Case Study: Running Head

James Mburi has been making an effort to get more data for use by the marketing team to prove its viability and to push toward a new bespoke customer base he has been trying to court. He calls in his marketing and business intelligence guru Nubrio Nutahsi to discuss the best way to push this project even though current preliminary data does not support moving to the new customer base. James calls Nubrio and asks him to check out a new vendor for conducting their business intelligence surveys that would help him prove the worth and value of the new customer base. James said he had heard great things about the Nigerian Data Consortium (NDC) and he would like Nubrio to use them for the data gathering and analysis phase of the project. Nubrio mentions that this is outside the normal policies regarding contractor use; however, if James directed him to do so, he would call them first thing after lunch. James calls him on the telephone and directs him to proceed in the project using NDC. James then calls his wife to have her call her brother, CEO of NDC, and tell him to get data to support the project no matter what it takes. She makes the call.

Six weeks later Drew Cubbins and David MacIntosh are reviewing the cost and further outlays to NDC right after James makes a powerful and compelling presentation for his plan to expand his marketing and sales efforts using data supplied by NDC. After the meeting, in a private conversation, David says to Drew,The costs of this project seem to be a bit high, dont you think? Drew says,Yes, they do seem to be out of line with what I was expecting, and why did James use this new vendor instead of our usual data provisioning service? Also, I was wondering how they obtained the necessary internal data without access codes and passwords to work with that sensitive data? I checked with the provisioning group and found that they had not been given access to our VPN nor had they signed the required nondisclosure agreements. Let me check into it,David says and walks off with the spreadsheets stacked under his arm. Later he asks his research assistant, Sally Etheridge, to find out all she can about NDC. Her initial report handed to David later that afternoon was shocking. It appeared that James had violated a number of corporate policies, and that NDC was nothing more than a shell company. Sally said the trail of data appeared to have been partially constructed from internal data and data located outside their protected net. The how and when the data had been constructed was a serious question. And the determination of who had done the work, whether inside the corporation or external, was now a second serious set of questions. The validity of the data was suspect as well because it had to have come from outside their protected network.

Discussion Questions

1. What specific policy, ethical rules, and legal rules did James break, if any?

2. What should Nubrio have done when asked to perform a questionable task with a vendor that had not gone through the companys strict accreditation process for vendors? Do you think he will come to regret having let this contract without a paper trail?

3. What happens when a major stockholder and founding member violates company rules, procedures, and processes?