Ethical Dilemmas in Leadership: TAP Pharmaceutical Case Study Analysis

This assignment analyzes the ethical failures within TAP Pharmaceutical, focusing on issues such as Medicare fraud, bribery of doctors, and improper accounting practices. The case study examines the lack of in-house legal counsel and the dominance of a bottom-line-focused reward system that undermined ethical conduct. The analysis highlights the attempts of Durand Douglas to change the unethical culture, and the challenges he faced due to lack of support from senior leadership and entrenched informal norms. The study explores how the organization's systems, including reward structures and informal communication, actively supported unethical behaviors, ultimately leading to the failure of attempts to instill ethical practices. The assignment emphasizes the difficulties in changing organizational culture when faced with resistance from those in power and deeply ingrained unethical practices. The case underscores the importance of ethical leadership and the alignment of organizational systems to support ethical conduct.

Stakeholder Values and Ethics
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Table of Contents
Answer 1.....................................................................................................................................................2
Answer 2.....................................................................................................................................................2
References...................................................................................................................................................4

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Answer 1
From the case, it has been observed that TAP Pharmaceutical does unethical practices within
their organization like, involved in Medicare fraud, improper accounting for free samples and
sales representatives bribed doctors. It does not possess any in-house legal counsel in its formal
system. However, the sales prevention department was determined to be the legal counsel instead
of a source to support everyone to keep their conduct under the law (Revolvy, 2019). The
primary focus of the reward system is on a bottom line where the leaders of the organization did
not support the attempts to change the reward system. The organizational system has not
developed any system that would have enhanced ethical conduct such as, codes, policies or rules
or selection system.
The informal norms that are carried out within the organization highly supported illegal conduct
like, bribing physicians. Durand Douglas discovered that TAP follows illegal and unethical sales
practice. The sales representatives of the organization were not keeping track of the free samples
that are needed by the law. There does not possess any language for communication; rather the
sales representatives rolled their eyes after demonstrated about the significance of receiving trust
from the doctors (Skandrani and Sghaier, 2016). The company gave incentives to the urologists
who are governing TAP’S new drug Lupron. Therefore, it clearly states that the ethical culture of
TAP was misaligned, as the representatives within the organization were not willing to listen to
Durand. As a result, the overall system of TAP Pharmaceutical was strongly aligned to support
unethical practices or culture.
Answer 2
Durand, the vice president of TAP, took various attempts to change the culture of the
organization by using the reward system and by appealing to the sales representatives regarding
ethics. He applied performance management to reinforce ethical conduct within the organization
to report appropriate information. For a short period, the change made by Durand had an
intended effect as the people responded to the rewards positively. Ultimately, the senior
management team overturned Durand’s efforts (Enciso, Milikin and O’Rourke, 2017). Thus, the
support of senior leadership (Executive leadership) significant for any cultural change effort was
missing. The other systems were strongly aligned to support unethical conduct such as no code

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or policies. On the other hand, by appealing to the concerns regarding physician trust, he also
tried to change the informal systems but was met with the rolled eyes of the sales representatives.
However, during his attempt to change the culture, he was instructed not to discuss the
significance of receiving physician trust as well as understand the culture. Durand tried to
impose the conflicts of the upper management who does not follow any core values. The culture
change effort of Durand failed as he did not have the support or the authority from those who
worked for the change effort (Mulinari, 2016). Thus, he was capable of targeting the change in
the isolated cultural systems, rather than the entire cultural system. Therefore, from the
beginning, Durand's attempt to change the culture failed. Hence, changing the culture of an
organization is difficult for an individual.

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References
Enciso, S., Milikin, C. and O’Rourke, J.S., 2017. Corporate culture and ethics: from words to
actions. Journal of Business Strategy, 38(6), pp.69-79.
Mulinari, S., 2016. Unhealthy marketing of pharmaceutical products: An international public
health concern. Journal of public health policy, 37(2), pp.149-159.
Revolvy, L. (2019). "TAP Pharmaceuticals" on Revolvy.com. [online] Revolvy.com. Available
at: https://www.revolvy.com/page/TAP-Pharmaceuticals [Accessed 19 Mar. 2019].
Skandrani, H. and Sghaier, M., 2016. The dark side of the pharmaceutical industry. Marketing
Intelligence & Planning, 34(7), pp.905-926.