Legal and Governmental Processes I

Written Assignment 5

There are two options for this writing assignment. You can either:

1) Write a paper which first briefly describes the most difficult moral dilemma you have faced in the workplace, and then applies Trevino/Nelson's Eight Steps to Sound Ethical Decision Making in Business (pp 71-75) to the resolution of this dilemma.

or

2) Steinbeck has argued that "it happens that every man in the bank hates what the bank does, yet the bank does it" (Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5). The moral paradox is that oftentimes 'organizations' seem to do the 'wrong' thing, yet no individual in the organization acting on their own would have made a decision leading to this 'bad' outcome. Outline such a moral paradox (refer to Harvey's The Abilene Paradox: The Management of Agreement), and then suggest several mechanisms managers might use to overcome this moral paradox.

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