Reference no: EM13871100

What is the issue in this scenario with the president in term of both a legal and an ethical dimension? what is the president's legal obligation to Acme, and any other person? what is the ethical reason?

FACT PATTERN AND QUESTION Acme manufactures widgets that purify the air and are advertised to meet environmental standards. The widgets are made in Canada and sold around the world. The air purifying widget business is fiercely competitive, with major competitors in Japan, Germany, Korea, USA and soon China. Everyone is fighting to get an edge or to hold on tenaciously to whatever they already have. The president of Acme was hired under an employment contract. The contract is very lucrative for her both in terms of money and perks, i.e. private schools for her children, a chauffeur every morning and evening. The contract requires her to exercise her best efforts to make Acme as profitable as possible and a world leader in widgets. The president is under extreme pressure to maintain the market lead for Acme's widgets. Failure to keep the market lead means both her contract position is at risk and, she will also have to order lay-offs. The President knows many of the workers on the factory floor. They are married men and women highly skilled in their trades (i.e. tool & dye) supporting families, often with children in post-secondary institutions. The president has fostered a corporate climate that stresses naked achievement and initiative at any cost. The old cliché about "seek forgiveness not permission" permeates the company. As long as Acme is making money, how it happens matters not to the president. There is an old English proverb that holds: "if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door". This resonates with the president. She knows that if she markets a truly better widget, Acme will have plenty of world-wide customers and therefore not only keep but increase its market share. Consequently, the president orders the vice president of engineering, Mr. Dilbert, to build a new air purifying widget that will not only meet strict new environmental government standards, it will surpass them and satisfy the phased in regulatory standards for the next 7 years. However, the harsh reality is that this objective cannot be met without investing billions of dollars and years of work. Acme has neither the luxury of money nor time. Mr. Dilbert, has fully absorbed the culture of Acme. So the VP knows he has to come up with a solution-any solution. So Mr. Dilbert comes up with a bypass valve for widgets. The by-pass value will operate to trick government inspectors (and their testing equipment) into concluding the widget actually purifies the air to the standards claimed by Acme and in full satisfaction of regulatory strictures. The bypass is a simple software programming step which Dilbert views as an extremely elegant engineering solution. The President discloses the course of action to the law department. To protect herself and the engineering staff, the President seeks a legal opinion from the law department that the concept is technically legal. Moreover the President makes it clear that if the law department will not approve the course of conduct she will find new lawyers that will, and the present lawyers can vacate their desks (they will be fired). The legal department generates a memorandum saying that given ambiguities in the law, the architecture of the device and testing tolerances, Acme is not in breach of the law. Edward Snowstorm, a low level contract employee at Acme snitches / whistle-blows / discloses to the government regulators that the widget has the bypass value and triggering software. Edward Snowstorm by making this disclosure is breaching his employment confidentiality agreement with Acme that holds that Snowstorm must not disclose to anyone anything he learns on the job at Acme. The president finds out about Edward Snowstorm leaking this information to the government and fires him.