In the article of this case study, our class has to identify Borris, Swee Lan, Borris’s manager and Marcus ethical dilemmas toward Borris’ decision of forgoing this planned holiday and continued with the client’s project upon their request. He had the options between either to join Swee Lan in Hong Kong before she returned to Germany for her studies and the priority for this trip was to meet Swee Lan’s family, or to fulfill his client’s requests for pull in the new product launch date, in Borris’ opinion if the launch was successful, it would secure more deals for the company and would be a stepping stone for something more lucrative in his career.
Swee Lan team illustrated her as a traditional Asian upbringing, which face-measure and relationship at high important, hence she was utterly upset that Borris had to cancel the trip and may possibly caused her parents unhappy (Jones 1991, concentration of effect). Swee Lan exhibited egoistic behavior where she could not understand Borris’s situation who had chosen work over relationship is more important (Harsanyi, 1977).
Manager team identify the manager as a stakeholder oblige to customer satisfaction and displayed the behavior of establishing intent to act on judgment with the consideration of situational factor (Rest ; Barnett, 1986) after assessing that Borris’s presence was necessary and crucial for the success of product launch. Despite this, he did not ask Borries directly to cancel his leave; instead the manager showed an ethical leadership by leaving the option to Borris himself after emphasizing many times on the importance of the client and the product launch. (Jones 1991, probability of effect)
Marcus and friends portray their behavior of making moral judgment on the issue by his intuition, despite being sympathetic to Borris situation, Marcus and friends were highly concern of that in future they might have to say yes if asked to give up holidays in the future (Zhu, May, & Avolio, 2004). As such Marcus was characterised at level 1 stage 2 of Kohlberg’s (1971) moral stages of development (Precoventional-Naively egotisical).
Borris eventually, he decided to cancel his trip and this reflected the behavior of consequentialist egoism with the mindset of decision made would result precedency to his benefits (Machan, 1979), and the behavior of stage 2 –naively egotistical of Preconventional morality- level1, whereby he acknowledged it was his duty and responsibility to handle his accounts well that ultimately benefits to the company and customers (Pettit, 2000). The client had high regards for Borris’s work and believed his capability in handle the project changes, the manager could actually find another person to replace Borris’s absence but he did not, instead he pressured Borris indirectly by manipulate and scheme just to cancel his holiday and work on client’s project.
Borris’s moral intensity (Jones, 1991) is constitute by all 6 elements. First, magnitude of consequence covers a wide spectrum harm from Swee Lan’s parents, Swee Lan, his colleagues to the important client. Foremost his career will be jeopardized as the company operates in a high intense environment, where employees were dismissed due to under perform. For social consensus, it was evident that both Swee Lan and working peers voiced their disappointments on Borris’s decision in cancelling the holiday, thereby increasing moral intensity. For probability of effect, Swee Lan parents probability be upset, however she should be more understanding and explained to her parents why the plan was changed. With Asian tradition, there is high chance that Swee Lan’s parents would also agree that work is more important to a man. Although temporal immediacy may not be immediate, nevertheless client would be impressed with the excellent support and reward with future business. Proximity of social distance will shifted negatively between Swee Lan and working peers, but adversely opposite for manager and client. Lastly for concentration of effect, are basically, every stakeholder in the case study including the client.
In conclusion, Borris had done much consideration of minimizing the impact to his surrounding stakeholder, against the beneficial outcome. However his utilitarian approach has not being appreciated by some of the stakeholders.
Appendix C: Interpersonal & Team working skills
In term of interpersonal skill, my initial perspectives of ethics are a set of guidelines, which govern human morality and value, however the perspective of defer from person to another. It is a good chance in express ourselves and at the same time looking at others teammate perspective, we ought to be open-minded and accept deferring opinion from others as there always two side of the coins to a situation.
In term of team working skill, everyone participated with consistency. Everyone in the team was free to communicate and putting their ideas across. We respected each other ideas, even there were deferring opinion, we debated and came to our consensus in regards to case study. Evidently, identify my team as a level 2 stage 3 of moral development (Kohlberg, 1973). At time team member tasks might not be evenly distributed, to improve good team working, team leader should delegation the task accordingly and team’s rules can be establish to ensure order.
