Ethical Dilemmas and Leadership: TAP Pharmaceuticals Case Study

This case study examines the ethical culture at TAP Pharmaceuticals, focusing on the unethical practices within the company, such as bribing doctors and engaging in medical fraud. It explores the efforts of Douglas Durand, a vice president, to change the company's culture, including attempts to appeal to sales representatives' ethical values and implement reward systems. The case highlights the lack of support from senior management, the absence of formal ethical guidelines, and the resistance to change within the organization. It concludes that despite Durand's efforts, culture change is a difficult process, particularly without the backing of top leadership, and that the entire system at TAP Pharmaceuticals was aligned to support unethical conduct.

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Title: The Need of Change
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Executive Summary
This case study summarizes the ethical culture at TAP Pharmaceuticals and unethical practices
undergoing in the company. Whether the culture is in alignment? Secondly, what efforts had
been taken by Douglas Durand to change the present position of the company and this is
followed by a conclusion.
Contents

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Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
1. Ethical Culture at TAP.............................................................................................................3
2. Culture Change Efforts.............................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................5
References........................................................................................................................................5

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Introduction
This case study is about the whistleblower Douglas Durand was hired as the vice president
profile at Tap Pharmaceuticals. During the time there, the Douglas discovered unethical cultural
practices and the company was defrauding government and illegal sales.
1. Ethical Culture at TAP
From the case study, Tap Pharmaceuticals has been involved with unethical business
practices in organization like sales representatives were bribing doctors and did not provided
account of the free samples and representatives were also engaged in medical fraud. In
Terminologies of Formal System, there had been no provision for the legal counsel. The legal
counsel was thought of the sales prevention division and also being used as the sources for
helping everyone to keep code of conduct within the existing law system. This reward system
was only focused on to the existing bottom line. Leadership have not supported any new attempts
for making the changes in present reward system. No systems had been in place for encouraging
the ethical conduct like rules, systems, codes and policies (Hazama et al., 2018).
Informal norms were supporting the illegal conduct like bribing the physicians. There had
been no language and sales representatives rolled eyes when Durand had been telling about the
importance of getting trust through the doctor. The complete system of TAP pharmaceutical has
been strongly aligned for supporting unethical culture. Few important points’ needs to be in
consideration-There was no in-house legal counsel department. The company used to push the
products through any means that was necessary. Physicians used to bribe with administration fee
and for prescribing with TAP pharmaceuticals new drug Lupron. This was given as samples at
the discounted prices and also for free. Urologists were provided with incentives who were

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administering Lupron. Sales representatives had been not keeping track record of free samples
and this is required by the law system. Merck evaluated every product and pulls back the
products, if required.
2. Culture Change Efforts
The Douglas Durand has made attempts by simple persuasion when the top management
failed. The Durand had made attempts for changing the culture through appealing to sales
representatives ethical values through using the reward system. This is also referred to as the
Performance management. This reinforces ethical conduct, but it was argued through the
management. Durand had done the right thing. For a shorter span of time, this change showed
intended effect as people respond to awards. Paradoxically, senior management had overturned
the efforts. Therefore, the senior leadership efforts which are important for any culture change in
the organization. This has been clearly missing that is executive leadership. All other systems has
been aligned for supporting the unethical conduct. There were no policies or code of conduct. All
the attempts made by Durand were probably getting failed from the scratch (Regan, 2013).
Durand has also made attempts for changing the informal systems and by the appealing
the concerns to the physicians trust, this was met with rolling eyes. The effort of culture change
had been failed as he did not had any authority or any sort of support from the colleagues for
changing the effort. As a result of which, Durand had been able to target change in the isolated
culture but this was not included throughout the whole culture. One of the important messages
through this case study is culture change is a tedious process. Even people at a Vice-President

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level are unable to change the culture without any substantial support received through senior
management of the company. The wide changes are necessary for changing the culture.
Conclusion
In this scenario, Douglas Durand has good intuition and ethics for correcting the wrong doings
taking place in the organization. Using the simple process of decision making and going to
company through a compelled court system for punishing company as what they have done
illegally.

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References
Hazama, S., Tamada, K., Yamaguchi, Y., Kawakami, Y. and Nagano, H. (2018). Current status
of immunotherapy against gastrointestinal cancers and its biomarkers: Perspective for precision
immunotherapy. Annals of Gastroenterological Surgery, 2(4), pp.289-303.
Regan, J. (2013). Redefining dementia care barriers for ethnic minorities: the religion–culture
distinction. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 17(4), pp.345-353.