Blow the whistle or dance to a tune! An ethical dilemma

Abstract

Case overview

Mr Qazi was sitting in his office in the Multan branch, reviewing his past month’s key performance indicators when he got a call from his Town Operations Supervisor, Mr Ahmed, based in Bahawalpur. Ahmed was recently promoted and transferred to Bahawalpur, from Multan branch. He informed Qazi about the huge inventory variances, which were not earlier reported by the previous Town Operations Supervisor, Mr Sagheer. Qazi was informed that differences were around 2.37% of total sales vs the allowable company limit of Zero inventory variance. Qazi was worried about whether to report these differences to higher management or not. He was very well aware that reporting might even cost him his job, and that of Sagheer too. He could not see any solution to the recovery of the inventory or cash against the same. Should Qazi take a risk and let go of Sagheer? Should he report the differences?

Expected learning outcome

1. Demonstrate the fraud and integrity-related issues. Why and how happened? 2. Analyzed the role of organizational policies in the decision of blow the whistle. 3. Identify the behaviors that helped a whistle-blower. 4. Assess the ethical dilemmas in which professional duties may conflict with personal ethics. 5. Propose organizational policies to encourage whistle-blowing and to discourage the fraud or integrity-related issues.

Supplementary materials

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

Subject code

CSS 9: Operations and logistics.

Study level/applicability

BBA.

Citation

Qazi, A.A., Shaikh, A.R. and Appolloni, A. (2021), "Blow the whistle or dance to a tune! An ethical dilemma", , Vol. 11 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/EEMCS-01-2021-0018