Ethics

Wednesday – Team 4

AN ETHICAL DILEMA ANALYSED USING THE GIVING VOICE TO VALUES APPROACH

This report has been prepared for Unit Coordinator, Professor David Webb for the purpose of Unit MGMT8506 Ethical Dimensions of Organisations, Management and Leadership

Background and Case Description

In 2009, having just finished his Economics Degree, Peter joined Bank X, one the largest multinational banks in Europe. Roughly, a year after, whilst working for the Department of Credit Analysis, Peter was handed a case to work on. It came from his boss, Ben. An Automobile company was asking for a loan. Bank X had a policy of two signatures minimum for any loan to be approved. Ben had already signed and now needed Peter’s signature. However, even though this might all sound normal, there were a few aspects of the file that made Peter uncomfortable. First of all, the file came directly from his boss. The normal procedure would be for the client to have been contacted by the Sales team. Along with that, there were, within Bank X, minimum financial capacity ratios for a firm to be considered for such loans. In this case, some ratios were not being met. Having worked for his boss for more than a year now, Peter knew that Ben would typically not even consider analysing corporate clients with these kinds of financial ratios. For Peter it was clear that this automobile business had no way of repaying the debt already standing on its balance sheet, further debt would undoubtedly be a mistake. With these factors on his mind, Peter confronted his manager. Ben’s answer was short and crisp. Even though he respected Peter’s view on the issue, he knew what he was doing when asking for approval of that loan and he was reassured that nothing could go wrong because he personally knew the owner of the firm. Not wanting to react before thinking thoroughly about the issue, Peter left Ben’s office without giving a clear answer as to what he was going to do.

Having slept on the issue,...