Ethical Issues in ANZ Bank: A Case Study

Running head: ETHICAL ISSUES
ETHICAL ISSUES
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Table of Contents
PART A: SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT.......................................................................................2
PART B: SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT.............................................................................................4
PART C: ROLE PLAY TRANSCRPIT..........................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................15

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PART A: SCENARIO DEVELOPMENT
The ANZ bank or the Australian and New Zealand Banking group limited is a
multinational financial and banking company that is headquartered in Australia. It is considered
as the second largest bank of Australia because of its assets and the four largest bank of
Australia. It mostly operates in Australia and provides retail banking facilities and commercial
facilities. The company operates in about 34 countries besides its operations in Australia and
New Zealand. The bank is also known for its sustainable activities. The company has values of
Integrity, Accountability, collaboration, respect and excellence. Their culture comprises of
meeting the customers’ needs by incorporating their values, code of conduct and purposes.
Moreover they also have the culture of customer orientation, learning culture and a culture of
making things simple (Grace & Cohen, 2015). Their code of conduct and other supporting
policies laid down the behavior standards for all the employees of the organization. Moreover all
the contractors and employees of the company are required to undergo training in order to
reinforce all the codes of conducts and values of the company within two months of commencing
their jobs and also on an annual basis to ensure that they behave according to the codes of
conducts. The training is given to the contractors and the employees such that they can comply
with all the codes of conducts, and they have to give a declaration that they have also complied
with the same while carrying out their work (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015).
Therefore the company believes that it is the responsibility of all the employees to
identify and report about any violation of the code of conduct by anyone in the organization. For
this purpose, the company has a whistle blowing policy which ensures that everyone in the
organization is given a chance to share their concerns freely with the management without being
exposed. The company also believes in taking corrective actions immediately whenever any

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violations are identified as claimed by the company. However, the company recently stood
against its own values recently by overlooking the case of discrimination and sexual harassment
of a female employee.
An ethical dilemma refers to a situation in which the management of an organization is
faced with conflicting interests between two parties and the management is required to make a
decision out of the alternatives available (Jenkins, 2016). An ethical situation has been faced
with the management of the ANZ bank where the two parties involved are- a female employee
Ms Oyo who is an African who is the victim and a male employee who belongs to a much higher
position in the organization who is the accused. Ms Oyo was working as a salesperson in the
foreign exchange sales of the organization (Anz.com.au., 2019). It was then when she had to face
racial discrimination and sexual harassment in the organization. The accused openly targeted her
and made any sexual comments upon her in the workplace. In fact the skills of Ms Oyo were also
compared to that of a monkey by her supervisor and this term is basically used as a racial epithet.
According to Ms Oyo the bank has continuously harassed her since then. However, the accused
said that she did not have any proof with herself. He even said that when asked to discuss about
the event she said started discussing about various other events that happened to her during her
college life and was not discussing about the main issue. A lawyer was employed by the accused
and he asked a few questions to Ms Oyo to which she was unable to give proper answers.
In this case, the management of the bank is faced with an ethical dilemma as whatever
decision it will make it will have an impact on their reputation and public image and will also
affect their actions (Kaptein, 2017). If the bank makes a decision in favour of Ms Oyo who is the
salesperson, they will lose one of the experienced supervisor of the company and its activities
may get affected. If the company takes any decision in favour of the accused then its public