Project Management Ethics: Accepting Gifts and Stakeholder Relations

This assignment explores the ethical dilemma of a project manager accepting gifts from grateful clients at the end of a successful project. The response argues that the project manager should decline the gift, citing project management ethics and the guidelines provided by the Project Management Institute (PMI). The assignment emphasizes that accepting gifts is generally against project management ethics and, in some cases, may be against the law. The project manager should tactfully decline the gift while ensuring the client understands the reasons behind the decision, and if the client insists, the matter should be brought to the attention of higher management. The assignment references sources such as Kerzner (2017) and Meredith, Mantel Jr & Shafer (2017) to support its arguments.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Response:
A project manager is accountable for the accomplishment or the failure of the entire
project. Starting from the discussion with the stakeholders to executing the complete project
management life cycle, the project manager, who is in charge of the project, plays the most
important role in the project management. Thus, ensuring the success of the project is his or her
duty (Meredith, Mantel Jr & Shafer, 2017).
In this case, a happy customer may offer gifts to the project manager. But it is the prime
duty of the project manager to decline the offer. According to the project management ethics, a
project manager should refrain themselves from accepting any gifts from any one. Instead of
telling these on the clients’ face, the project manager should tactically deal with these issues such
that the client understands the reason for the declining of the offer.
As suggested by the PMI, Acceptance of any kind of gifts is against the law of the project
management (Kerzner, 2017). This could only be accepted when the country’s law allow such
instances. Thus, with all due respect, the project manager should refuse the acceptance of the
gifts from the client.
In case, the client is insisting upon acceptance, the higher authorities must be informed
regarding this, but under any circumstances the gift should not be accepted by the project
manager. Again it is the duty of the project manager to deal with client with patience such that
the stakeholders must not be offended with the actions along with making them aware of the
project management code of ethics.

2PROJECT MANAGEMENT
References:
Kerzner, H. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and
controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Meredith, J. R., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Shafer, S. M. (2017). Project management: a managerial
approach. John Wiley & Sons.