Balancing organizational and individual interests
Mr. Jack was the Vice President and General Manager of Paramount Enterprises, and my boss. Annually Mr. Jack was invited by Mr. Raul, the president of Oriental Fabricators, to play golf at an exclusive resort. Mr. Raul was very personable and like Mr. Jack was thirty plus years older than me and from a different generation. My Raul was originally from Asia where he still maintains a distributor business with linkages to major international clients for his organization as well as ours. While Mr. Jack and Mr. Raul had different cultural backgrounds, both shared a leadership style characterized by many of my female colleagues as the “Good Old Boys” network and philosophy of leadership.
Mr. Raul was as usual, one of the bidders vying to do work on an environmental compliance project at our facility that I was overseeing. I was a young facilities manager who planned and organized the project and put it out for bids. Unlike government organizations, we did not need to issue formal Requests for Proposals (RFPs), publish bids when received, or even accept the lowest bid. As is the case with custom projects, there is usually plenty of room for interpretation of what is best for the organization. I was proud of this project since I had done most of the planning, developed the specifications, and sent the project out to five different bidders; including Oriental Fabricators. When the bid proposals came back, I evaluated each against the criteria that I had established. Mr. Raul’s bid was in the middle range of the five bids received. I talked with each vendor to carefully explain what was needed and try to understand what the differences were in what they were proposing. Mr. Raul, of course, reminded me of his annual golfing trip that was coming up with Mr. Jack in the next couple of months and how he was looking forward to the event.
The differences in the proposals and total prices were not that much and I tried to look carefully at the merits of each proposal. However, I felt very uneasy about Mr. Raul’s comments and decided to go to Mr. Jack the next day for guidance, knowing that, if I didn’t give the job to Mr., Raul, Mr. Jack may be upset with me, and of course the ultimate consequence would be losing my job. I went to Mr. Jack and explained the situation, and he smiled. He said, “Well, it’s up to you” and walked away. Not much help! I agonized and debated with myself all through the weekend and on Monday awarded the bid.
Discussion question: Who should I have awarded the contract to and why?
