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Module 5 Moral Minefield Reflection

Drew Lassiter

OGL 345 Organizational Ethics

Dr. Michael Pryzdia

September 28, 2023

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Module 5 Moral Minefield Reflection

1) Copy and paste (or screenshot) your Level overview and scores. You can find this information

again in your Overview & Profile.

Corporate Impact
216 / 250
Company Profits: 112
LEVEL 5: LAUNCH

Question Result Points

1. Targets ✘ 3

2. Targets Bonus ✔ 3

3. The Union ✔ 7

4. The Union Bonus ✔ 3

5. Bots ✔ 7

6. Bots Bonus ✘ 1

7. The Whistleblower ✘ 3

8. The Whistleblower Bonus ✔ 3

9. The Whistleblower ✔ 7

10. The Whistleblower Bonus ✔ 3

2) Reflect on the scenarios presented in the game. Was there anything you found particularly

difficult? Anything that surprised you?

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I found the first situation to be a bit of an ethical conundrum. In the first place, I do not

think the supervisor should have demanded unrealistic goals for the sales team, but I also do not

think that exempts the team from the consequences of falsifying their numbers. If you cannot

reach the quota, there should be space for conversations with superiors to find a compromise or

solution. It is best for a workplace to provide the culture and environment to voice opinions and

concerns without backlash. Unfortunately, it is still unethical to lie in a report. We discussed

early in this course that no matter what, the company must be consistent with the consequences

of unethical behavior. If you misappropriate funds, you do not get a second chance, if you are

lying to your supervisor about your sales, should you get a pass to blame unrealistic quotas? In

the organizational mindset, I can see the argument for the responsibility to fall on the supervisor,

but individually, each person is responsible for their own ethical behavior. Therefore, I

essentially disagree with the simulation that responsibility should fall on the demanding

supervisor.

3) Explain one of the decision-making scenarios you were given in this level and analyze it in

terms of one of this week’s theories. (Note: for full credit, be sure you name the theory you are

using, explain the theory fully, and then explain how the scenario illustrates that theory.)

The instrumental stakeholder theory suggests that business leaders’ primary

responsibility is to manage their relationship with the influential stakeholders in the business to

ensure success (Fryer, 2015, p. 288). The key word here is influential. The most important

business stakeholders require first priority to the point where stakeholders with no influence on
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the business are essentially ignored. Businesses following this theory rely on the power and

resources of the most influential stakeholders to garner the most business success. Therefore, the

shareholders with the most influence will receive more attention than a lower stakeholder on the

totem pole. It is a harsh, but realistic approach to business. Most company leaders find

themselves practically aligning with this theory even if they are supposed to support the common

employee/stakeholder.

In the final “Whistleblower” scenario, the company’s leadership faces the allegations

made by a whistleblower in the organization. Two of the allegations are true but one is built on

speculation. In the scenario, the leadership admits to the two true allegations but immediately

challenges the unproven one. This reflects the instrumental stakeholder theory by focusing on the

shareholders’ potential loss over the unimportant stakeholders who do not impact day-to-day

business (like a lone Ulban user). The leadership counters the whistleblower to cut their losses

from false allegations. They see the chance to minimize their influential stakeholders’ financial

losses without any consideration that this drug could be harmful to lower-level stakeholders. This

approach practically makes sense but seems ethically questionable.

4) How could you use the concepts discussed in this simulation in your job today? Relate these

concepts to the other course materials and to your own experiences. (Note: for full credit, be sure

discuss a specific scenario, a specific example from your own experiences, and a specific

connection to something you learned from the text.)

We recently had to terminate an employee from my workplace. Sparing the details, it

boiled down to his irresponsibility. He had been given multiple warnings and had been properly
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set up for growth in this area. Unfortunately, it did not work out. One of his main “excuses” was

not having the proper resources to do his job right. He was a supervisor, and he blamed his

failures on the senior manager who did not schedule the right work, did not allocate proper

resources, etc. He had been heard criticizing the manager’s performance and personality. I

thought of this when the scenario asked if it were ethical to reveal information that could destroy

someone’s career. The ethical answer is it is never right to publicly reveal that type of

information. In my job and in this scenario, the connection between character and performance

and ethicality showed me there are always two sides to a story. I could have easily accepted what

this employee had said about his manager without knowing or seeing his own misbehavior. In

the scenario, the leadership could have easily shared the damaging information, but that side of

the story was not theirs to tell. In the book reading, it talked about the difference between acting

as principal and acting as an agent. The main difference is whose behalf you are acting on. When

acting as principal, you look after things belonging to you. Resources, time, money, all these

things fall into that category. When you are acting as an agent, you are acting on behalf of

someone else’s property and belongings. Therefore, agents must act in the best interests of

someone else (Fryer, 2015, pp. 367-368).

In this workplace circumstance, this employee was working as an agent of his manager’s

responsibilities. He was responsible for doing his best with what he was given while acting as

principal of his own time management. The irresponsibility in his own resources was blamed on

someone else and he chose to be a poor agent of what he was given by his manager. The

leadership in our scenario chose to be a good agent of the information given to them and acted

ethically. I hope I adequately explained the interplay between my work situation, the minefield
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scenario, and the textbook. It boils down to personal responsibility for both your own belongings

and for someone else’s goals given to you.

Reference
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Fryer, M. (2015). Ethics Theory & Business Practice. SAGE.