Suppose you're the manager of a small division of a large multi-national company operating in a remote area of the world. What do you do when the ethics of the organization clash with the ethics in the country? [MUSIC] We're going to start with the case called, what price safety? What Price Safety is a real story about a company that Motorola was running in a very disguised location because they don't want us to know the name of the place called Nambu. Nambu manufactures microelectronics and Motorola owns the controlling interest. If the plant they have in Anzen focuses on safety and that's very important at Motorola. Nambu, interestingly, has a sort of a custom, I would say, of duty and obedience to authority. And Motorola has a worldwide code of ethics that applies to all their companies. That code includes, which seems pretty obvious, respect for each employee, safety first, and third, and this is important in this case, employees will not physically assault or touch other employees. Now, what is this case about? First off it's about Stan Stark who's an American and he is running the headquarters. Willard Wa is a Nambuian, he works on employee relationships. Henk Van Dyke is a Dutch Human Resources person at that plant. Victor Min is the plant manager and he's been doing very well. And Tommy Tang is an employee, a plant worker, at the plant. Notice the diversity of these people. This is quite a diverse company and a diverse group of stakeholders. The other stakeholders at the Anzen plant are of course, Motorola headquarters, Motorola shareholders, the plant itself and the country Nambu. Now, the question we want to think about is how should we prior our ties each one of these stakeholders or group of stakeholders in this case, and that will turn out to be important as we'll see. So what is the problem here? Victor broke one of the rules at Motorola. Never to physically assault another employee. This is a dismissible offense and ordinarily Victor would be fired immediately. So Victor and Tommy are bad role models in this factory. But, there's a little catch here, because in Nambu, if you apologize to someone and give them some payment, that is considered apology and the issue is over. It's finished. So how would dismissing Victor and Tommy be viewed by the Nambuian culture and the Nambuian employees? Probably little questioning. Anzen has a spotless safety record and Victor was very proud of that and wanted to preserve that. But Tommy was kind of an independent worker. He'd been a mountain guide and he sort of thought for himself. Unlike other people in Nambu, he didn't understand duty and obedience to authority. Now, at this plant safety glasses were required, because part of the plant floor was rather dangerous. Tommy hated safety glasses and simply wouldn't wear them. And Tommy was warned, I don't know how many times, please wear your safety glasses, you know that's the rule. Finally, Victor got really fed up with Tommy and lost his temper and slapped him around his ears. Now this is the first time Victor had ever lost his temper. He was a terrific manager otherwise. And, of course, Tommy, who's now feeling really badly about not wearing the glasses, apologizes. And then Victor apologizes to Tommy for hitting him and he presents him a lot of money as part of the compensation for hurting his ears. So Victor and Tommy are reconciled, but Tommy has lost part of his hearing. But this is the dilemma here, to fire Victor or Tommy would be terribly expensive under Nambuian law, and it would also violate their culture. So what should Stan, the head of this company do? When there these deep cultural differences, how does one decide? Which shareholder interest take priority? [MUSIC]