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9.9 Exercises

Ethical Dilemma

Imagine you work at an ad agency and your team is charged with coming up with the name for BeautyBees’s latest perfume. You have been with the company for 6 months. The branding team has been brainstorming for the last 2 hours, filling up pages and pages of the flipchart with innovative, imaginative names. Feeling daunted by how loudly, quickly, and assertively branding team members are shouting out suggestions, you decide to sit this one out, even though you have some ideas. You are uncomfortable shouting over everyone else and you reason that the group would discount your input anyway. Plus, everyone else is generating so many good names that the group is bound to succeed regardless of your input.

What Do You Think?

  1. Is your lack of participation ethical? Why or why not?
  2. What are the implications of speaking up or not speaking up?
  3. Would you change your answer if you’d been with the company for 10 years instead of 6 months?