Free «Bidding Process Irregularities» Essay Sample

Introduction

Tom the newly appointed salesperson for Woods Truss Commercial Building Company is preparing a bid for his company; in the process his boss Mark gave him Strong Built Construction Company bid in order to review it. Mark also handed him two other envelopes which contains bids from Woods Truss other two competing companies and asked him to evaluate the bids and construct a lowest bid out of the three bids (Swanton, 2003).

 The unethical issue here is experienced when Woods Truss Commercial Building Company indulges in an unfair and unethical activity of examining the other companies bids, and use the information to construct a bid that is lower than that one of its competitors, and in the process resulting to Woods Truss Commercial Building Company emerging as the lowest bidder in the entire process and this eventually improves the companies chances of wining the tender of constructing the ware house (Crisp, & Slote, 1997).

The ethical issue in this case is recognized as the virtue ethics; this is because the action is not depending on the goodness of badness of the action they are involved in, but it depends on the results /final outcome or mutual benefit the company will get from the action, this is well explained in this case. This is seen as the motive that drives Mark into the examination of the competitor’s bid, this action is in order to help his company to come up with the lowest bid that will be attractive to the company that has invited bids from different construction companies (Swanton, 2003). This is because Woods Truss Company has offered the lowest bid that is attractive resulting to the company being appointed for the purpose of construction as compared to the other companies that want to be contracted to undertake the same activity (Manuel, et al, 2008).

The ethical facts makes this incidents to be considered as Virtue Ethics includes some incidents like when Mark is told by Tom that what he is doing is ethically wrong but Mark admits its wrong and states that he is doing it because he wants their organization to win the bid  against its  competitors. The other incident in the issue is where Tom reviews the information on the budgets of Strong Built Construction Company and the other construction companies and uses the information to come up with a subsidized bid that is considered as the lowest bid which will make it easy for the company win the bid. The other indication is when Woods Truss Construction Company always won big construction opportunities this is as a result of the company deliberately offering the lowest bids while others loose the bid as a result of there high bids, at the same time other companies won small construction bids in order to reduce cases of suspicion that might arise as a result of Woods Truss wining lots of bids (Crisp, & Slote, 1997).  

The alternatives that the company would use in order to come up to be the lowest bidder in the contest for the lowest bidder and ensuring that the company will be in the position of  being  awarded the tender of these includes  Deontological and  Consequentialist morals; Deontological theory ensure that the company is in the position of following the set business rules, this is in order to provide a level ground that will offer all the  participating companies with  the opportunity of fairly trading in the bidding  process, it would be ethically correct if  Woods Truss company drafted its own bid without confirming with what the other companies had written (Manuel, et al, 2008). The other alternative ethical requirement is consequentiality; this is where the morality of an action is more valued as compared to the outcome of the action. In this case the company should keep away any unfair highlighting of the others budgets in odder to provide a plain ground for each bidder; in this case the company should provide budgets that are drafted in their own perception and not evaluating on the other companies’ budgets.   

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 The main reason that the Woods Truss Company decided to act in that manner is because the company wanted to win the contract of building the warehouse, thus they had to win it by emerging as the lowest bidder amongst all the other companies that have presented there bids for the same project, and they were more privileged to win the bid as a result of the company having the lowest bid for the proposed project this is as a result of the company examining the other companies budgets (Swanton, 2003).     

The action that Mark and Tom were involved in were ethically wrong and is unacceptable in any business environment, this is because they had illegal access to evaluate the information that was contained in there rival companies without the company being aware of this act, and this will help them to come up with the most effective bid that will be lower than there competitors, this will definitely result to the company getting an upper hand in the selection process, as the company will be selected as the lowest bidder this is after examining the bids of there rival  companies (Crisp, & Slote, 1997).    

Tom and Mark’s actions were the most important in determining the companies opportunity of wining the tender, Tom was reluctant in adapting to Mark’s ideas of but was eventually convinced into the idea of examining the bids of the other companies in order to come up with the lowest bid that will facilitate the companies wining the bid.