Personal Ethics Case Study For this case study use the principles from the first few classes and the “Back to Virtue” book to answer the question at the end. You should evaluate the situation using all 4 Cardinal and all 3 Theological Virtues. If appropriate you can also evaluate using the Beatitudes and 7 Deadly Sins discussion You are a member of the Global Alliances team at Thermometric International. Thermometric manufacturers consumer digital thermometers used by homeowners when cooking meats and are sold through various online companies (i.e., Amazon), specialty retailers (i.e., Stonewall Kitchen) as well as broad based retailers (i.e., Target). The job of the Global Alliance team is to manage the relationships between these resellers and Thermometric International. The Global Alliance team is comprised of 8 individuals and is managed by Karen Hendricks, the VP of Alliances, who reports to the Chief Marketing Officer. Karen has worked for Thermometric for 6 years and has been instrumental in building this team from 4 to 8 people and tripling the revenue sold through these channels. Approximately 80% of the company’s revenues are sold through the Alliances group while 20% is sold directly by the company in their on-line store. Peter Jackson and you were both hired around the same time approximately 2 years ago. You have been working for about 8 years and this is your 3rd job and second in an Alliance/Relationship Manager role. Peter is the senior member of the team having worked in Alliances for over 25 years. The other 6 members of the team have varying lengths of time in similar positions at other companies, and most have been at Thermometric for between 5 to 10 years. You are clearly the youngest member and the one with the least experience. Because you are relatively inexperienced and new, you handle a lot of the smaller, specialty retailers while the more experienced ones, like Peter, handle the larger retailers. You manage approximately 10 retailers while some of the other Alliance partners may manage just one. Your compensation is about 75% salary and about 25% bonus/commission based on how much your retailers sell. You are married with 2 young children living in the North Shore of Boston and your spouse is a teacher at a small Christian school and doesn’t make a lot of money. Because of the high cost of living and childcare expenses, you are living paycheck to paycheck and that bonus is helpful. For the last few years sales have had a solid, steady increase for Thermometric driven mainly by consumers using BBQ grills. Your thermometer is very portable, easy to use and is ideal for use in on a BBQ grill and the marketing efforts of the company have focused on that market. In 2020, sales skyrocketed because of COVID. Since people couldn’t go to restaurants, they were finding themselves cooking more than ever. Fortunately, the production staff at Thermometric had created enough finished inventory and had enough raw materials to be able to keep up with the sizable increase in demand throughout 2020. That all started to change in January 2021. Because of COVID supply chain issues, a key element in the production of the digital thermometers became very difficult to get thus inhibiting the company’s ability to keep up with demand. Sales flattened and then declined. Backorders started to happen and, because your product is somewhat of a commodity, consumers just changed vendors. Your job went from managing a relationship with your 10 resellers to one of customer service handling customer complaints, managing frustrated resellers, and dealing with rapidly declining sales. Two other elements in your job changed as well. The bonus program was suspended, impacting your total compensation by 25%, and each day Karen would hold a meeting with all 8 of the Alliance members to decide which retailers would get which amount of finished goods that were made the day before. It was now literally a hand to mouth existence for the company with allocations being made in drabs to the channels. At these meetings Peter was incredibly aggressive in fighting for his reseller to get as much inventory as possible. This surprised you as the bonus program was suspended so there was no incentive for Peter to get as much as he can in these meetings. You hated these meetings mainly because of the bullying that Peter did to get as much inventory for his reseller as possible. Because Karen was younger than Peter, she did not do much to stop Peter. One day you were at the coffee machine talking to Peter and you decided to ask him why he was acting so aggressively. Peter pulled you into a side office and told you that he had worked out a deal with his retailer where they would give him a percentage back of all the sales they made above a certain number. He was now very incentivized to get as much inventory as possible for them. Peter said he had told no one else this but encouraged you, as someone who needed the money to pay for a young family, to do the same thing. He was sure at least 2 or 3 of your retailers would participate and then you could channel your inventory to those 2 or 3. Peter left the room and you stayed there for another 15 minutes trying to absorb what you just hear. How do you respond to what you just heard? Personal ethic

Remember all the dynamics and all the parties involved as you craft your response.