CASE STUDY - NEW BUSINESS/NEW MANAGERS
When my cousin bought the business that my husband and I had managed for several years, we began from the first day to have philosophical differences with him in the way that he conducted business. He had a reputation as a shrewd business man but we also knew that he and his partner often disagreed on business policies and his standards of operating a business were very different from our own and the religious standards of most of our customers.
We knew that the new business, we had been managing for my brother, had not made much profit despite a large clientele and many video rentals, partly because of the very expensive overhead managing costs and low rental prices for videos. The low rental prices had been established by my brother based on success of his stores in other areas of the country that had much less competition from grocery stores or large well-established chains.
We were anxious for the business to succeed and continue to offer an alternative form of family-entertainment for our customers, but we were very uncomfortable with the policies of the new owner. Parents had been accustomed to sending their children to our video store and would tell them to ask the mangers to pick out an appropriate movie for their family to watch. Both they and we felt very strongly about the kind of influence inappropriate movies can have on families and children. We had taken great care to keep questionable videos out of our store. We knew that if we left, our valued customers would likely no longer be able to trust the selection or managers in the same way. Our ethical dilemmas included the following: