Question

Thinking Critically About Ethics:

You have been hired as a phone sales representative at G.A.P Adventures in Toronto. In this job, you help customers who call in to book vacations by finding what works best for them and their needs. You check airline flights, times, and fares, and also help with the rental car and hotel reservations. Most car rental firms and hotels run contests for the sales representative who books the most cars or most hotel rooms. The contest winners receive very attractive rewards! For example, if you book just 50 clients for one rental car company, your name is put in a draw for $1000. If you book 100 clients, the draw is for $2500. And if you book 200 clients, you receive an all-expenses-paid, one-week Caribbean vacation. So the incentives are attractive enough to encourage you to “steer” customers toward one of those companies even though it might not be the best or cheapest for them. Your manager does not discourage participation in these programs. Do you see anything wrong with this situation? Explain. What ethical issues do you see for (a) the employee, (b) the organization, and (c) the customer? How could an organization design performance incentive programs that encourage high levels of performance without compromising ethics?

(NOTE: Answer must be in your own words, do not copy from another source)

Answer 1

The given situation presents different issues for customers, employees and the company.

For employees, it would present an opportunity where there will be a fine line between being high performance and unethical behaviour. Most of the employees would prefer later, given the stakes. Once this fine line is crossed, the person would compromise his /her ethics, even if there is nothing on stake. This will also demotivate the person if such perks are withdrawn in future, and the performance will take a beating.

For company, the inappropriate advice driven by vested interests will alienate the customers and bring a bad name for the company if its customers realise that the company's employees make false commitments and give wrong advice for money and act in unethical way. It will be detrimental for the company in the long run to overlook such practices that undermine its reputation.

In this internet age, it will not take the customers long to realise that they have been conned and would prefer to stay away from the company. As a result, there would be fewer repeat purchases, and practically no referrals.

The company should limit the degree of direct involvement of the hotel, cruise and other companies with the employees. It should come up with an integrated incentive program after summing up and normalising incentives offered by different companies, so that the final incentives are not based on business generated for individual companies, but a consolidated figure.It will help the company to ensure that the employees act without any preferential treatment and biases in favour of a company.