Business Ethics

The people's issue at Sugar can be divided into two parts, mainly, issues concerning the president's leadership and general manager's communication skills.

As Sugar Bowl's president, Givens' leadership is definitely questionable. For one thing, without any concrete business plan or financial report on the company's future performance, she hastily claims that she needed $600,000 to renovate the alley and 100,000 for unexpected incidents. Without any cost-benefit analysis or any financial plan she applied for SBA loan and made her condo as loan collateral.

The back up plan in Sugar Bowl is missing due to the president's insufficient ability to handle the incidents. The major mishap is that after gave her instrumental employee, Gary Spalding, an extra 2 weeks' vacation, Givens does not have any back up employees to fill his absence. Unexpectedly, during Gary's vacation leave, two machines malfunctioned causing Givens to request out of state servicer to repair them, which again results in both time and financial costs. Last but not least, without any preparation for the unexpected low rate of patrons, Givens failed to have a backup plan to effectively handle the situation.

Regarding hiring process, Gives fails to provide a satisfactory performance. The most crucial and deadly mistake she made is hiring a wrong general contractor. As a leader of the company, she was supposed to identify the most economical and suitable employee for the company, not just the cheapest one. Although the contractor, Mike Walker, is more competitive in price compared with other candidates, his lacking of experience (only 3 years of practice) has cost huge amount of lost in financial and time sense. The most direct evident from this is the postponed opening for 7 week and Givens confessed that she might not meet the bank's timeline and face a tight budget. Moreover, Givens' reluctance to terminate some of her former employees illustrates her inability to identify the right employees, those who have a shared vision about company's future. Being keen deep into the idea that loyalty and family tie are overwhelmingly more important than other qualities, Givens contains 3 of her former employees who have not meet the criteria for Sugar Bowl.

As president, Givens has too many responsibilities, most of which could be passed down to the general manager, Sarah Petty. For example, Givens is in charge of budget control, hiring potential employees, designing and reconfiguring the space for Sugar Bowl, etc. Too many details have overshadowed her ability to forecast the company's future and analyze the company's performance.

As to the issues about general manager, the most detrimental one is her lacking of communicative skill.