizational benefit from top to bottom we cannot reach a clear-positive picture supporting the completion of the Silicon 6 project.

Kantian Ethics

Immanuel Kant was probably one of the most influential authors in modern ethical reflections and he definitely has something to add to the theoretical framework in the analysis of the McCaskey case. According to Kant’s ‘supreme principle’, there are two main formulations which must be considered in relation to Martha McCaskey situation:

a. ‘Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’ (Goodpaster, 1983:10)

b. ‘Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person, or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only’ (Goodpaster, 1983:10)

Under Kantian ethical lenses, our conclusion comes quite straight forward: in formulation a) we can only assume that deceiving or ignoring our moral values should not become a universal law. On the other hand, and following Kant’s second formulation, treating humanity as an end should not involve damaging your moral values.

Conclusion

Using previous work on ethics and adopting various ethical lenses we have identified the problems faced by Martha McCaskey and outlined a path that Martha should take. We based our decision on McCaskey’s need to maintain her integrity while adopting different ethical frameworks to gain a greater understanding as to how her predicament should be handled. Overall we have discovered that there are various forces which come into play when deciding how to handle McCaskey’s situation. However, because McCaskey’s moral values and those of other members in Seleris, such as Kaufmann, conflict with Richardson’s values it is in the best interest of McCaskey to find a job where there is cohesion in the values adopted by staff and those adopted by upper management. In this way, there will be cohesion within the organisation as they will be working together towards a common goal.