1.

Vested Interests:
 According to Khaled’s suspicion, it was unethical on the part of GE when they have made the
appointment of a woman who is supposedly closely associated with the Senior Deputy Minister
of electricity in order to gain favor while negotiating a lucrative joint venture. His suspicion was
also aroused when there was a single bid for the project which was quite unusual and not
permitted under Iraqi Law
2. Unfair Retaliation:
 Khaled Asadi, who has reported the violations in the company has been treated unfairly. He has
been given a negative performance review which is quite opposite to his 10 previous positive
reviews.
 The review did not even state his specific faults and offer any points to improve upon, which
clearly directs towards unfair treatment.
 He was subsequently subjected to many other such instances and eventually handed over a
termination notice
3. Hypocrisy by GE:
 GE has initially joined few other companies in a statement to commission to support the
companies compliance programs which provides employees legal protection as whistle-blowers
who report internally first. But, at the later stage GE’s laywers have claimed Asadi, who has
reported internally, not fit for the whistle blower protection according to Dodd-frank act.
4. Conflict between internal policy and SEC rules:
 There has been certain discrepancies between the Securities and exchange commission(SEC)
rules and the internal company policy. According to the internal policy at GE and few other
companies, it is a protocol to report the violation internally first. According to the study by Ethics
resource center, 92% whistle blowers have disclosed the information of violation internally first.
But, in case of SEC, the final set of rules did not contain a requirement that the employees who
report internally to be eligible for legal protection
5. Ineffectiveness of internal reporting:
 According to the study by the Ethics resource center, there has been a certain level of
ineffectiveness of internal reporting at some companies, where 29% of employees said that the
company did not act on the disclosure and over 36% were not satisfied by the action taken by
the company
 In case of Khaled Asadi, the company didn’t take any reasonable action towards the violations
raised. Instead, he was subjected to unfair retaliations and eventually terminated from the
company.

When faced a situation similar to that of Khaled’s, we would ideally gather concrete evidence against the
unethical hiring and the correctness of the rumor about a single bid being received for the Joint venture
agreement. This evidence would help us to back the accusations rather than just jumping into conclusion
based on speculations.

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  With enough evidence in hand, we would seek legal opinion concerned with the Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act that would be violated by the illegal hiring. This would also help us to understand a
proper protocol to be followed for the escalation of the matter effectively.
 According to the internal company policy, we would provide the information to the higher
management in the company internally.
 In case of no action after the disclosure, we would report the matter to the Securities and
Exchange Commission externally
 On facing the unfair retaliation from the company in the form of negative reviews without
mention of his specific faults or any guidance on steps of improvement, and the eventual
termination, we would seek help from the Dodd-frank wall street reform and consumer
protection act that prohibits retaliation against whistle blowers and permits the recovery of
damage
 We would have sued General Electric for breach of its code of conduct which directed its
employees to report any suspected violations of company policy and assured them of no
retaliations

In this case, GE has let unethical appointment of people to gain traction in the business without
caring for the consequences and when it was brought up by an employee, he was wrongfully treated
and is not given a fair legal route to challenge the treatment. If a company as big as GE tends to
follow such path to further its business decisions then it would set a very bad precedent

 It also highlights the importance of the laws to be unambiguous in order to not let the company
use the gray areas and exploit them
 We think the companies should provide enough freedom to its employees to bring any kind of
violations being observed at workplace and also create confidence in them that there would be
no retaliations in relation to the concerns raised
 After reading the case and followed by discussions within the group, we realized the importance of
ethics in the business scenario

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