Ethics/Legal decisions

Date: 6 February 2018
To: Ethics Office of Friendly Digits
From: Trevor J. Langford
Subject: Embellished Resume of Ms. Tara King
Executive Summary
Recent information has come to the attention of the board that Ms. Tara King potentially mislead the company inn her application to Friendly Digits. Ernst Blofeld recently discovered that Ms. King does not hold the Master’s degree as stated in her initial hiring. Consequently, this recent discovery instigates an interesting dilemma to the Colossal Corporation, particularly on how to morally and legally handle Ms. King’s situation. Ultimately, it is our recommendation that a developmental action, regarding her recent promotion, be taken to address the situation and show our employees the care we have for them in addition to addressing the wrong doing emanating from Ms. King’s falsification of her credentials in the early stages of her employment.
Ethics and Legality
To come to this conclusion as the best approach, we utilize the Badaracco’s Right vs. Right framework. In this ethical approach, we look at four questions and utilize these to come to the best moral decision to make. Furthermore, this framework allows us to consider the rights people inherently should have, the morality of the company, the outcome for the most parties possible, and a decision that will work in our company morals/framework and maintain as a precedent for future situations to come. The first question to address is the outcomes that all decisions would face.

The potential termination of employment would hurt the company, be negatively viewed on by her peers and upper management, and would greatly hurt her personal life and career. However, the revocation of her pending promotion allows us to lessen the damage we do on employees and the company. Furthermore, it allows us to create documentation on her indiscretion and addresses the lack of credentials she claimed to have. Furthermore, it allows her to continue to perform, seek the degree and the promotion she one had. Additionally, it appeases her managers and peers and benefits the company overall. The next thing to address is the rights she has as a human being. The decision to withhold promotion does not encroach on any of her intrinsic rights in any manner. Furthermore, it allows her the opportunity to continue to stay with the company on peaceful terms. The next item in which we consider in this framework is the deliberate or spontaneous process we use to reach this decision. This simply put means the ‘gut feeling’ we face. It established that we have no calculation or formula to reach this process and that it is not always an easy decision. However, in a spontaneous feel, this is the conclusion I reach as a good and moral person, because it is the right thing that leaves the least damage but allows us to justify our rational. Finally, we must consider what will work in the current company as we are today. This seems like an easy question to consider; however, we must look at innovation and pushing the boundary. I believe that the company would often terminate the employee for wronging out business and practice; however, this is the easy decision that doesn’t leave us pushing our potential and allowing growth and development of the company (Badaracco).
Before addressing the ethical situation, we face with Ms. King, I would first like to walk through the legal issues we potentially face. Ms. King applied ten years ago and stated that she had a Master’s Degree, while not a job qualification for the position she was applying for, she thought it gave her a leg up on the competition. This is a common trend in applicants and they often embellish their resume to try to gain an easy face value in the mass of applications. However, in her offense, she committed a positive resume misrepresentation through falsifying her credentials. This provides us a justifiable basis to terminate her employment even in the presence of any of the protections that would usually take place. Furthermore, a small monetary fee could be sought for the offense she has committed. However, it is highly against my recommendation to seek either of these actions (Mackey, 2012). While her offence allows termination, we must consider the ethics behind a decision like this and look for the best moral ground to take for the company and for Ms. King, who has served as a loyal and excellent employee for ten years with Friendly Digits.
Due to the nature of her recent promotion, and the requirement for Vice Presidents to possess a Master’s degree, implemented in the last four years, we should look at retaining her as an employee but not as a Vice President. Not only is this option addressing her lack of the degree, it addresses her excellent performance over the least ten years, allows us to show our employees the loyalty we show towards them, and does not promote or encourage deceiving our company or maintain deception that may have occurred.
Ultimately, Ms. King is a dedicated, knowledgeable, fast burning employee that has shown ten years of dedicated outstanding service to Friendly Digits. She deserves to stay with the company and potential to prove herself again and correct the wrong doing she did in her early, naïve, pre- Friendly Digits years. It is my recommendation that we revoke her promotion, document her lack of a degree, and maintain her in her old position, allowing her to earn a degree and continue to fight and apply for further development within Colossal Corporations.

Works Cited
Mackey, M. (2012, May 15). Ex-Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson and seven other cases of resume fraud. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/yahoo-ceo-scott-thompsons-resume-fraud_n_1516061.html
Badaracco, J.L., Jr. (2018, February 1). Harvard FSS: Defining Moments: A Framework for Moral Decisions. Lecture presented in Harvard Business School Faculty Seminar Series.