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The Nkf Scandal

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Oct ‘10 Nanyang Technological University[Type the company address] Yi Theng Lim Organization Behavior & Design Case Ethical Analysis NKF Singapore: Anatomy of a Crisis 08 Fall Introduction In July 2005, Singapore was shaken by a scandal involving the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), the nation’s largest charity. The scandal had surfaced many ethically controversial practices by NKF. In this paper, I will be focusing on the dilemmas surrounding NKF’S operations structure and evaluate them from various theoretical perspectives to present a more holistic view of the issue. Unlike most charities in Singapore, NKF operated as a professionally run, non-profit organization (NPO), where professional fund-raisers were …show more content…

Pertaining to the transparency issue, it is well within the rights of the donors and society to demand for total transparency as they should be informed of how their donations are being utilized to help the needy. However, this conflicts with NKF employees’ rights to privacy, who are fundamentally private individuals. This issue can also be discussed from the perspective of deontology. Although it is indeed the duty of NKF, as a public NPO to reveal its financial standing such as its reserves, disclosure of high reserves could deter donations, which would cause its current and future beneficiaries to suffer. Over here, a divergence occurs again between the duty of NKF to society and its duty to do the best it can to aid its beneficiaries. Conclusion In short, the downfall of NKF was primarily caused by its failure to thoroughly weigh the interests of its various stakeholders. Although it cannot be denied that NKF and Mr. TT Durai had not informed the public of travel perks, bonuses, as well as the size of its reserves, had NKF been more transparent, the scandal could have been prevented. NKF had failed to address the concerns of the donating public, beneficiaries, government and society thus resulting in the lost of trust in NKF. Drawing from the conclusions so far, to prevent similar ethical issues from occurring, NKF should practice more publicly transparent accounting to be more accountable towards the donating

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