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This series of cases (see also the B [UVA-E-0108], C [UVA-E-0109], D [UVA-E-0110], and E [UVA-E-0147] cases) takes students through five design-and-manufacturing decisions confronting Albin Kalin, managing director of Rohner Textil AG, a textiles manufacturer in northeastern Switzerland. Faced with community pressure to use quieter machinery and challenged by increasingly stricter environmental regulations, Kalin has committed himself to improving the ecological profile of the mill. He has adopted a set of rule-based design imperatives proposed by William McDonough based on McDonough's concept "waste equals food." Given these strict environmental parameters, Kalin attempts to design and manufacture a compostable fabric for DesignTex, a division of the U.S. company Steelcase. The A case examines Kalin's choice of a twisting-yarn supplier: the two alternatives pose significant differences in product quality, reliability, and performance.

Supplement for case UV1821

Moral theories provide us with reasonable criteria for making moral judgments and evaluating decisions and actions. There is, however, one difficulty with approaching moral reasoning strictly from a "moral-theories" approach: Despite their knowledge of ethical theories, intelligent, reasonable people make moral mistakes. These mistakes cannot be attributed solely to ignorance or insensitivity or even merely to weakness of character, but rather to a paucity of moral imagination. Moral judgments involve a delicate balance of context, evaluation, projection of moral standards, and imagination. The linchpin of this process is a highly developed moral imagination that perceives the nuances of a situation, challenges the framework or scheme in which the event is embedded, and imagines how it might be different.

Susan Lyons, a vice president at DesignTex, a firm that develops high-end custom fabric collections, wants to create an environmentally responsible fabric that will provide a model for sustainable design. Lyons consults with William McDonough, a noted designer of environmentally sustainable buildings and materials, whose stated ideal is that "no environmental risk is acceptable." The A case follows the development of a new furniture fabric and asks students to decide whether McDonough's principles go too far--whether it is really necessary or feasible to redesign the chemical protocols to produce a completely compostable product that emerges from an absolutely clean manufacturing process. See also the B case (E-0100).

Supplement for case UV1814

Describes the purpose and nature of industry self-regulation and outlines the factors self-regulatory groups must consider to avoid infringing U.S. antitrust laws. Several examples of industry self-regulation are discussed.

Ethics is as much an organizational as a personal issue. Managers who fail to provide leadership and institute systems that facilitate ethical conduct share responsibility with those who knowingly benefit from corporate misdeeds. Executives who ignore ethics run the risk of personal and corporate liability. In addition, they deprive their organizations of the benefits available under new federal guidelines that recognize for the first time the organizational and managerial roots of unlawful conduct and base fines partly on the extent to which companies have taken steps to prevent that misconduct. An integrity-based approach to ethics management combines a concern for the law with an emphasis on managerial responsibility for ethical behavior. When integrated into the day-to-day operations of a company, such strategies can help prevent damaging ethical lapses, while tapping into powerful human impulses for moral thought and action.

Describes the 1988 amendments to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.

A young investment banker returns home one night to find that her roommate and best friend has been laid off from Universal Bank because Universal is shutting down its capital finance group. Her roommate makes her promise to keep this information confidential because the news is not to be disclosed to the market for several days. The protaganist knows, however, that Universal's capital finance group is collaborating with her own investment bank on a leveraged buyout deal and that Universal's withdrawal could have potentially disastrous ramifications for the deal if her own investment bank is not notified immediately. She must decide whether to break her promise to her friend or to remain silent and expose her own company to great risk.

Three situations are described. A branch manager for a retail brokerage firm must decide whether to change the branch's cash management techniques to increase interest earnings. An auto mechanic must decide whether to oversell parts and repairs to meet sales and service quotas set by management. A research director must decide what to do about suspicions of product adulteration. The vignettes illustrate the impact of organizational context on individual decision-making and the importance of management of management systems and behavior for organizational integrity.

The division human resources officer must decide whether an older employee should be disciplined for misusing company time and for improperly filling out time cards for his work on government contracts. Intended to focus on the various factors relevant to disciplining employees for violating company policy as expressed in the Code of Ethics.

A jury must decide whether an employee, discharged for misusing company time and filling out false time cards for work on U.S. government contracts, has been wrongfully terminated. Designed to show how the human resource manager's perspective on employee discipline compares with the perspective of U.S. legal doctrine and a group of disinterested jurors. Also permits students to consider the legal status of a company's policy documents, including the Code of Conduct.

The president of one of Martin Marietta's four main operating companies has learned of procurement irregularities in the company he manages. The problems involve U.S. government contracts the company is working on. After getting legal advice from the company's general counsel, the president must decide whether to disclose the irregularities to the U.S. government. Permits students to consider how managers should react if they learn about potential wrong-doing in their companies. Asks students to consider whether a policy of openness and disclosure should be generally favored and how such a policy should be applied.

Senior managers at Martin Marietta are considering two questions: how to assess the company's seven-year-old ethics program; and how to deal with employees' fear of retribution--real or imagined--for alerting the corporate ethics office to potential problems. The case describes the company's ethics program, the process of integrating it into the organization, and the reactions and views of key managers. Intended to provide in-depth knowledge of one company's approach to managing corporate ethics and to permit students to evaluate the impact of the program. Exposes students to a range of issues involved in managing programs like the one in place at Martin Marietta.

A division president of a Fortune 50 company must decide whether to initiate an immense capacity expansion. The critical question is whether revenue from the company's major product line will continue to grow rapidly. An opportunity is available to conduct some market research prior to making the decision. This case introduces the steps of decision analysis: decision diagramming, assessing monetary consequences, assigning probabilities, and evaluating expected monetary value to "fold back" the decision tree. The case also develops the ideas of value of information (clairvoyance), control (wizardry), and sensitivity analysis (breakeven probability).

Presents two brief vignettes about female employees who object to gender discrimination in their work environment. In one case, the manager of a convenience store removes "adult" magazines from the store's shelves because she sees them as damaging to women. In the other, a group of female employees of the Stroh Brewery Co. charge that the company's advertising creates an overall atmosphere of hostility to women. Designed to help students understand the scope of management's responsibility for dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace and the challenge of exercising that responsibility in the face of moral and legal rights of free expression. May be used with Note on the Law of Sexual Harassment.

This case follows the A case (UVA-BP-0253) by three years, chronicling the indigestion Dollar General (DG) suffers after the acquisition of the Eagle Store chain. The DG organization, originally held together by a strong sense of "rural American" values, deteriorates because of (1) dramatically different cultures (Dollar General vs. Eagle); (2) massive internal theft, which spreads from Eagle throughout the Dollar General organization; and (3) an irreparable rift between Cal Turner Jr., the president, and his brother Steve, the COO. The stock price has plummeted from 29 to 12. How can Cal Jr. regain control of his company and turn it around?

This case traces the history of a successful discount retailer, with a clearly developed low-cost strategy, from its founding to a major decision point, where the president must decide whether to acquire a Florida-based chain of 206 stores with a very different product mix. The basic issue is not so much whether the price is a good one but whether the acquisition fits the company's strategy and whether the president should put his personnel through another acquisition only months after completing another large acquisition. If he decides to move forward with the acquisition, how should it be managed?

In April 1988, The Naval Sea Systems Command (NavSea) came under fire from the naval inspector general for its excessive reliance on contractors to carry out day-to-day functions in support of its mission: the acquisition, maintenance, modernization, and deactivation of the Navy's ships and onboard systems. In the course of a routine review, the inspector general found that many NavSea contracts had no clearly stated performance requirements and that contractors were involved in sensitive activities, such as acquisition planning and source selection, that should be reserved to government employees with responsibility for protecting the public interest. The inspector general's report recommended that NavSea reduce its use of contractor support services by 50 percent over the next three years. NavSea officials quietly set about reviewing individual contracts and preparing a response to the report, but the matter was not destined to remain quiet for long. On June 14, reporters broke the story of Operation Ill Wind, a two-year investigation into illegal dealings among Navy and other Pentagon officials, defense contractors, and independent consultants. This case details the various phases of policy that took place within the US Government as pertains to NavSea. It should be paired with HKS827 (Part B). HKS Case Number 997.0.

HKS Case Number 998.0. In April 1988, The Naval Sea Systems Command (NavSea) came under fire from the naval inspector general for its excessive reliance on contractors to carry out day-to-day functions in support of its mission: the acquisition, maintenance, modernization, and deactivation of the Navy's ships and onboard systems. In the course of a routine review, the inspector general found that many NavSea contracts had no clearly stated performance requirements and that contractors were involved in sensitive activities, such as acquisition planning and source selection, that should be reserved to government employees with responsibility for protecting the public interest. The inspector general's report recommended that NavSea reduce its use of contractor support services by 50 percent over the next three years. NavSea officials quietly set about reviewing individual contracts and preparing a response to the report, but the matter was not destined to remain quiet for long. On June 14, reporters broke the story of Operation Ill Wind, a two-year investigation into illegal dealings among Navy and other Pentagon officials, defense contractors, and independent consultants. This case details the various phases of policy that took place within the US Government as pertains to NavSea. It should be paired with HKS826 (Part A). HKS Case Number 998.0.