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Martha McCaskey Case Solution

Solution Id Length Case Author Case Publisher
2475 1448 Words (6 Pages) Bart J. Van Dissel, Joshua D. Margolis Harvard Business School : 403114
This solution includes: A Word File A Word File

Martha McCaskey's case elaborates on the situation of an employee (Martha) who is confused between her promotion and her values. To secure a promotion, she has to complete the Silicon 6 project. The project requires her to acquire confidential data of other parties which is against business ethics. The marketing manager of the company has assured the client that they will get the data for them. Martha is an ambitious Harvard Graduate who doesn’t want to follow the wrong path at the start of her consulting career. The firm has established itself as one of the best consulting agencies in the market. She wants a promotion in this leading firm but is also facing the dilemma of following the wrong path. Martha’s previous work was highly regarded in the company making it more difficult for her to lose a promotion opportunity.

Following questions are answered in this case study solution

  1. As Martha McCaskey (MM), what is your plan of action for finishing the Silicon 6 project?

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

  3. Was this situation avoidable? How did MM end up in this situation?

Case Analysis for Martha McCaskey

1. As Martha McCaskey (MM), what is your plan of action for finishing the Silicon 6 project?

The scenario requires Martha to perform tasks to complete the Silicon 6 project. The actions required to complete the tasks might hurt her integrity. It's hurting her, even more, to gain the information she needs from Mr. Phil Devon since he's so willing to assist.

The following points might be used as a starting point for looking into possible solutions to this critical issue: The first and most important choice is the route we will take for this job. If we're going to learn anything from Mr. Devon, we should do it in a manner consistent with our values. In other words, we gather all of the material from Exhibit 1 (costs, wages, and all other project specifics) and get Phil Devon's opinion on it the second time around. A. However, this exercise does not take us anywhere since it was previously completed with the least effort. This is not the information we are seeking from Phil Devon in the first place. Our customer doesn't find it appealing or useful. 2. We may consider letting Kauffman handle Devon according to his preferences. 

3. If Kauffman succeeds in unseating us in the campaign for promotion, we might be in serious trouble. When it comes to Devon's honesty, we may not just accept Kauffman's approach since we might be held responsible for the whole incident. A background check on Mr. Phil Devon to see whether he has any past dealings with our target competition would be an option. This might tell us whether Mr. Phil Devon is willing to provide the specifics of our target competitor's production process, which is exactly what we need to know. For starters, we'd look into Mr. Phil Devon's past employment history at our competitor's business to see whether he has a history of disclosing confidential information to others. Kauffman's services would be used for this, and he would be in control of the project alone. 

Phil Devon's former coworkers at our target competitor's firm would likewise be a focus of our investigation. Martha McCaskey would contact Mr. Phil Devon if we had confirmation of this, and we'd have a talk about the project's details and ask him for the additional charge of USD 3000 to collect the necessary information. This allows me to retain Mr. Phil Devon on hand for these kinds of projects. A database of ex-employees of the target organization will be prepared and consultants will be hired if Phil Devon comes clean in his background check. This data can be analyzed to come up with an efficient project completion strategy, which will be cross-checked with Devon's general data as well as the report we'll be putting together based on the information received from former workers.

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