Business Studies

Strategic Management Topic 2 Q4 Imagine a situation where you are the national sales director for a large firm in a highly competitive market. You and your sales team are principally remunerated through a progressively tiered commission scale. While attending a trade show, you find a document left on a vacant table that appears to disclose your major competitor’s market pricing plan for the coming year. How would you handle this situation? Would you disclose the incident to your boss? What would be the risks of that decision? How might you train your sales team to prepare for such an event?

ANSWER

Theft of Confidential Information Law

As a national sales director who is constantly under pressure to ensure that the company always performs at the top level, finding any valuable information concerning the company’s competitor would sound enticing. In this scenario especially, finding the competitor’s market pricing plan would enable my company to have an added advantage and perform better. However, in this case, I would, first of all, leave the document the same way I found it, without even going through its particulars. I would also not tell my boss about the incident. This is because looking at the information in that document would be a theft of confidential information law. Theft of confidential information law covers business information and customer data retrieved without the permission and authorization of the concerned party (Ross & Franklin, 2020). This form of illegal activity is also considered a trade secret under the Uniform Secretes Act. A trade secret is any information obtained without the competitor’s permission and using it as a competitive advantage. In this case, if I had given the information to my superior, there is a high chance he would have used it for the company’s benefit but still committed fraud.

I would train my sales team to prepare and handle such future events by teaching them all the rules regarding retrieving and sharing confidential financial information. I will also teach them about the repercussions of engaging in such activities, which entails getting sued and ultimately fired. I would also teach them about integrity because it narrows down to a personal understanding and choosing between right and wrong at the end of the day. In this case, sharing the information would be wrong, and they should learn to emulate such actions in the future.

References

Ross, W. H., & Franklin, D. (2020). Characteristics of Effective Trade Secrets and Confidential Information Policies: Guidance from Labor Arbitration Cases. Labor Law Journal, 44.