Boardroom Ethics may be an interesting part of leadership where the various actors within an organization play their game.
Boardroom Ethics: Executive Director
A.”He had told her that the executive manager was often unavailable due to speaking engagements out of town, he was unreceptive to proposals from senior staff members and reluctant to meet with them on a regular basis, and he seemed to be ignoring potentially severe budgetary shortfalls and numerous staff resignations.”
B.”He frequently appeared tired, even somewhat frenzied, and he occasionally took criticism and suggestions very soon, becoming defensive when a board member asked a question or voiced a concern, indicating by his response the board member did not trust him.”
C.”Proust also performed many jobs that might have been assigned. His management style included always meeting with agents of the bank or the nation, frequently dropping in at the COI group homes, and frequently checking or even correcting the work of subordinates. He also did much of the fundraising himself. Despite having a hand in everything that went on in the bureau, Proust was not a detail guy in regards to fiscal matters. He seemed neither to enjoy that aspect of his occupation nor to devote much time on it.”
D.”His underlying message appeared to be, this is neither very interesting nor really important and we won’t spend much time on it. His fire has been advocacy, not budgets.”Erik Proust is undoubtedly an energetic workaholic, a certain orator and a leader that knows how to play the politics necessary to market ideas to anyone who cares to pay attention.
However, by the excerpt above, the perception of this son-in-law of a board member shows he was of the habit of preferring to take on speaking engagements which took him out of town and forced him loose touch with the day-to-day running of the organization. He’s also reported to be defensive when confronted with questions from older staff members and wouldn’t think that it was needful to meet with them on a regular basis.
He took concerns raised by other members of this board as attack to his individual and interpreted it to mean that they didn’t trust him. He is also perceived to forget the new numerous staff resignations and would not deem fit to ensure that the organization was likely to be faced with serious budgetary shortfalls very soon. He busied himself with duties he would have delegated to other people and paid no focus on one of his primary responsibilities, fund.
As a leader, I don’t find Proust’s behavior or attitude adequate enough to lead any visionary organization without having such crisis as seen in this case study. “With Esposa’s encouragement, the board had finally gotten around to a formal inspection of Proust’s functionality as executive director three months ago. He had not been examined for a couple of years, at least not since Esposa had united the board”
Esposa’s decision to review Proust’s performance is exemplary and commendable. However, I am of the opinion that if he was well appraised, this crisis would have been avoided. The obscure explanations he gave during his review was sufficient sign for its board to have beamed their search light deeper into unveil the obscure matters.For the board chair to haven’t seen the facility in a very long while is yet another contributing factor to this issue.
Boardroom Ethics: The Board
“Pai was worried that the board”seemed oblivious to the seriousness of their bureau’s fiscal and personnel issues”. In accordance with Pai, he believed that the board was unaware of the financial standing of this organization.
His understanding of this board could be as a result of their neglect to make sure that Proust’s projects were closely monitored through regular and objective inspection. The board’s behavior is inadequate and should not be seen anywhere in an organization.
The proper way to judge functionality should involve the job flow process which enabled them arrive at any given result they have presently. In trying to judge their operation, one should focus on how well they were able to understand the project and why they did the things that they did (purpose ).
It’s also important to know if everyone from the top management to the least in the business has been in tandem with the set goals and objectives. If this was set up, it might have never been hard to recognize the problems and fix them before this crisis. More significant is the fact that whatever standards they decide to judge their performance will be, it should be uniform and across board to be satisfactory.
Boardroom Ethics: Strengths and weaknesses
The advantages of this service include;
a. This agency is one which has a fantastic cause geared towards improving lives of and meeting the day-to-day needs of the physically challenged.
b. Their job is one which people are able to easily identify with and provide their resources to.
c. They’ve a good organizational structure.
d. They have been able to hire experienced professionals no matter the little they pay.
e. Their work force is big enough to get all the work done.
The flaws include;
a. Absence of an accountant or a finance department. They simply have a bookkeeper who’s a junior staff.
b. They Chair was hardly on earth to pay periodic visits for their various endeavors.
c. They had an Executive director who derived more satisfaction going from one event to another instead of pay close attention to his primary assignment.
d. It’s obvious that the Executive director rarely held meetings with his team and this really goes to explain why someone would resort to performing a newspaper book about the bureau.
e. The board were unaware about the progress of the projects and therefore, relied solely on the words of this ED.
Boardroom Ethics: Primary problems Concerning Ehtics and Leadership
Executive Director
The executive director will be responsible for hiring, discharging, directing, and managing all employees, subject to approval by the board of supervisors or its committee.
The leadership of the service (the board) is not correctly educated about the challenges faced in the bureau and rely solely on what the ED claims to them. They had been insensitive to the current resignations and did not believe it would affect their cashflow at the end of the day.
Boardroom Ethics: Alternatives for Board actions
The options for board actions include;
a. Call for the auditing of this agency’s accounts.
b. Relinquish the office of the ED to somebody else that has proper understanding of finance and management
c. Employ a senior accountant
d. Since Proust derives much pleasure in advocacy, make him that the director of advocacy or create a department for advocacy and make him create, and manage the agency’s advocacy unit.
e. The board members should also be made up of people who are willing to give their time to visit the projects
The best ethical results of the impact of this board activity is going to be a total overhauling of the agency to match up with the recommendations. It has the potential of making people perceive them as being accountable and dependable especially if their cash flow significantly enhances.
However another possibility is for the newspaper publication to damage the agency’s image beyond repair and also for them the 90 employees to tender their resignation in precisely the exact same time.
Boardroom Ethics: How can you manage snitching?
The board ought to summon everybody who signed the petition and go on a fact finding mission to establish what their motivation was. They should also identify who behind their back and find out why he did thus. It is also important that you know if he had tried addressing the issues in house in writing and nothing has been done about it, and that had been responsible for not telling the board about this particular development.
However, if it is established that he jumped the gun, he should face disciplinary actions for undermining the bylaws which he vowed to adhere to when he had been employed.Boardroom Ethics: Things to do and do ethic-wise
Claudia should carefully outline her priorities and determine her willingness to continuing in the agency, her bank job and her ailing father. She should avoid being prejudiced and functioning on”hear-say”; rather she should have different units in the agency come up with a list of the challenges and recommendations to be reviewed by the board.
Boardroom Ethics: Application and Knowledge of a clear code of behavior
This might be viewed in the way and manner information is disseminated over the ranks. In case Pai’s son-in-law had made his observation formal enough and through the ideal channel, I think that this would have gone a long way to curb the way events turned out.