Case study of Lockheed Martin Corporation

Dennis Terris presented a fascinating analysis of the program the company employed to safeguard its personnel in the reading article. The business utilized a system in 1996 that was dependent on a pre-made game that featured characters from the Dilbert cartoon network. The CEO of Lockheed Martin Corporation, Norman Augustine, put up the idea for this approach of safeguarding the company's workers. The CEO raised the idea of holding each corporate specialist accountable for taking precise measurements of their output. For this reason, every specialist was able to be a part of the ethical complexities and administration of the corporation of the general decision making of the corporation.

The employees of the Lockheed Martin Corporation were all picked from the believers of the industrial development era. The Lockheed Martin Corporation leaders shaped the corporation is such a way that they could be able to create a working environment that will not only improve their living standards as Lockheed Martin Corporation employees but also build their character. These leaders of the corporation also endorsed reasonable business transactions, that later led to the creation of the Lockheed Martin Ethics program watched and chaired by the Defense Industry Initiative (DII). The Defense Industry Initiative had one objective, to ensure that Lockheed Martin Corporation conducted fair business transactions across all its stakeholders.

Unethical was used by Lockheed Martin Corporation to compete with its competitors

Every business has its competitors, and Lockheed Martin Corporation is not an exception. However, it is unethical for the firm to be involved in illegal business completion activities. Most of the business across the world would do their best to find best ways to outdo their competitors in the corporate market. Some business would use the "clean" competition strategy, but some may use dirty competition strategies to gain a bigger share of the market. Such businesses can get a leg up in their completion. Businesses that use unclean means to get an upper while when dealing with their competitors they exploit their customers unfairly to gain the benefits. According to this article, Lockheed Martin Corporation issued bribes to other companies abroad to secure huge sales for their produced aircraft. Because all the companies in the aircraft industry then used this method to gain huge sales, the Lockheed Martin Corporation could have been outdone by its competitors. My opinion is that Lockheed Martin Corporation acted fairly by bribing other companies overseas to sell more of its aircraft because all other competitors were doing the same.

According to Terris (2005), this way of securing sales of aircraft using backdoor means halted when the aircraft became overpriced. The aircraft were overpriced because the Lockheed Martin Corporation among other manufacturers of the Lockheed Martin's Corporation and other competitors had to sell at higher prices for them to make a profit after factoring the bribes they were offering. In the year 1970, Lockheed Martin Corporation started its first code of moral conduct. Later, Lockheed Martin Corporation’s workers begun to work making their relationship with the Defense Industry Initiative. The Lockheed Martin Corporation made the right decision to hire Augustine as its CEO. Due to this initiative, all the companies in the in the aircraft industry started to comply with professionalism in all their transactions. This way all the competitors were working under the same rules. This was a good measure to ensure that the consumers were not being overcharged.

Importance of the DII to the Success of Lockheed Martin Corporation

The DII was essential to the achievements of Lockheed Martin Corporation because its program on ethics it had a detailed history that covered almost all types and instances of bribery that Lockheed Martin Corporation and other competitors were involved in. According to the DII, all the bribes that the Lockheed Martin Corporation paid has a significant role in the discussions and inquiries carried out by the Foreign Corrupt Practices in the United States of America (Terris, 2005). The principles of the DII have been thought to offer better supervision practices of the aircraft industry and promised that business transactions would follow certain regulations. The Defense Industry initiative also helped to restore the public trust on Lockheed Martin Corporation.

The Defense Industry Initiative created the office of the DII coordinator to watch over the persons involved in the sales of aircraft. The new office was also to establish any rallies, gather a list of best practices in the sales of aircraft, collect data regarding the sales of aircraft, and conduct day-to-day business deals that would be linked to the DII as well as other relevant tasks. The Defense Industry Initiative played a key role in ensuring that the aircraft business was conducted in a professional and unbiased way that guaranteed zero tolerance to any circumstance that would indicate any unfair or corruption in the business. The rules designed by the DII were necessary to ensure that the aircraft business would not benefit any of the competitors.

Discussion of Dilbert’s and Norman Augustine’ s Contributions that Helped Lockheed Martin Corporation to Turn the Corner with Ethics Program

Both Dilbert and Norman Augustine was able to spearhead the suggested changes to the Defense Industry Initiative’s ethical program using a well-designed decision-making process. They both used a credible procedure to determine the real problem by clearly elaborating the issue at hand. Both Dilbert and Norman Augustine were able to secure help from another employee, which helped in collaboration and hence the success of the DII’s ethical program. They all believed morals in the business context; they thought all the possible professional morals, moral values, and moral or ethical issues that can occur in the business of Lockheed Martin Corporation. This related to all aspects of Lockheed Martin Corporation’s business together with the organizations’ and peoples’ behavior. The both developed illustrative and regulating measures when it came to the point of business morals. Lockheed Martin Corporation was able to boost its conduct with non-monetary concerns as a result of the activities of Dilbert and Norman Augustine.

References

Terris, Daniel. (2005) Ethics at Work: Creating Virtue at an American Corporation. Brandeis University Press. Waltham, MA.