Questions

1. What are the ethical issues in the case with respect to leadership at
various levels? Who gains and who loses? What is the end cost-benefit for
not addressing the issues?
"Sexual harassment, defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests
for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual
nature that tends to create a hostile or offensive work environment, is
considered workplace discrimination."
Chapter 2 • The Global and Cultural Contexts

The ethical issues in this case are considered as Power Abuse and
workplace discrimination

If we refer to Appendix I, Moon SPA's Organization structure, Ethical

issue can be analyzed in various leadership levels as follows:

1. Pervious Vice-president of human resources, at HQ when a

woman who has been harassed visited Santa Barbara about ten years
ago. She got no reaction (lack of organization culture/ No specific
memo to deal with harassment) …………Top Management
2. Albert Ashwood sexually harassed a number of women
(Destructive or toxic leadership / Power without accountability/
Power Abuse)…Mid-level Management
3. Celia's boss who hopes to be recommend by Albert to be a general
manager someday. (Suspect follower/ Follower flattery) … Mid-
level Management

4. Celia as mid-level leader a have been afraid about what would

happen to her. (Higher power distance).. mid-level Management

Gain and Lose

As we define Abuse: taking advantage of one’s power for personal gain;
unethical, but not always illegal…Chapter 5
 1. Albert and his follow leaders have gained more power and privilege.
2. 25 women has lost their jobs.
3. Organization loses its reputation.
Cost-benefits:

As per the above illustration, Power Abuse and Corruption Cycle

1. Decreased job satisfaction
2. Decreased organizational commitment
3. Poorer task performance, decisions.
4. Lower extra-role performance
5. Increased employee turnover.
6. Financial cost of reduced productivity, absenteeism, and turnover
7. Damage to organizational reputation
* Chapter 2 • The Global and Cultural Contexts

2. What short-term steps should David recommend the company follow?

 The Following Short-term steps are as follows: -

1. Clear message and consistency *

David should send memos for all executives, reiterating their expectations for
a respectful workplace, where misconduct and other harmful behaviors are
not permitted. Also, they should not underestimate the power of setting their
expectations – and holding themselves accountable, because employees are
watching.
2. Investigation
David should attempt to contact the 25 women in Celia’s diary and gather
enough evidence from them to make a sold case against Albert such that the
head office has no option but to take action (Investigation)*

3. * Chapter 5 power, Solutions to Corruption

3. To what extent does he have to address the cultural issues of how leaders
address, or do not address, bad behavior from stars like Albert? What
steps should be taken in the longer term?

The cultural issue must be extended to all levels, leaders/employees must be

informed that they must address any bad behavior.

David should go through the following Steps:

1. Build a healthy workplace culture (Changing the organizational culture)*

David should Building a healthy workplace culture should be a key goal of all
organization because it returns huge value. Embracing respect, good
communication and diversity and inclusion are a great start, managing
unconscious bias and effectively resolving conflict brings it to a whole other level.

2. Create Culture Keepers (Protecting employees) *

David should mobilize the leaders / employees to become Culture Keepers of

organization healthy, respectful workplace. They should provide positive
reinforcement for good behaviors and keep a check and balance on bad behaviors
in a way that HR, legal and business executives never could. David should
encourage this by having an open dialogue and a true open-door policy.

3. Change how Organization train on sexual harassment (Training for

leaders and followers) *
David should conduct periodic training for leaders and Employees, they should be
learning from their training, given tools to do their jobs better, and practicing those
skills throughout the year. Preventing workplace harassment training content
should be a resource that they can tap whenever they experience an issue.

4. Handle complaints and investigations in a fair and respectful way

(Open communication, Protect employee) *
David wants to know about incidents early so he can resolve them swiftly. And he
doesn’t have to take the human out of HR to be effective. he can listen, understand
the situation from each person’s perspective, even say “I’m sorry you had this
experience.” Efficient, unbiased investigations, with quick and fair resolutions
elevate HR to be a key partner to employees and their corporation.

* Chapter 5 power, Solutions to Corruption

 4. What stakeholders does David need to consider or engage in his decisions
and communication? What stakeholders should not have a say in the
decisions or process set up, although they might be informed? Why?

According to Appendix A (page 8,9) , which is a Normative Decision analysis, it’s

a Consultant Leader Type (II) model which required the following:

1. Try to contact the 25 Victim woman and obtain more information, if they are
willing, get them to corroborate the allegation and may be even give written
statements of their own. Also ask them to give physical evidence if they are
able to. (Ask a specific information from whole group).
2. Involve and engage higher management and the executives with policy and
functional responsibilities that supported chain-wide initiatives worked at
Silver Moon’s headquarters in Santa Barbara, California.
3. David makes the decision with the higher management and executives’ input.

The Stakeholders, should not have a say in the decision or process setup, although
they might be informed are as follows:
1. Owners.
2. Park City Executive committee members
3. Albert Ashwood.
4. Albert fellow leaders.
5. Celia's boss who hopes to be recommend by Albert.
6. Employee

The reason for not engaging them that Albert has hold confidence of the owners, is
widely respected by associates and executive committee members and is known to
be jovial and charming which is quite contrary to the accusations levelled against
him (Flattery).

* Chapter 3: The Foundations of Modern Leadership, The Normative Decision Model

 5. What and how should David communicate with Albert?

As David and Albert are Leaders from low-context cultures focus on explicit,
specific verbal and written messages to understand people and situations and
communicate with others… Chapter 2

David should use Celia’s documented diary to get the names of the affected ladies,
then contact them through forwarding addresses and contacts from employee
documents, if they are willing, get them to corroborate the allegation and maybe
even give written statements of their own. Also ask them to give physical evidence
if they are able to. (Investigation)

David must Show these documents to management and use them to argue that
action should be taken against Albert and if they cannot do without him, he should
at least get a warning. (According to NDM analysis)

David will communicate him through another channel as the CEO or HQ human.
Albert must attend in the HQ.

* Chapter 2 Culture The Global and Cultural Contexts

6. Looking back, what earlier actions, if any, could Celia as a mid-level
leader have taken to ensure silver Moon leaders took the information
about Albert seriously? Did she behave ethically?
Earlier Action should have been taken from Celia:
1. Raise the complain to higher levels in the organizations
2. Provide the documents.
3. Convince the victim to raise the issue
4. Insist for Human resource investigation.
5. Communicate officially.
She did not behave ethically, because she must raise the complains, and take
quick action to stop Albert bad behavior.
* Chapter 2 Culture The Global and Cultural Contexts

Appendix I

CEO,
Executives,
David

Regional Regional
VP 1 VP 10

Property Property Property

GM1 GM X GM X

Executive Executive Executive

CM CM CM

directors directors directors

Key Key Key

leaders leaders leaders
Appendix II:
Normative Decision Analysis:
Q Quality requirement: How important is the technical
R quality of this decision? High
CR Commitment How important is subordinate
requirement: commitment to the decision? High
LI Leader’s information: Do you have sufficient information
to make a high-quality decision? NO
ST Problem structure: Is the problem well structured? NO
CP Commitment If you were to make the decision by
probability: yourself, is it reasonably certain that
your subordinate(s) would be
committed to the decision? NO
G Goal congruence: Do subordinates share the
C organizational goals to be attained in
solving this problem? YES
C Subordinate conflict: Is conflict among subordinates over
O preferred solutions likely? Yes
SI Subordinate Do subordinates have sufficient
information: information to make a high-quality
decision? NO

Normative Decision Chart