MARTHA McCaskey

GROUP MEMBERS

MANISHA SHARMA

RAGHU RAMRAO

SURYA TEJA

LAKSHAY GUPTA

KUNAL GOKHALE

SAUMAYA JAISWAL

SHUBHAM MAHESHWARI

OVERVIEW• Martha McCaskey, an Electrical Engineer and MBA graduate

from Harvard is a project leader in Seleris Associate’s IAD has been assigned a project called SILICON 6. She was assigned to gather information to identify manufacturing technology and cost of its competitors’ new chip .She met Phil Devon’, who had worked earlier as a consultant in the competitor’s West Coast operations in southern California, to get proprietary information related to silicon 6 competitors. On working with this project she felt she was compromising her values on proprietary information and she felt that she was doing corporate spying .She was very disinterested with the project. On presentation day even though the clients management was satisfied with her work but she was not at her best as she was earlier in her previous projects.

Q1.As McCaskey what is your plan of action for finishing the Silicon 6 project?• Firstly I would meet Phil Devon and explain him the situation of my

uncomfortability of working with the project as I realised that I was going against my moral values because I felt that I was getting into corporate espionage.

• I will suggest Devon that I would use my cognisance of my prior education along with his industry experience for completing the project.

• Since Devon has a prior experience of setting up a plant and I have specialised in Electrical engineering along with a course on chip design, this will help me in coming with a solution for this project.

Q.2 What is troubling McCaskey? Do you agree with her assessment of the situation?

• McCaskey is troubled because her conscience was not willing to follow the current approach of extracting proprietary information since the inception of the project.

• We agree with her assessment of this situation because the principles of business ethics were compromised.

Q.3 Was the situation avoidable? How did McCaskey end up in this situation?• The situation was unavoidable as McCaskey was

not completely convinced with the approach • Her presentation with the client was not that effective

as it was evident that she did not provide new information, but when she cited the sources of information the clients were pleased with her efforts.

CONCLUSION

• Our understanding from the case is that in

business decisions the dilemma is between

values and profit oriented results but the best

solution could be the blend of both.

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