Prior to taking the extreme measures used by Durand to rectify the situation at TAP, he might have tried several alternatives to bring the Corporation into moral and legal alignment to the necessary standards of corporate conduct.Durand might have taken it upon himself to revise the company code of conduct to reflect legal and moral standards. He might have followed that with extensive training of the staff regarding compliance with standards and focusing on consequences on non-compliance.It was Durand’s responsibility to define the corporate ethic a certain way, and frame non-compliance as a personal, rather than a business choice.
He should follow this up with well-publicized implementation of consequences for those who did not comply with the new standards.This new training might also have included a contract of conduct that guaranteed a good faith effort to revise practices on the part of the corporation’s employees. The training should have included input from corporate counsel, who would be retained, and also be able to articulate individual accountability for illegal acts committed by the agents of the corporation.Within these acts, there needed to be a showing of corporate support for the new culture. This might have come by way of relaxation of quotas and sales requirements during the transition of ethical and legal standards.
At the same time, emphasis might have been placed on record-keeping and accountability among the staff. Incentives for proper record-keeping should have been modest for retained employees, in order to reinforce the notion that these acts are requirements, rather than “extras”.Durand might also have brought in three new types of employees. The first would have been replacements for dismissed non-compliant agents, the second is a set of middle-managers responsible for keeping accounts of sample distribution and other conduct by agents.
Finally, the necessary support staff for in house counsel should have been employed. This staff might have been charged with working in concert with agents and accountability department to ensure compliance with both legal and ethical standards of conduct.The difficulty in these implementations exists predominately in the market. The recipients of the gifts and incentives for using the medications from TAP may have developed a sense of entitlement that precludes them from using TAP medications without the incentives they are used to receiving.One solution to this problem would be to encourage agents to develop a new client base, one unfamiliar with the former practices of company agents.
In the absence of these “gifts” and incentives, agents would be required to market the medications on their merits. If this proves difficult because of the quality of the product, then resources must be allocated by the company to improve product quality, performance and cost.Under the circumstances encountered by Durand, he probably would have been better off doing full department reorganization and replacing as many of the agents as possible. It is much easier, on the whole, to train new employees in a particular corporate culture and ethical set than attempting to change the ethical and legal behavior of a group that had long reaped the benefits of a misaligned corporate ethic.
