Introduction
In today's highly competitive world of business, meeting deadlines in a timely and efficient manner is crucial towards the success of any company. Organizations that are able to fulfill this simple requirement naturally excel, while the firms that fall behind are left behind permanently. If a business finds itself in such a predicament, its leaders are expected to take all necessary measures to ensure the company's going concern. However, these management decisions pose a certain degree of risk that may or may not be acceptable to the shareholders involved. The treatment of ethics in such issues is especially important, since the grey area between right and wrong can both be justified in many instances.
Background
During the summer of 2000, I worked at a small software firm as a programmer. Characteristic of most start-ups, the company consisted of only two partners and five employees, including myself. They operated on contract basis and specialized in developing customer relation management (CRM) applications using Java.
Upon my arrival, I was immediately assigned a code a few components. From observing the milestone requirements, it was clear that the project was already falling behind schedule. Although delays occur frequently in the software industry, it is incredibly difficult to play catch-up and recover from a timing perspective. With specific client expectations and launch dates set in place, it becomes expensive and time consuming to deal with such impediments.
As required in the contract agreement, the client established mandatory site visits to monitor the progress of the project. Furthermore, the budget structure was divided betw ...