Question

Kirk is a bright individual who is being groomed for the Controller’s position in a medium-sized manufacturing firm. After his first year as Assistant Controller, the officers of the firm were starting to include him in major company functions. For instance, today he was attending the monthly financial statement summary given at a prestigious consulting firm. During the meeting, Kirk was intrigued at how all the financial data he had been accumulating was transformed by the consultant into revealing charts and graphs. Kirk was generally optimistic about the session and the company’s future until the consultant started talking about the new manufacturing plant the company was adding to the current location and the costs per unit of the chemically plated products it produced. At that time, Bob (the President) and John (the chemical engineer) started talking about waste treatment and disposal problems. John mentioned that the current waste facilities were not adequate to handle the waste products that would be created by the “ultramodern” new plant in a manner that would meet the industry's fairly high standards, although they could still comply with federal standards. Kirk’s boss, Henry, noted that the estimated cost per unit would be increased if the waste treatment facilities were upgraded according to recent industry standards. While industry standards are presently more stringent than federal regulations, environmentalists are strongly pressuring for more stringent regulations at the federal level. Bob mentioned that since their closest competitor did not have the waste treatment facilities that already existed at their firm, he was not in favor of further expenditure in this area. Most managers at this meeting resoundingly agreed with Bob, and business continued on to another topic. Kirk did not hear a word during the rest of the meeting. He kept wondering how the company could possibly have such a casual attitude toward the environment. Yet he did not know if, how, or when he could share his opinion. Soon he started reflecting on whether this was the right firm for him. What should Kirk do? Putting Corporate Responsibility first, but recognizing the politics at play, what is the most ethical thing to do? The most practical? What strategy would you suggest to Kirk if he came to you for advice?

Answer 1

ANSWER:-

Kirk being an ethical professional with sound experience in managing things would be an ethical dilemma after the meeting. He should play wisely inroder to tackle the situation where the leaders in organisation are concentraing just on financial numbers ( or on creating more profit margins). At the same time Kirk can propose new plans which will create a new value addition to the entire system which has addressed bot environmental safeguard as well as companys objective. A company can sustain in the field only if they have multiple perspective which should address the future of the environment . The corporate culture should be favorable to safeguard the sustainability practice. Kirk can propose plans which wont compromise on the qualitity stand point of view and design the new treatment plan and project the idea as a goodwill for the organisation towards public. It should be considered as a benchmark for other industries and take the advantage of public attention to their new proposals. There will be trade off on cost vs quality and Kirk should take the responbility to design a assesment plan where ROI will be calculated based on both quantitative and qualitiative way and he should convince the management based on the long term outcome. Industry wise they can gain a new level of ethical practise which is favorable to the organisations groth and environmental protection. This should be Kirk;s strategy to address the current issue.