Highlights
Case
In the spring of 1986, Mike Flanagan graduated from Cornell Law School. Eager to flee the cold winters in Ithaca, New York, Flanagan packed his bags and headed west to California to take the state bar exam. He passed the exam and secured a position as a securities attorney with a law firm in Los Angeles. However, it did not take long for Flanagan to realize that the practice of law was not his passion. After just a year at the firm, he left to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams.
During the decade that followed, Flanagan founded three companies, bringing in seasoned industry executives in each of the ventures as operating partners. Flanagan reflected, “I am largely an entrepreneur, more of a developer and initiator. I like the early phases of the business. Neither my strength nor interest is in running day-to-day operations of a business.” This personal management philosophy appeared to work well for Flanagan and guided his decision making.
By 2001, Flanagan had profitably exited two of the three companies he had started. The third company, Video Symphony, Inc., was operating well and filling a growing niche in the digital video editing market. Then, in July 2013, Flanagan received a letter from the Department of Education (DOE). Serious allegations were being brought forward and bringing the legitimacy of his business into question. His personal ethics and business decision-makers were under scrutiny. Flanagan believed his choices were always well guided by his personal values. As he reflected on the situation, he felt the allegations were a part of a larger movement to hamper the growth of for-profit education. He questioned whether he should have transitioned from being a training centre to a for-profit educational institution, and having done so, whether he should have entered into the lending business. Was Video Symphony a victim of circumstances or complicit by missteps in judgment?
Questions
1. What duties or obligations did Video Symphony owe to its students?
2. How did Mike Flanagan’s conception of his role as entrepreneur and developer affect his ethical decision making as president?
3. Did Video Symphony’s apparent failure to comply with federal regulations on financial aid and lending to students mean that it acted unethically?
4. Was Video Symphony’s decision to begin lending to its own students through promissory notes an ethical business decision?
5. Did Mike Flanagan have an ethical responsibility to have competence or expertise in education, specifically for-profit education, before entering that field as Video Symphony’s president?
6. Did the company’s self-described values signify an ethical position by Flanagan and Video Symphony?
7. Could Video Symphony justify any unethical decisions it may have made by rationalizing it as industry normative behaviour (business as usual)?
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