Business

Authentic Assessment Scenario

The below is the scenario you are to use for the Authentic assessment which is in lieu of the final exam.

Gumthrop Northern was a long- term military contractor and munitions manufacturer, with annual revenues of $500 billion. The company employed 105 workers. All were highly paid UAW technicians and mechanics.  Gumthrop Northern manufactured body armor and armored vehicles for the United States military.

Contrary to international law and treaties, it also manufactured landmines exporting them to Afghanistan and Iran, its best foreign customers.  More than half of its profits derived from these clandestine operations.

All of Gumthrop Northern's products had problems. Although paid handsomely for its body armor and armored vehicles, the materials used in manufacturing were substandard. The body armor did not protect service members from most antipersonnel ammunition. The simple addition of a standard issue flak jacket would have prevented most injuries, but Gumthrop did not tell the military because it feared it would lose its contract. In addition its armored vehicles, though quite strong and sturdy on the sides and top, had only a thin sheet of steel on their undersides, making them especially vulnerable to  IED (Improvised Explosive Device) explosions.

The landmines it sold to the Taliban in Afghanistan and to the Iranian government were themselves defective.  Many of those who attempted to plant the mines were themselves killed in the process because of the use of faulty switches. Most of the mines’ victims however, were children and soldiers.

As the US military began to understand the problems with the body armor and armored vehicles it had purchased from Gumthrop Northern, Department of Justice lawyers became involved and the families of injured or killed US service members consulted attorneys. Gumthrop’s corporate leaders were themselves now looking down the barrels of criminal prosecution, and classes of...