When the idea first occurred to her, it seemed like such a win-win situation. Now she wasnt so…

When the idea first occurred to her, it
seemed like such a win-win situation. Now she wasnt so sure. Marge Brygay was
a hardworking sales rep for Inspire Learning Corporation, a company intent on
becoming the top educational software provider in five years. That newly
adopted strategic goal translated into an ambitious, million-dollar sales
target for each of Inspires sales reps. At the beginning of the fiscal year,
her share of the sales departments operational goal seemed entirely reasonable
to Marge. She believed in Inspires products. The company had developed
innovative, highly

When the idea first occurred to her, it
seemed like such a win-win situation. Now she wasnt so sure. Marge Brygay was
a hardworking sales rep for Inspire Learning Corporation, a company intent on
becoming the top educational software provider in five years. That newly
adopted strategic goal translated into an ambitious, million-dollar sales
target for each of Inspires sales reps. At the beginning of the fiscal year,
her share of the sales departments operational goal seemed entirely reasonable
to Marge. She believed in Inspires products. The company had developed
innovative, highly regarded math, language, science, and social studies
programs for the K12 market. What set the software apart was a foundation in
truly cutting-edge research. Marge had seen for herself how Inspire programs
could engage whole classrooms of normally unmotivated kids; the significant
rise in scores on those increasingly important standardized tests bore out her
subjective impressions. But now, just days before the end of the year, Marges
sales were $1,000 short of her million-dollar goal. The sale that would have
put her comfortably over the top fell through due to last-minute cuts in one
large school systems budget. At first, she was nearly overwhelmed with
frustration, but then it occurred to her that if she contributed $1,000 to
Central High, the inner-city high school in her territory probably most in need
of what she had forsale, they could purchase the software and put her
over the top. Her scheme would certainly benefit Central High students.
Achieving her sales goal would make Inspire happy, and it wouldnt do her any
harm, either professionally or financially. Making the goal would earn her a
$10,000 bonus check that would come in handy when the time came to write out
that first tuition check for her oldest child, who had just been accepted to a
well-known, private university. Initially, it seemed like the perfect solution
all the way around. The more she thought about it, however, the more it didnt
quite sit well with her conscience. Time was running out. She needed to decide
what to do.