Case Study :
Students are to read the following case and respond to the questions.
Accountant at Alpha-Male Sport Shoes:
Thuy is a mid level accountant at Alpha-Male Sport Shoes. The company she works for competes with the big brands like Nike and Adidas but they offer cheaper prices and more garish fashionable colours. The brand has been doing reasonably well. Their factories are in Vietnam. Their sales are in the USA. The company also has a venture capital branch that seeks [to invest corporate funds directly in external start-up companies] to diversify the company in new global markets.
BBS302 Values, Ethics & Attitudes Assignment-Melbourne Polytechnic Australia.
Thuy’s boss, Cora, calls in sick and asks her to handle any emergencies. Cora gives Thuy her computer access code. After Thuy finishes her work for the day, she makes one last check on Cora’s account. Then she gets curious, goes through her boss’s files and discovers that one of the venture capital [investment] accounts, Elysium Fields, is a totally bogus (not genuine or true) operation. She is very surprised and upset. She decides to stay late at work and subsequently discovers that it is some sort of phony (fake, deceptive) operation. Lots of the company’s money go into the venture capital branch and especially into Elysium Fields through various foreign bank accounts that offer secrecy and do not report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She is accounts that offer secrecy and do not report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She is convinced that something wrong is happening, but she is unsure as whether the company’s actions are illegal. Before she left, in her last search, Thuy discovered a suspicious e-mail that may tie Elysium Fields into the illegal drug trade from Vietnam. She prints out the suspicious files and accounts transactions and go home with the copies.
BBS302 Values, Ethics & Attitudes Assignment-Melbourne Polytechnic Australia.
Thuy is a Vietnamese citizen of the USA. A single mother with a seven-year-old daughter and a sick mother who are entirely dependant on Thuy’s work to pay school tuitions, rent, buy groceries and medicine. She left Vietnam because her mother and she were abused by her father. She knows the pain that illegal drug-trafficking has caused in the USA. Her own beloved brother died of a drug overdose.
Thuy feels that Alpha-Male Sport Shoes is a front company for illegal drug traffic. She may have enough evidence in her hands to go to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and open an investigation that will probably lead to a conviction. However, going to the FBI would drastically change her life. Her family may be put into the witness protection program. People living ‘undercover’ live under tremendous psychological stress. She has heard about abuses committed to children in those programs. She does not want that to happen to her daughter or risk her family.
If she does nothing, more people will die via this particular drug outlet. If she shuts the company down, then her own family life is permanently disrupted.
BBS302 Values, Ethics & Attitudes Assignment-Melbourne Polytechnic Australia.
Answer the following questions:
Following the steps to moral reasoning, explain:
1.What Thuy should do?
BBS302 Values, Ethics & Attitudes Assignment-Melbourne Polytechnic Australia.
Your answer must include:
a.A claim
b.Your reasons to support that claim
c.Evidence based on facts and theories of ethics (10 marks for facts, 15 for theories of ethics.
d.Acknowledgement of two different ethical approaches using two theories of ethics
e.Justification for your disagreement with the different approach
f.Conclusion in a single brief paragraph
2.What could possibly be Thuy’s personal system of values? Minimum 3 levels
3.Should she have gone through her files? Elaborate your answer using a moral analysis
4.Should she have taken the evidence home? Elaborate your answer using a moral
5.Does it make a difference that the factories are in Vietnam and she is a national of that country? Elaborate your answer
BBS302 Values, Ethics & Attitudes Assignment-Melbourne Polytechnic Australia.