Ethics Resource Center

Published: March 25, 2010

The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business
Book Review by Kyle Goetschius

Since 2002, the Academy of Management’s Critical Case Studies interest group has held an annual case studies competition calling for submissions that focus on the negative impacts of contemporary capitalism. The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business is a collection of sixteen of these case studies, compiled and edited by Emmanuel Raufflet and Albert J. Mills.
 
The wide range of cases (which begins with hockey team hazing and closes with genocide in Rwanda) differs starkly from traditional best practices studies. While every case in the book revolves around a failing on the part of businesses, the book manages to avoid being too one-sided. A clear picture of the circumstances out of which each problem arose is presented, and demonizing specific businesses or people is avoided.
 
By not placing the blame on one person or business, the book feels less like an indictment and more like a collection of cautionary tales. The message is clear; even in cases where managers act in a manner they believe is appropriate, there can still be negative consequences.

The clearest example of this is Matt Bladowski and Rosemary McGowan’s study of a German food discounter, Lidl.  The study presents the case of a young Canadian, “Matt,” who moves to Germany to participate in an executive training program.  Once there, he discovers that employees at his new company are forced to work long hours under strict, suspicious supervision because higher-ups in the organization believe that this is the only way to run competitive stores.  In order to ensure that Matt is also giving the most to the company, Lidl executives deny him assistance in helping his new wife immigrate to Germany, something he was promised upon taking the position, because they believed that she would distract him from his work.

Clearly, when laid out in this way, Lidl had serious cultural problems from the top down, but it is also possible to see how this behavior was justified.  You get the impression from the case study that managers had all had a way of thinking pushed upon them and that this had eventually soured the entire organization.  Even in dramatic cases like this one, it appears that most people involved didn’t see themselves as doing something wrong, just following company policy.  It is this realization that underscores the importance of ethical culture within an organization and also demonstrates how we can learn from worst-case scenarios.
 
The Dark Side is a solid collection of cases and would serve as a valuable resource when used to supplement other teaching materials. While we should be teaching what is right, sometimes the best way to achieve this is by asking how things go wrong.  
 
The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business is available now through Greenleaf Publishing, www.greenleaf-publishing.com.

Kyle Goetschius is Communications Coordinator at ERC. He can be reached at kyle@ethics.org.

 

In This Issue

• The Importance of Leadership in Times of Crisis. Column By Patricia J. Harned, Ph.D. President, ERC
• Patricia J Harned, ERC President, testifies before the United States Sentencing Commission
  
• The Dark Side: Critical Cases on the Downside of Business. Book Review By Kyle Goetschius
  
• A Case for Cooperation: the Defense Industry Initiative
• ERC Honors the Late Carol Marshall with the 2009 Pace Award
• January Fellows Meeting Retrospective