For the past six months, I have been working as a telesales accounts manager for a manufacturer of bedroom slippers. The firm had recently opened the telesales department, on a trial basis, to reach smaller retailers whose sales volumes were not large enough to attract the attention of the regional field representatives. Traditionally, the busiest time for the firm is the period from September to December, when retailers are ordering the inventories they want to have on hand for the Christmas shopping season. Last year, the number of orders coming in was unexpectedly heavy, and the lead time needed to ship the orders was nearly a month. Unless the order was placed by the end of November, it was unlikely that the customer would have the merchandise on its shelves by Christmas. However, the department manager encouraged us to take the late orders and promise delivery by Christmas, even though we knew that the merchandise wouldn’t be delivered until early January. Most likely, the retailers wouldn’t have wanted the merchandise if they had known the actual delivery date. Our manager’s reasoning for this practice was that we needed to boost our department’s sales revenue to ensure that upper management saw our department as a success at the end of the trial period. In other words, our jobs could be on the line. Also, each order that we may have lost meant a smaller commission check
a. How would you characterize the practice in which our firm engaged?
b. Were the jobs of all the people associated with the telesales department more important than ethical principles? What ethical principles are at stake?
c. Should I have followed my manager’s orders and gone along with what I thought was a deceptive marketing practice? Is the practice all that bad if there is some chance we could deliver on time?