"You are negotiating an important contract with a local firm with a reputation for driving a hard bargain. After a full day of negotiating, the other firm’s representatives leave the room and leave behind a folder which appears to contain key information about their negotiating options.  What would you do?"

This mini-ethics case is one of ten cases developed by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania at the request of NYNEX for use at the twenty-first meeting of the World Management Conference which was held in New York City in September, 1989.  The mini-cases and four possible answers to each were contained in personal computers available to the conferees in reception areas in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel where the conference was held.

The four alternatives offered on the Folder case were as follows:

1. Do nothing and leave the folder where it is.
2. Look over the material in the folder and then leave it in the room in the exact location that you found it.
3. Take the folder and call the other managers and tell them that you found it.
4. Take the folder, study it during the night and then return it prior to the beginning of the next day's meeting.

There are obviously other alternatives which might be considered, but our desire to make the NYNEX Ethics Challenge interesting and enjoyable limited the complexity of each case and its offered alternatives.  And one would certainly want to develop a complete list of pros and cons for each alternative.

Anyone interested in the answers to this case and the other nine given by participant — half from the United States and half from numerous countries around the world — may call me or Sister Kathleen Sullivan, Associate Director, or Mary Diamant, Executive Assistant at Dominican College, and we will provide the first twenty with a book containing those answers and much more.

More importantly for you, the reader of this "Musings," what would you do, really do?  What would your organization and its culture expect?  In which direction would your compensation plan tend to drive you?  What would be the long term impact on this potential partner with whom you are negotiating?  What would the values you learned as a child suggest you do?

What is the right thing to do?