Scenario:
Butterfly Corporation where Charles had worked for two years after graduating. He liked his job but the firm was going through some rough times. Because the firm was losing money, Douglas, the CEO, set increasingly rigorous performance goals. Charles noticed a lot of employees were grumbling about these unrealistic expectations. He also heard rumors of quality control incidents and other problems.
One day, Charles was called into Douglas's office. "Hello, Doug. You wanted to see me?" Charles asked.
"Yes, Charles. Come in." Doug looked grim. After Charles sat down, he began to speak. "Look, you know about the tough times we are in. We are losing money left and right. So far, I've been able to keep this company afloat by drastically making cuts and speeding up production. I guess in all this cost-cutting, there have been problems that have come up. A lot of people have called the hotline to complain about ethical problems, such as employees cutting corners to make their quotas. Now I've got the board on my back."
"I'm really sorry, Doug. How can I help?" Charles asked.
"Well, the board requested we perform an ethics audit to make sure everyone is complying with company regulations. As if we don't have enough to worry about. This is only going to increase our costs. Anyway, I want you to lead the audit."
Charles was stunned. "Me? But Doug, I've only been here for two years. Shouldn't you choose a more experienced manager to lead this?"
Doug shook his head. "We need all our managers to continue doing their jobs. I don't have the time to pull one of them away from their responsibilities just because the board wants us to do an ethics audit."
Charles agreed to lead the audit process. That night he researched how to conduct an ethics audit. He promised to have a rudimentary plan outlining how the ethics audit should be conducted on Doug's desk for approval the next day. As he researched on the Internet, he became more excited. He spent hours forming objectives for the audit, determining the audit's scope, and defining what he thought should be the firm's ethical priorities. He created a plan for using focus groups of employees to see what the greatest concerns were. He wanted to get other stakeholders involved, especially customers. Charles was interested in assessing the overall corporate culture of the firm. Because Charles knew his data analysis skills were not good, he recommended bringing in a committee of competent coworkers who had been in the organization for years and knew the system inside and out. He also developed a list of organizations Butterfly could hire to verify the results once data was collected and analyzed.
The next day, Charles turned in his report and waited while Doug read through it. When finished, he looked up at Charles and frowned. "Charles, I can see you put a lot of work into this. However, what you have recommended is not going to suit our needs."
"What do you mean?" Charles asked.
"First off, I already told you, I don't want to remove people from their jobs to work on this. We're behind schedule as it is. Also, focus groups of employees and customer feedback? That's going to take up time and resources we cannot afford to lose. We're supposed to be cutting costs, not throwing money . . . simply to check our results." Doug asked that Charles "Revise this and bring it back to me tomorrow" he said.
Initial Posting
As Charles, what options do you have at this point? Your task is to create an ethical response to the task you have been given. In your response, consider what successful auditing processes should be in place at Butterfly Corporation. Make recommendations as to what should be done to encourage an ethical environment.
This analysis should be prepared as a MicrosoftTM Word document. There is no minimum or maximum in terms of the word count; however, the response should explicitly address all required components of this discussion assignment. The document should be prepared consistent with the APA writing style (6th edition) and reflect higher level cognitive processing (analysis, synthesis, and or evaluation).