MARTHA McCaskey

GROUP MEMBERS
MANISHA SHARMA
RAGHU RAMRAO
SURYA TEJA
LAKSHAY GUPTA
KUNAL GOKHALE
SAUMAYA JAISWAL
SHUBHAM MAHESHWARI

OVERVIEW
Martha McCaskey, an Electrical Engineer and MBA graduate
from Harvard is a project leader in Seleris Associates IAD has
been assigned a project called SILICON 6. She was assigned to
gather information to identify manufacturing technology and
cost of its competitors new chip .She met Phil Devon, who had
worked earlier as a consultant in the competitors West Coast
operations in southern California, to get proprietary information
related to silicon 6 competitors. On working with this project
she felt she was compromising her values on proprietary
information and she felt that she was doing corporate spying
.She was very disinterested with the project. On presentation
day even though the clients management was satisfied with her
work but she was not at her best as she was earlier in her
previous projects.

Q1.As McCaskey what is your plan of

action for finishing the Silicon 6 project?
Firstly I would meet Phil Devon and explain him the situation of my

uncomfortability of working with the project as I realised that I was

going against my moral values because I felt that I was getting into
corporate espionage.
I will suggest Devon that I would use my cognisance of my prior
education along with his industry experience for completing the
project.
Since Devon has a prior experience of setting up a plant and I have
specialised in Electrical engineering along with a course on chip
design, this will help me in coming with a solution for this project.

Q.2 What is troubling McCaskey? Do

you agree with her assessment of the
situation?
McCaskey is troubled because her conscience was
not willing to follow the current approach of
extracting proprietary information since the inception
of the project.
We agree with her assessment of this situation
because the principles of business ethics were
compromised.

Q.3 Was the situation avoidable? How

did McCaskey end up in this situation?
The situation was unavoidable as McCaskey was
not completely convinced with the approach
Her presentation with the client was not that effective
as it was evident that she did not provide new
information, but when she cited the sources of
information the clients were pleased with her efforts.

CONCLUSION
Our understanding from the case is that in
business decisions the dilemma is between
values and profit oriented results but the best
solution could be the blend of both.

THANK YOU