For This Project, You Will Complete An Organizer, An Email Recommendation, And A Targeted Message With Explanation

Project Overview

For this project, you will complete an organizer, an email recommendation, and a targeted message with explanation. In order to make the best informed decision about whether to move forward with a business partnership with a particular company, you will investigate some of the ethical issues that company may have faced, and communicate your recommendation to leadership. Understanding and following ethical guidelines will impact many decisions you make in life and in your professional career.

Competency

In this project, you will master the following competency:

• Make decisions informed by ethical frameworks

Scenario

You work for Gauze and Effect, a local nonprofit organization that provides emergency medical care to people in crisis. Gauze and Effect was founded less than two years ago. Its small but dynamic team of doctors, nurses, and administrators has been nationally recognized for its work helping people after natural disasters.

You are a member of Gauze and Effect’s administrative team. This team works to coordinate relief missions, plan fundraisers, and do community outreach.

Recently, several businesses have asked to collaborate with Gauze and Effect. However, you’re aware that each of these companies has been involved in some sort of ethically questionable situation in the past.

The founder of Gauze and Effect, Dr. Lee, needs you to gather some background information about one of the businesses and its past ethical issue. After you’ve investigated the business and its controversy, you’ll recommend whether or not Gauze and Effect should pursue the partnership.

You will need to explain your decision in an email to Dr. Lee. You’ll also create a communication targeted to the local community.

Directions

The local community is very important to Gauze and Effect. It is a relatively new nonprofit with limited funding, so it must consider any new partnerships very carefully. Business partnerships could have a major impact on the nonprofit and the communities that it serves.

For this reason, you will need to investigate one of the businesses and its involvement in a controversy. Your work will help Gauze and Effect decide whether to move forward with the proposed partnership.

Follow these steps to develop your analysis and recommendation:

1. Organizer

Choose a business to investigate. To learn more about each company, visit the Businesses and Ethical Dilemmas List. In this project, you will select one of the following companies to investigate:

• Facebook and the data privacy controversy
• Mylan and the overpriced medications controversy
• Southwest and the safety violations controversy
• Volkswagen and the falsified data controversy

Investigate your chosen business and its ethical dilemma. Use the readings in the Businesses and Ethical Dilemmas List to learn more about each company and the ethical issues it faced.

Once you’ve read the resources, use the Organizer to guide your analysis. You’ll need to recommend whether Gauze and Effect should move forward with the proposed partnership.

You can also conduct your own research on the topic. Be sure to select authoritative resources and cite them appropriately.

Analyze the ethical dilemma you chose. Use the Organizer to guide your analysis of the ethical issue and aid in your decision making.

If you conducted any of your own research, make sure that your sources are trustworthy. Remember to cite the sources you use.

2. Email Recommendation to Dr. Lee

Next, write an email to Dr. Lee that summarizes the ethical dilemma and gives your recommendation about the partnership. Your email should include the following items:

• A brief summary of the ethical dilemma
• A description of how you approached the issue
• Your recommendation: Should Gauze and Effect pursue the partnership? This should be based on your analysis of the issue in your Organizer from Part 1.
• A justification for your decision: What other options might have worked? What were some of their advantages and disadvantages?
• A discussion of how your own ethics impacted your decision: Does your decision align with your personal ethics and values?

3. Targeted Message with Explanation:

Dr. Lee agrees with your recommended position on the partnership. Now he wants to share Gauze and Effect’s stance with the local community.

He has asked you to create a proposal that explains how you will create this message. Your proposal should contain the following:

• Your message to the community:

Change your message about ethics to fit a new context while staying true to the original idea behind it. Use the information you gathered in the previous steps to create your message to the local community. Your message should explain Gauze and Effect’s decision on the partnership. You could create anything, from a social media post to a press release.

• Your approach to crafting the public message:

As part of your message to the community, you should also explain how you updated the content for a new audience. Make sure to explain how you used specific ethical theories to create your message.

What to Submit

Every project has a deliverable or deliverables, which are the files that must be submitted before your project can be assessed. For this project, you must submit the following:

1. Organizer
   Once you have read the Businesses and Ethical Dilemmas List, answer the questions in this worksheet and submit it as part of the second deliverable, the email recommendation to Dr. Lee. This will guide your analysis of your chosen ethical issue and help you to make an informed recommendation to Dr. Lee.
2. Email Recommendation to Dr. Lee (300-500 words)
   Using the information that you gathered in the Organizer document, write an email to Dr. Lee that summarizes the ethical dilemma and gives your recommendation about the partnership. Review the Supporting Materials if you need help crafting a response.
3. Targeted Message with Explanation (300-500 words)
   Propose a message to share with the local community. It should convey Gauze and Effect’s decision and explain the ethical theory you used to make the decision.

Supporting Materials

The following resources will help support your work on the project:

Citation Help
Need help citing your sources? Use the CfA Citation Guide and Citation Maker.

Reading: Writing Guide
Review the tutorials and resources in the Writing Guide document if you need help with the writing aspects of this project.

Supporting Materials

Do you want to review strategies for reading?
Watch this short video on reading comprehension strategies from SNHU Academic Support.

Do you need additional support on your writing?
Watch this short video on brainstorming from SNHU Academic Support.
Or try this video on paraphrasing and summarizing from SNHU Academic Support.