THE TASK:

Imagine that you have been asked by the Board of Directors of your company to bring them up to speed on ENRON. They are particularly interested in the case since the trial of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are currently being conducted. They want to emphasize the ethical issues in the situation so they can avoid mistakes that Enron's management made. Now (6/25/06) that you have completed your ENRON report, the Board of Directors would like to have another report. This time they want you to focus on the issue of the pricing of medications. They are concerned about Merck's recent (6/21/06) pricing of its cholesterol-lowering medication, Zocor, below its recent generic competitors. This "manipulating" of the market (especially if Merck does it for other products or other pharmaceutical producers follow Merck's lead) could have important effects on your company's healthcare insurance, including its supplemental plan for Medicare prescriptions (Part D) . They know that you have taken this course in SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ETHICAL DIMENSIONS OF MANAGEMENT so they expect you to give a carefully argued presentation and analysis. They do not want the presentations and analyses to be too long --- about 2500 words would be quite sufficient; they do not want a lengthy tome --- their time is very valuable and they do not have the time to read an excessively long treatise. If you CLICK HERE you will find an outline that you are to follow in writing your report.

Your company is a strong believer in teamwork so the Board wants you to work as teams in putting together your report. Unfortunately, your other tasks and travels make it impossible for your teams to get together in a room for any length of time so you have to do most of your work over the Internet. Fortunately, QuickPlace offers you the ideal tool to develop team presentations. You will notice that this project combines the features of a threaded discussion and the task of writing. The threaded discussion that leads up to the actual writing should contain at least 5 contributions from each member of the team. These contributions should have substantive content. There may be, in addition, some contributions about how you are going to go about writing the report. The merits of the report will be judged on the team discussion and the reflection of that discussion in the final report.

The Board wants two reports from each of the teams. They want three reports to check one team against another. They have recomposed the teams for the second report. The teams are composed by a random process.

Since the issues in this matter are so current you will have to use news magazines and newspapers for your research. I suggest Time and Newsweek and also The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. You probably all get The Wall Street Journal so you can go to WSJ.com as an easy resource. You can also take advantage of the Dow Jones Interactive website, <http://www.sba.udayton.edu/it/dji.asp>, which the School of Business Administration makes available to you. The link to the Dow Jones Interactive website is accessed form the SBA link identified above, but you will probably have to use a computer at the university to access this site.  Much good and accurate information is available from these sources. The library at this site is a particularly valuable treasure trove of references.

The first report  is due Sunday, June 25 with the last day for making contributions to the Threaded Discussion, which precedes the writing of the report, being June 18

This second report  is due Tuesday, July 25 at 9:00 a.m. with the last day for making contributions to the Threaded Discussion, which precedes the writing of the report, being July 18.
 

DIRECTIONS: 1. Go to http://quickplace.udayton.edu/QuickPlace/mba652_ulrich/Main.nsf 2. Click on your "Team and number." [Team members are identified at the bottom of this page.] 3. Click on your "Team and number --- Discussion." 4. Click on "new." 5. Select "Page" and click "next." 6. Enter a brief title in # 1 and type your comment(s) in #2 and then click "publish". 7. Point to and click on the comment, response, or revision which you wish to address. 8. Click on "new" if you wish to make a new comment; click on "respond" to respond to what another member in the group has said; click on "revision" if you are making changes in a text that has already been started. You will always be creating a new page or editing an existing page.

ENRON  TEAM 1: Gagliardi, Harris, Kress, Vazquez, Wabler  (Due 6/25)	ENRON TEAM 2: Bellan, Broerman, Mergler, Sills, Suchland, Waddell  (Due 6/25)	ENRON TEAM 3: Butler, Duffy, Hulbert, Nicolas, Roessner, Sheridan (Due 6/25)
MARKETING MEDICATIONS TEAM 4:  Harris, Kress, Nicolas, Sheridan, Sills, Vazquez  (Due 7/25 - 9:00 A.M.)	MARKETING MEDICATIONS TEAM 5: Bellan, Broerman, Gagliardi, Wabler, Waddell (Due 7/25 - 9:00 A.M)	MARKETING MEDICATIONS TEAM 6: Butler, Duffy, Hulbert, Roessner, Suchland  (Due 7/25 - 9:00 A.M.)