You are a store manager for the Melbourne-based branch of ABC Company. When you got the job you were quite young and inexperienced in your role as manager and you had to learn a lot on the job. You realised as time went by that you did not have enough knowledge of the industry and its codes, laws and legislation, as you came from a trading background. You had also realised that there were a lot of codes of practice and requirements that needed to be followed in order to run a retail store according with legislative requirements.

In the beginning, you had not worried too much about these details; when employees had asked her questions about what to do in certain situations, you just used your own judgement and did not bother to find out if this would be compliant or not. If someone pointed to a compliance issue, you had instructed them to either fix the problem or 'hide' it if the issue was difficult to rectify. However, you now felt that the situation had spiralled out of control; employees had learnt that this was acceptable, and they were all building a house of cards that would eventually fall.

You knew at this stage that they would have a large number of compliance issues in terms of work health and safety and they would be in trouble soon. You, sensing that a head office audit was not too far away, decided to start working on solving the problem. You spoke to some of your most trusted employees, and asked them to make up 'fictitious' evidence that was required by law but had been overlooked, as well as record evidence that was the basis for WHS training. They all agreed to help, as most of them had already figured out that their jobs were probably at risk come an audit.

Questions 1:

What is your responsibility in relation to unethical behaviour as the manager of this college?

Questions 2:

Why do you think this situation got so out of hand?