Question

If you have a customer who wants to buy a product from your company and you've tested the design on the product and you know the temperature and pressure that are safe for use. The customer tells you they want to use this product at the limits of the physical tolerance range. The data that you have says the proposed use is at the edge of the product's intended use zone.  The temperatures and pressures go a little beyond what the customer proposed. As a manager you know the product would fail. This is a big customer and does lots of business with your company

Debate Preparation Questions

1. What would you tell the customer? Why?
2. How should managers deal with ambiguous information? Do they have obligations to share all that they know, or should they provide customers and users only with the information they need to know?
3. How would you describe the benefits and risks of each proposal?
4. how does this tie into Corporate Governance and Ethics

Answer 1

It would be better to tell the customer about the probability of failures due to design constraints since the manager knows that the product will surely fail. This is the right thing to do and since the customer is a a big customer, it would be prudent not to anger the company by providing a defective product. The customer will be bound to accept that that safety is more important and that out company did not hide anything.

Managers should deal with ambiguous information by clearely referrring to the standard process or workflow set and discusiing with the person responsible in the workflow or organizational structure for thar information. Managers shouls seek clarifications from the personal responsible and document the requirement and specification to remove any ambiguity and share the document will all other concerned persons and seek their approval before proceeding. Managers do not have an obligation yo share all information with the customers.They should only share what the customer requires and whether they are able to achieve it or not. If any changes are to be made, it should be discussed and customer approval sought before making the changes.

The benefits of goig ahead with the proposal is that the company will gain immediate orders from the customer and it will bring in short term cash flow wherease the benefits of warning the customer is that the safety of customers employees will be taken into account and that the long term relationship might not be affected.

This is an ethical decision which pits safety vs money for the organizational decision makers.Therefore,this is a question of ethical corporate governance whether the company should hide the product defects or should go and sell the product to customer.