Case Studies with Open Discussion

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 Tata Code of Conduct :

Case-1
The company has given a stringent target to the group. Mr. Ganguly, a young manager and
the Officer In-charge of the group is a good task master, but usually speaks in a rough and
threatening tone. Hence, he didn’t have a very cordial relation in his team. Being frustrated
with the situation Mr. Ganguly’s behaviour became worse. The matter was raised by other
member of the team. When interrogated Mr. Ganguly’s reply was he always wanted to achieve
and surpass the stringent targets given by the management and people were not cooperating
with him. It laid to his bad behaviour, otherwise he is a very gentle person.
Corporate Ethics

Q1. Is there any ethical issue involved?

Q2. If yes, what is/are the issue/s?
Q3. Which clause/s is/are relevant to the issue/s?

Disclaimer: All the characters, incidences, etc. mentioned in the case are imaginary. Any incidental resemblance with any person, place etc . if any is
highly regretted.

Corporate Ethics, Tata Steel 2

 Tata Code of Conduct :

Case-2
Mr. DB Vaidya, Head, HR/IR was requested by LIMS, a reputed Institute for management
study in the town to deliver an inspiring lecture for its newly enrolled students. Considering it
as social responsibility, Mr. Vaidya delivered the lecture on scheduled date & time and got an
applaud from the students. At the end, the Dean of LIMS handed over a memento to Mr.
Vaidya which he accepted. To his utter surprise, Mr. Vaidya found the memento made of silver
weighing approximately 20gms having the name & monogram of the institute engraved on it. It
was a joyous moment for the entire family and they put it in the showcase of their drawing
Corporate Ethics

room.

Q1. Is there any ethical issue involved?

Q2. If yes, what is/are the issue/s?
Q3. What if Mr. Vaidya had taken leave on the day he had to deliver the lecture?
Q4. Which clause/s is/are relevant to the issue/s?
Q5. What could be done by Mr. Vaidya to comply with the clauses?

Disclaimer: All the characters, incidences, etc. mentioned in the case are imaginary. Any incidental resemblance with any person, place etc . if any is
highly regretted.

Corporate Ethics, Tata Steel 3

 Tata Code of Conduct :

Case-3
Mr. S Narayana joined as an intern in the Research wing of the company and worked on a
project under Dr. Venkatesh Rao. Most of the research work was carried out by Mr. Narayana
that was well appreciated by Dr. Rao in person. When Mr. Narayana’s internship was about to
complete, he found the reaserch detail published in a National research journal and the
author’s name was Dr. Venkatesh Rao only. When he approached Dr. Rao with his grievance
for his name too, Dr. Rao replied, “As all the facilities and guidance was provided by me only,
you should not expect your name appearing in such a reputed journal.”
Corporate Ethics

Q1. Is there any ethical issue involved?

Q2. If yes, what is/are the issue/s?
Q3. Which clause/s is/are relevant to the issue/s?

Disclaimer: All the characters, incidences, etc. mentioned in the case are imaginary. Any incidental resemblance with any person, place etc . if any is
highly regretted.

Corporate Ethics, Tata Steel 4

 Tata Code of Conduct :

Case-4
Mr. Ramesh, a maintenance contractor in the company has requested Mr. Kartik, a
Maintenance Manager in LD#1, to attend the ‘Vishwakarma’ puja at his residence which Mr.
Kartik accepted as they were known to each other for quite sometime. There was a post puja
party, a cocktail followed by lunch where some other friends of Mr. Ramesh were also present.
When the party was over, Mr. Ramesh presented Mr. Kartik a ‘sweet-packet’ for his family
which he hesitantly accepted.
Corporate Ethics

Q1. Is there any ethical issue involved?

Q2. If yes, what is/are the issue/s?
Q3. Which clause/s is/are relevant to the issue/s?
Q4. What if both were schoolmates and friends? What could be done by them to comply with
the clauses without tarnishing their friendship?

Disclaimer: All the characters, incidences, etc. mentioned in the case are imaginary. Any incidental resemblance with any person, place etc . if any
is highly regretted.

Corporate Ethics, Tata Steel 5

 Tata Code of Conduct :

Case-5
Mr. Marwah, the Head of the section, otherwise a very good person was very casual in
passing vulgar remarks to his subordinates for both good or bad job done. Though unhappily,
everybody was tolerating this considering it as one of his weaknesses. Ms Savita joined as
Maintenance Associate reporting to Mr. Marwah. She could not tolerate it and requested Mr.
Marwah not to repeat this at least to her; but of no use. She remained frustrated but did not
report anybody except sharing her feelings to one of her elderly colleague Ms Vargava who
suggested her to tolerate this as there were no bad intensions.
Corporate Ethics

Q1. Is there any ethical issue involved?

Q2. If yes, what is/are the issue/s?
Q3. Which clause/s is/are relevant to the issue/s?

Disclaimer: All the characters, incidences, etc. mentioned in the case are imaginary. Any incidental resemblance with any person, place etc . if any is
highly regretted.

Corporate Ethics, Tata Steel 6

Build around cases

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Case studies for Managers on Business
Ethics

Please present in each case:

What went wrong ?
Who were the culprits ?
What should be the consequences ?
What could/should be done to prevent the recurrences ?

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Scenario 1- Transporting Household
An officer who had recently joined the company had claimed a payment of Rs. 52,000/-
towards transportation and packing charges for shifting his household materials from one
location to another on his transfer as per his entitlement. In the Travel bill, he had declared
the period of his journey for shifting of goods which was approximately two months prior
to his actual shifting in his new residence.
As per rules an officer has to obtain quotations from three transporters and then select the
lowest bidder. Accordingly, the officer had submitted copies of competitive quotations
under the letter head of transporters who were operating from locations far away from the
place of required transportation. Physical verification at the transporter’s address revealed
that the said documents were not genuine. On being questioned by the enquiry team, the
officer confessed that he had not shifted any house hold goods and he had submitted fake
documents for claiming and receiving the amount from the company as per his entitlement
considering it was a part of joining facilities / benefits given by company.
Contd………..
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Scenario 1 -Transporting Household
Q. What should be the stand of the Ethics Counsellor / Company?

a) Company should consider that the claim was as per the entitlement of the officer; hence
there was no violation.

b) The officer has followed the process; hence only a recovery of the claimed money should
be done.

c) The officer has followed the process, but has used wrong means; hence some disciplinary
action should also be taken.

d) It was a case of active involvement of the officer in forgery; hence severe disciplinary action
should be taken.

Ans. d) It was a case of active involvement of the officer in forgery; hence severe disciplinary
action should be taken. 

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Scenario 2- Cementing benefits
A truck arrived at the store to deliver 400 bags of cement from a supplier against a
Purchase Order. The storekeeper did not post the quantity in the stock ledger. Instead on
request of the construction site contractor he had allowed the same truck to carry the
cement bags to the construction site. However the contractor had approved material
requisition for only 200 bags. The storekeeper requested his superior, the store in-charge
sitting in a different office over phone to approve issue of 400 bags to the alleged
contractor. The contractor supervisor instead of proceeding to get the endorsement from
the superior on the delivery challan took the truck straight away towards the security gate
for exit. The Security personnel posted at the exit gate suspected that one of the two
material reservation slips each indicating 200 bags of cement was forged. The proprietor of
the contractor firm tried to cover up the misdeed putting blame on his supervisor. However,
his involvement was established from the call records of telephonic conversations between
him and his supervisor on the date of incident.
Contd………..
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Scenario 2- Cementing benefits
Q. What should be the stand of the Ethics Counsellor / Company?
a) The storekeeper had not followed the process of posting the received quantity in the
stock ledger and had allowed the same truck to carry the cement bags to the construction
site without the requisition slip for the required quantity. Hence, disciplinary action should
be taken for the person’s negligence.
b) The contractor supervisor instead of getting the endorsement from the store in-charge
on the delivery challan took the truck straight away towards the security gate for exit.
Hence, disciplinary action should be taken against the contractor supervisor.
c) The acceptance of the proprietor to his supervisor was established based on the call
records; hence the disciplinary action against the contractor firm along with the contractor
supervisor should be taken.
d) Disciplinary action against all the three persons the storekeeper, the contractor and the
contractor supervisor should be taken.
Ans. d) Disciplinary action against all the three persons the storekeeper, the contractor and
the contractor supervisor should be taken. 12
Scenario 3- Friends with benefit
The vendor was registered in the year 2003 and the order value for the firm was
approximately Rs 2 crore in 2015. In spite of this the proprietor continued to be engaged as a
contract worker against a small remuneration.
The employee’s SAP ID had been logged in from his computer on regular basis at different
dates and time. It was found that employee’s SAP ID had been logged in from his asset on
Sundays and other week days either early morning or late at night, when the employee was
not on duty.
The asset was located in a protected area and the probability of physical presence of the
employee or any unauthorized person during odd hours is ruled out.
It was found that the proprietor of the vendor was working on different shift timings by
virtue of being an outsourced data entry operator.
Some documents related to the proprietor’s firm were downloaded and saved by employee’s
SAP ID during night shift on the dates when the proprietor was present .
Similarly, it was found that some Purchase Orders and Request for Quotations of other
vendors were downloaded through this ID on different dates. The employee from
Procurement confessed that he had shared his SAP ID with the proprietor for two years .
He said that the proprietor was his friend and he had shared his SAP ID on request of the
proprietor for viewing the schedule line details of the orders related to his firm. He had
accepted that sharing the SAP ID and password was his mistake.
.
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Scenario 3- Friends with benefit

I. As per the Works Standing Order, the employee from Procurement Division
has been discharged from the Company.

II. As concluded by the facts above, as per the vendor consequence

management framework it falls under “VF4: Stealing Company's material by
the Proprietor / Partner /Director”, for which the firm belonging to the
proprietor has been blacklisted “. The proprietor’s contract as a data entry
operator has been terminated and his entry inside Tata Steel premises has
been banned.

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Scenario 4- Whose benefit is it anyway?

An officer inducted a vendor in which his brother was engaged. He also ensured that this firm got some
trial orders before he submitted the declaration. The value of the trial orders were increased manifold
during the execution period. However, there were no anomalies found in the ordering process and
rates.
This case was given for forensic audit by external consultants to establish whether any personal benefit
was taken by the officer. The forensic audit report concluded following: (i) The officer had helped his
brother to get job in the company of the above vendor in March and submitted declaration in Nov. He
had taken part in a decision to give trial order to this vendor before submitting declaration. (iii) He had
introduced this vendor in the area of service contracts. (iv) His brother had once resigned from this firm
but was reinstated with a substantially higher salary and bonus amount (v) Review of two years’ Bank
statements for his salary account revealed suspicious abnormalities.

As concluded by the forensic audit report, it falls under “Though given Conflict Of Interest
(COI) declaration, providing undue advantage to relatives, without evidence of personal
benefit to the employee”. The officer has resigned.
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Scenario 5- Test Trap

The vendors of raw materials were supplying substandard quality . On verification ,few
irregularities were found in the shapes and sizes of the raw materials supplied by the two
vendors. The vendors were advised to submit test certificates for the materials they had
supplied. One of the vendors had submitted a test certificate with the parameters irrelevant
w.r.t. the required specification of the material. Due to such anomalies, a team visited the
premises of the two present suppliers and checked inspection records maintained by them. A
mismatch was observed in data recorded in the test certificate that was submitted by the
vendor during enquiry and the data recorded in the inspection records maintained by the
vendor at their premises. No in-house testing facility was found available with the vendor.
Visit to the other vendor’s premise revealed that the vendor had outsourced their
manufacturing unit as their plant did not have the capability to produce product as required..

Case of contract management Order short closed and they have been suspended and barred
from future business.
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Scenario 6– The story of gold coin
A Supplier has been supplying material, since 2013. Recently an order for few MT. of “the raw material”
was placed on them for a trial. As per process, the supplier had supplied the material at the store from
where department had drawn the material against approved Material Reservation. The department had
observed certain deficiencies in the packaging of the item. Almost 60% quantity had been consumed in
the production process by the time Sr. V.P. of the Supplier firm had visited the Plant. One officer was
engaged in the production process at the Plant. Sr. V.P. of the Supplier firm met the officer and had some
discussions about the consumption of their supply item. However, after discussions, the Sr VP had
handed over a small gift packet to the officer. Since the officer was in hurry to reach the shop floor
hence, immediately did not open the gift pack and left the packet at the office. However, later opened
the gift packet, and observed that it contained a gold coin.

The officer immediately informed her superior. Next day, the representative of the supplier
firm was called at the office of the Head, and communicated about their violation of the gift
policy as per the Code of Conduct and the gift packet was also returned to him.
The vendor was blacklisted. 17
Scenario 7– Can you Measure ?
A plant is a consumer of packing box for finished product. A long term order was placed on a
vendor for supplying of such materials. On completion of the order, fresh order was
processed by the Procurement dept. which went to a new vendor. Prior to submitting their
quotation, the new vendor had visited the user department to see the sample being used by
the department (supplied by previous vendor) ,accordingly, they submitted their rate. After
getting the order, the new vendor informed the Procurement dept. that their order item
specification carried higher dimensions as compared to the product inspected by him before
giving the order.
Verification of the material supplied by the previous vendor revealed that length of those
material was less by one foot as compared to the order specification. However, the length
mentioned in the material-challan was same as mentioned in the order specification- one
feet more than actual length supplied. All employees and officers who had signed on the
challan and received the materials at different point in time were questioned. They clarified
that only the quantity as mentioned in the challan was ensured by them and they did not
check the length dimension due to lack of knowledge about the order specification. All had
accepted their negligence.

Case of contract management “Failure to exercise the degree of care that is required in the
given circumstances with no malafide intent but causing financial loss to the company” .
A formal letter has been issued to the Foremen, Asst. Manager and the Sr. Manager. The
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Discussion points
Thank you