Please see the case on Sexual Harassment and answer the given questions to help me get started:
Q1. DO YOU RAISE THE ISSUE WITH YOUR C.E.O.?
Q2. IF SO, WHAT DO YOU TELL HIM?
Q3. WHAT DO YOU ADVISE HIM TO DO?
Q4. HOW DO YOU RESPOND TO THE JOURNALIST?
It's been only one year since you graduated college and already you are assistant vice president in charge of public relations for the Catfish Division of Fink, Inc., the largest seafood purveyor in the world.
Your Catfish division is the primary income earner in the corporation. All is going swimmingly at Catfish, until your good friend in purchasing asks you to go to lunch with her. At lunch, she confides that she and another young woman in the purchasing department have been the target of offensive sexual gestures and remarks of one Catfish executive. The executive, you learn, is none other than Catfish President Boris Swine. Swine, a Catfish veteran of 25 years, is the darling of the securities analysts and the press. His beaming face has appeared on the cover of every seafood trade journal. His magic touch in selling seafood has even named him the industry nickname, “the harpoon king.” Swine's unit continually surpasses profit projections, and his is the best-run subsidiary in the organization. He is the odds-on favorite to replace Fink, Inc. CEO Rhattan Fink, when the kindly founder, who built the company, retires in two years. Indeed, Swine is like a son to the elderly Mr. Fink.
You learn that the women three weeks ago voiced their complaints to Swine's executive assistant, an officious young Ph.D. named Seano Evil. They reminded the executive thatSwine's behavior was a violation of the Fink, Inc. “Code of Conduct,” for which the company has received numerous awards.
“We have been demeaned and denigrated in the most obscene way,” they told Evil. “If the company doesn't take action, we'll be forced to.”
Evil, you are told, promised to get back to your friend and the other woman but, as yet, has failed to do so.
You pay a call on Seano Evil, who says he has “looked into the accusations” and found that the women's complaints are “just smoke.” He explains, in picturesque fashion, how the two women are “merely frustrated ladies.” He explains to you that the “most important value” at Fink, Inc. is “loyalty.” He points out that staff members who show themselves to be “disloyal” are eventually shown the door. “Themost loyal employee this place has is Boris Swine,” he tells you. “You don't mess with Boris if you know what's good for you.” “These women are making a mountain out of a molehill. Boris says there's nothing to it,” he scoffs. “Let it go. We'll handle ithere. You just do your job, and let us worry about managing the company.”
You leave Evil's office even more concerned than when you entered. Your mood doesn't improve, after you take a call from local investigative reporter Max Grudge. Grudge says he has received “anonymous calls” from Fink about some kind of “sex scandal involving a top exec—possibly Rhattan Fink himself.”
“I get these kinds of calls all the time,” he explains. “But this one sounds legit. Have you heard anything about this?”
Your mind is racing. The real answer to Grudge's question, of course, is “yes.” But that would “open the gates” for a major scandal at the company. You answer instead, “Let me look into it, Max, and get back to you.”
You convene an emergency meeting with Human Resources Director Ophelia Paine and General Counsel Noah Comment. You lay out the facts, as you know them to both.
Paine volunteers that although the two women have exemplary work records, at least one of them is a “known complainer.” Let's try to keep this quiet,” she counsels. “You're good at deflecting these obnoxious reporters.”
Comment explains that no matter how obnoxious Swine might have been, “he clearly didn't violate any law.”
“That might be true,” you answer, “but the Fink Code of Conduct says explicitly: “Any employee, who is found to have violated the personal rights of another—most particularly in the realms of racial, religious, and sexual harassment—will be dealt with in the most severe and uncompromising manner.”
Attorney Comment glares at you, “What about Swine's personal rights? The fact is that no law was violated, so it's nobody's business. Period.”
As to what you should do with the inquiring reporter, Comment's comment— “Stonewall him.”