Learning a hard lesson

After reading the "Qual Plus HMO" story in Perry's book, I couldn't help but wonder how often this happens in business today. Jim Goodrich had been a successful COO of Qual Plus for 10 years. Suddenly, a board committee makes a questionable ethical decision to allow a contractor to submit a rebid and Jim finds himself in disagreement with everyone, even his boss. Legally, the lawyer says the decision is OK, and even the ethics committee demured to the board's decision as being OK. Jim had no support for his uneasy feeling that a conflict of interest existed on the board committee which led to the final acceptance of the contract from the contractor who had ties on the board committee.
The old adage comes to mind "It's not what you know, but who you know" that matters. I hear this all the time when people use their contacts to win contracts, admissions to colleges, tickets to sporting events, interviews with high profile people etc. If Acme Construction did not have Joe Smith on the board committee, they would not have gotten the contract. Their initial bid was too high. There were no stipulations in the original bidding rules for allowing rebids. In this sense, it was very unfair to the other contractors who submitted the bids.
On the other hand, is there anything wrong with asking for a rebid from a contractor that the board really wanted to work with? Acme Construction did come in later with a competitively lower price, and assuming they met all the criteria for quality work, why shouldn't they get the job? As the lawyer stated, the board's actions were not illegal. Somewhat questionable, yes, but the board was in charge of making the decision. Even if the CEO stood up to the board and requested that a rebid not be offered to Acme, would the board have listened to him? Brent may have made matters worse, and may even have jeopardized his own job.
Hiring a contractor doesn't seem worth throwing 10 years of successful management away for, and Brent seems to be telling Joe just that. Brent obviously does not seem to be a good example of ethical conduct himself, so the option of him talking to the board was probably not going to happen. In my mind, Joe should be bothered by the events as they unfolded in the board room and the lack of support from the CEO, ethics committe and legal consule. As it states in the Epilogue, Joe should have resigned and kept his self-respect. His resignation now looks inevitable anyway.
Reference:
Perry, F. (2002) The Tracks We Leave: Ethics in Healthcare Management. Chicago:Health Administration Press