How to Structure and Write Your Assignment
This assignment requires you to identify a real ethical situation from a workplace setting, diagnose the ethical dilemma it presents, apply an ethical decision-making model to it, and produce a 5–6 page APA-formatted report. Each of those tasks is distinct and analytically different. This guide breaks down exactly what each section needs, which decision-making models work best for specific case types, and where students consistently lose points on the rubric.
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Get Expert Help →What This Assignment Is Testing — and Why General Ethics Discussion Fails
This assignment tests whether you can apply ethics course frameworks — ethical theories, ethical dilemma identification, and a structured decision-making model — to a real, documented business situation. It is not testing your general knowledge of ethics. A paper that accurately describes utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics without connecting those frameworks to a specific real-world case will not satisfy the rubric. The analytical work the assignment requires is in the application: taking a real situation with real actors and real decisions, and demonstrating how your course’s ethical frameworks illuminate what happened, why it was an ethical problem, and what a structured ethical decision-making process would produce.
The three distinct analytical tasks in this assignment are often collapsed into a single vague narrative by students who misread the prompt. Identifying the ethical dilemma is not the same as describing the situation. Describing what makes it an ethical issue requires applying a specific analytical lens — not just asserting that something felt wrong. And applying a decision-making model requires walking through the model’s steps using the actual facts of your chosen situation, not describing the model and then separately describing the situation without connecting them.
The paper must be 5–6 pages, double-spaced, with a minimum of two scholarly sources in APA 7th edition format. At academic writing density, 5 pages double-spaced is approximately 1,500–1,750 words of substantive content. That is enough space to develop each required element with analytical depth — but only if you are not filling pages with case background that does no analytical work.
The Assignment Has Three Distinct Analytical Requirements — Map Them Before Writing
The three required analytical moves are: (1) identify the ethical dilemma(s) and their impact on decision-making; (2) describe what makes the situation an ethical issue; and (3) apply a decision-making model. Students who write a single flowing narrative — telling the story of what happened, mentioning ethics along the way, and inserting a model name at the end — typically fail to satisfy any of the three requirements at the analytical level the rubric demands. Plan the structure before you write, and ensure each section has its own distinct content.
Choosing a Qualifying Ethical Situation — What the Assignment Requires and What Fails Immediately
The situation must be real, must have occurred within the past five years, and must involve a genuine ethical conflict in a workplace or business context. You can draw from your own employment history or from a documented case in another organization. Both are acceptable. If you use a case from another organization, you need to be specific enough to ground the analysis — vague references to “a company that faced data breaches” are not sufficient for the analytical depth the assignment requires.
What a Qualifying Ethical Situation Looks Like vs. What Doesn’t
Qualifies — genuine ethical conflict: A manager who discovered that a high-performing employee was falsifying expense reports in small amounts and faced a choice between protecting the employee relationship, maintaining organizational fairness, and adhering to company policy. This involves competing duties, identifiable stakeholders, and a decision point where ethical frameworks produce different answers.
Qualifies — documented organizational case: A company’s decision to continue selling a product after internal safety concerns were raised but before formal regulatory action — a documented case involving the tension between shareholder obligations and consumer safety. Use specific company and timeline details.
Does not qualify — no genuine dilemma: A supervisor who yelled at employees and was eventually disciplined. This is a management failure with a clear right answer, not an ethical dilemma. An ethical dilemma requires that reasonable people applying different ethical frameworks could reach different conclusions.
Does not qualify — too vague to analyze: “My workplace had ethical issues with hiring.” This is not specific enough to identify stakeholders, decision points, competing obligations, or applicable ethical frameworks. The assignment requires a situational analysis — you need a situation with enough detail to analyze.
Too old: Anything that occurred before 2021. The assignment specifies the past five years. Citing Enron or the 2008 financial crisis will not satisfy this requirement regardless of how well-known the case is.
If you are drawing from your own work experience, you do not need to name your employer or identify colleagues by name — you can anonymize details that are not essential to the ethical analysis. What you cannot omit is the structural detail of the situation: the roles involved, the nature of the decision, the competing interests, and the outcome. Those details are what the ethical analysis runs on.
Choosing a Situation That Produces Strong Analysis
The best situations for this assignment are ones where you can identify at least two different ethical frameworks that point in different directions. A utilitarian analysis might support one course of action while a deontological analysis supports the opposite. That tension is what makes something a genuine ethical dilemma and what gives you material to work with across the paper’s required sections. If your situation has an obvious right answer that every ethical theory agrees on, the dilemma identification and model application sections will be thin. Choose a situation with genuine competing obligations, not a situation where one party was simply wrong.
Well-documented real-world ethical situations from the past five years that work for this assignment include: whistleblower decisions inside organizations facing regulatory issues, conflicts between employee privacy and employer monitoring technology, AI-generated outputs used without disclosure to clients, compensation inequity decisions that disadvantaged specific demographic groups, supply chain decisions involving human rights issues in vendor operations, and data handling decisions that benefited the organization while affecting customer trust. Each of these carries genuine competing obligations that produce the type of dilemma analysis the assignment requires.
Identifying the Ethical Dilemma(s) — The Specific Analytical Task the Assignment Requires
An ethical dilemma is a situation in which a decision-maker faces two or more competing obligations, values, or courses of action, and no choice is without some moral cost. The assignment asks you to identify the ethical dilemma and describe how it impacts decision-making. This is a precision task — the dilemma is not the entire situation, it is the specific point at which competing ethical demands collide and force a choice.
The most common mistake at this stage is describing the ethical situation — telling the reader what happened — rather than identifying the dilemma within it. The dilemma is the structural tension: the point at which a decision-maker must choose between two obligations they cannot simultaneously honor. Identifying it requires naming both sides of the tension and explaining why they conflict.
Four Common Dilemma Structures in Workplace Ethics
Most workplace ethical dilemmas fit one of these structural patterns. Identifying which pattern your situation matches helps you name the dilemma precisely and connect it to the relevant ethical frameworks in the body of your paper.
Individual vs. Organization
- A decision-maker’s personal ethical obligations conflict with their organizational role or employer expectations
- Examples: an employee ordered to produce misleading reports; a manager directed to enforce a policy they know causes harm; a professional asked to shade a recommendation for a preferred vendor
- The tension is between loyalty to the organization and personal integrity or professional duty
- Relevant frameworks: deontology (duties that exist regardless of organizational role), virtue ethics (what would a person of integrity do)
Stakeholder Conflict
- A decision benefits one group of stakeholders while harming another, and the decision-maker must choose whose interests to prioritize
- Examples: cost-cutting decisions that benefit shareholders while reducing employee safety; data monetization that benefits the company but exposes customers; supplier selection that favors price over labor conditions
- The tension is between competing legitimate interests that cannot both be fully served
- Relevant frameworks: stakeholder theory, utilitarianism (which option produces the best outcome for the most people)
Disclosure vs. Confidentiality
- A decision-maker possesses information that, if disclosed, would harm either the organization or an individual, but concealing it causes a different harm
- Examples: a professional who discovers financial irregularities but fears retaliation; an employee with evidence of safety violations who faces pressure to stay silent; a manager who knows of a colleague’s misconduct but lacks formal evidence
- The tension is between honesty, loyalty, and self-protection — three obligations that pull in different directions
- Relevant frameworks: duty-based ethics, whistleblower ethics literature
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Ethics
- An action that produces immediate benefit to one party creates longer-term harm to others, and the decision-maker must weigh present vs. future consequences
- Examples: approving a product release that meets minimum safety standards but carries known risks; making a hiring decision that serves immediate needs but creates equity problems over time; setting sales targets that push staff toward misrepresentation
- The tension is between near-term utility and longer-term obligation — and who bears the cost of the decision
- Relevant frameworks: consequentialism with time horizons, sustainability ethics
Once you identify which structural type your dilemma fits, the second part of the requirement — describing how the dilemma impacts decision-making — becomes more tractable. Dilemmas that fit the individual vs. organization structure create specific decision-making pressures: loyalty expectations, organizational power dynamics, fear of retaliation. Stakeholder conflict dilemmas create different pressures: the need for prioritization frameworks, the risk of stakeholder capture, the difficulty of weighing incommensurable interests. Your paper should name these pressures specifically, not just assert that the situation was “difficult” or “complex.”
The Assignment May Have Multiple Dilemmas — Identify the Primary One
The assignment prompt refers to “ethical dilemma(s)” — plural is possible. Real workplace situations often contain layered dilemmas. For a 5–6 page paper, identify one primary dilemma and develop it fully. If there are secondary dilemmas worth noting, mention them briefly and explain why you are focusing on the primary one. A paper that tries to analyze three equally-weighted dilemmas across five pages will give each one inadequate analytical depth. One well-developed dilemma with thorough model application is stronger than three dilemmas each treated superficially.
Describing What Makes It an Ethical Issue — The Analytical Layer Most Students Skip
The assignment explicitly asks you to “describe what makes this an ethical issue.” This is a distinct requirement from identifying the dilemma. Many students confuse the two and provide the same content for both. Identifying the dilemma answers: what is the conflict? Describing what makes it an ethical issue answers: why does this conflict have moral weight — why is it not just a business problem, a legal problem, or a management problem?
The answer to that question must engage with ethical theory. A situation is an ethical issue when it implicates values, rights, duties, or character in ways that cannot be resolved by reference to law, policy, or economics alone. Your task is to identify specifically which ethical dimension is engaged and why it matters.
| Ethical Dimension | What It Means | How to Identify It in Your Situation | Why It Elevates the Issue from Business to Ethics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harm | The situation involves actions or decisions that cause, risk, or allow harm to identifiable individuals or groups. Harm is the most commonly recognized ethical dimension and is engaged by consequentialist frameworks. | Ask: who is hurt or at risk of being hurt by this decision? Is the harm direct or indirect? Physical, financial, reputational, psychological? Who bears the harm — those who made the decision, or others who had no choice in the matter? | A business decision that causes harm is not just a liability issue. The ethical dimension is about whether decision-makers had an obligation to prevent the harm, whether they foresaw it, and whether they prioritized other interests over those who bore the cost. |
| Fairness and Justice | The situation involves differential treatment of parties without adequate justification, or the violation of procedural principles that people are owed regardless of outcome. | Ask: were similarly situated people treated differently? Did the process by which a decision was made give all affected parties an adequate voice? Was the burden of the decision distributed fairly? | Unfairness is not just a legal category — it is a moral one. Treating people differently based on characteristics irrelevant to the decision, or making decisions through processes that exclude those most affected, violates principles of fairness that exist independently of whether the outcome was efficient. |
| Honesty and Trust | The situation involves deception, misrepresentation, or the violation of a trust relationship between parties who relied on each other’s good faith. | Ask: did any party withhold material information from another? Did statements made or implied create false impressions? Were there explicit or implicit commitments that were not honored? | Trust violations are ethical issues because relationships — employment, professional, commercial — rest on good-faith expectations. Violating those expectations is not merely a contractual breach; it damages the relational fabric that makes cooperation possible. Deontological frameworks treat honesty as a duty owed regardless of consequences. |
| Autonomy and Dignity | The situation involves actions that reduce another party’s capacity to make informed, free choices about their own interests, or that treat people as means to an end rather than ends in themselves. | Ask: were people given the information they needed to make choices in their own interests? Were individuals treated as having inherent worth, or as instruments for achieving organizational goals? Was consent obtained where it was required? | Kant’s categorical imperative — treating people as ends, never merely as means — makes autonomy and dignity independent ethical requirements. A decision that achieves a good outcome by manipulating or disregarding people’s capacity for self-determination is ethically problematic even if it produces benefit. |
| Competing Duties | The situation involves a decision-maker who holds multiple legitimate roles carrying different and conflicting obligations — professional, organizational, personal, civic. | Ask: what formal duties did the decision-maker hold by virtue of their role? What personal ethical commitments did they hold? What obligations did they have to different stakeholder groups? Where did those obligations pull in opposite directions? | Role-based obligations — a doctor’s duty to the patient, an accountant’s duty to accurate reporting, an HR professional’s duty to confidentiality — can conflict with organizational loyalty or personal interest. The conflict between legitimate duties is what produces genuine ethical dilemmas rather than simple misconduct. |
A situation is an ethical issue when it cannot be fully resolved by law, policy, or market logic alone — when the question of what is right persists even after the legal and financial calculations are complete.
— The analytical distinction between business problems and ethical problemsApplying a Decision-Making Model — Which Model to Choose and How to Use It
The assignment requires you to apply a decision-making model to the dilemma. The assignment does not specify which model to use, which means you choose one and justify that choice. The model must be an established, scholarly framework from the ethics literature — not a general problem-solving process you devise yourself. The application must walk through each step of the model using the actual facts of your situation.
The critical word is apply. A section that describes a decision-making model and then, in a separate section, describes what happened in your situation has not applied the model — it has listed two separate things. Application means using the model’s steps as the organizational structure for analyzing your specific case, so that each step in the model produces a specific finding about your specific situation.
Rest’s Four-Component Model
Four stages: moral sensitivity (recognizing that a moral issue exists), moral judgment (determining the right course of action), moral motivation (prioritizing ethics over other considerations), and moral character (following through despite pressure). This model is strongest for analyzing why ethical failures happen even when people knew better — it captures the gap between knowing the right thing and doing it. Best for cases where organizational pressure, loyalty, or self-interest led someone to act against their own stated values.
The Potter Box
Four stages: definition (facts of the situation), values (personal values the decision-maker holds), principles (ethical theories applicable), and loyalties (whose interests to prioritize). The model loops, requiring the analyst to cycle through stages as new information changes the analysis. Best for cases involving competing stakeholder interests where the decision-maker’s primary loyalty — to employer, profession, client, or public — is the crux of the dilemma. The explicit loyalty stage makes it particularly well-suited to cases of conflicting role obligations.
Kidder’s Ethical Checkpoints
Nine sequential steps from recognizing an ethical symptom through committing to a decision and reviewing it. Kidder’s model is particularly thorough on the distinction between right-versus-wrong dilemmas (misconduct) and right-versus-right dilemmas (genuine ethical conflicts between legitimate values). It explicitly addresses the four paradigm types: truth vs. loyalty, individual vs. community, short-term vs. long-term, and justice vs. mercy. Best for cases where the dilemma fits one of these paradigm structures and you want a model with strong step-by-step resolution logic.
Jones’ Issue-Contingent Model
Focuses on the characteristics of the moral issue itself — moral intensity — as the factor that determines how much ethical weight decision-makers give it. Six components of moral intensity: magnitude of consequences, social consensus, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, proximity, and concentration of effect. Best for cases where the question is not what the decision-maker should have done, but why they underweighted the ethical dimension. Jones’ model explains why organizational actors make ethically poor decisions without being malicious.
Blanchard and Peale’s Three-Part Test
Three sequential questions: Is it legal? Is it balanced (fair to all parties)? How does it make me feel? This model is simple enough to apply comprehensively in a shorter analysis and accessible for cases where the ethical failure involved a decision-maker who could have self-checked but did not. The “feel” component engages virtue ethics — what would a person of good character experience when contemplating this action? Best for cases in smaller organizational settings or where individual character is central to the analysis.
The PLUS Decision-Making Model
Filters decisions through four lenses: Policies (does it comply with organizational policy?), Legal (does it comply with law and regulations?), Universal (does it conform to the organization’s stated values?), and Self (does it align with my personal values?). This model explicitly connects organizational ethics programs to individual decision-making. Best for cases inside organizations with formal codes of conduct or ethics programs, where the analysis can contrast what the organizational framework required with what the decision-maker actually did.
How to Structure the Model Application Section in Your Paper
After naming your chosen model and briefly explaining why it suits your case, use the model’s steps as subheadings or organizing sentences within your body section. For each step, write two to four sentences applying that specific step to the specific facts of your situation. If the model has four components, you produce four distinct analytical findings about your case. Do not summarize the model at length and then say “applying this to my situation.” Go step by step — that is what application means in this context, and it is what the rubric is evaluating when it assesses analytical depth.
Connecting Ethical Theories to the Dilemma — Your Paper Needs Both Theory and Model
The assignment requires you to apply a decision-making model, but your paper also needs to engage with ethical theory to explain why the situation is an ethical problem and to characterize the nature of the competing obligations. The decision-making model tells you how to analyze the decision. The ethical theories tell you why it matters and which framework best captures the moral stakes. Both are required for a paper that meets the rubric at the analytical depth level.
Ethical Theories and What They Contribute to Your Analysis
- Utilitarianism: The morally right action produces the greatest good for the greatest number. Apply this to your case by identifying all affected parties, estimating the consequences to each, and determining which course of action maximizes aggregate benefit. Utilitarianism is strongest when the harm is widely distributed and measurable; it is weakest when it requires sacrificing the interests of a minority for aggregate benefit.
- Deontology (Kantian ethics): Some actions are right or wrong independently of their consequences, because they fulfill or violate duties owed to persons. Apply this by identifying the duties the decision-maker held by virtue of their role and the categorical obligations those duties generated. Deontology is strongest when rule-violation or rights-infringement is central to the case; it is weakest when rigid rule-following produces obviously bad outcomes.
- Virtue ethics: The right action is what a person of good character would do in this situation. Apply this by asking what virtues — honesty, courage, justice, integrity — the situation demanded, and whether the decision-maker exercised or neglected them. Virtue ethics is strongest when individual character is central to the failure; it is weakest in highly institutionalized contexts where individual virtue cannot overcome structural pressures.
- Stakeholder theory: Organizations have obligations to all parties affected by their decisions, not only shareholders. Apply this by mapping all stakeholders in your case, identifying what obligations the organization owed each one, and analyzing how the decision served or failed those obligations. Stakeholder theory is strongest in cases involving organizational decisions with broad social impact.
- Social contract theory: Organizations and individuals operate under implicit agreements with society that generate mutual obligations. Apply this by identifying what implicit agreement governed the relationship between the decision-maker and the affected parties, and how the decision violated or honored that agreement.
How to Use Two Theories Without Writing Two Separate Essays
- Do not allocate one paragraph to each theory and then never connect them. The value of applying multiple theories is showing that they reach the same conclusion (convergence strengthens the ethical judgment) or different conclusions (divergence illuminates the genuine moral tension).
- Identify which theory best captures the core moral issue in your case and use it as the primary lens. Use a second theory to show how a different framework complicates, confirms, or reframes the analysis.
- Example structure: “A utilitarian analysis of this decision suggests [finding], because [reason derived from the specific facts]. A deontological analysis reaches a similar conclusion through a different route: [finding], because the decision-maker violated the duty of [specific duty] owed to [specific party]. The convergence of two frameworks on the same conclusion strengthens the judgment that the decision was ethically indefensible.”
- If the theories diverge, that divergence is analytically productive: “A utilitarian analysis would support the decision, because [aggregate benefit calculation]. A deontological analysis would reject it, because [duty violation]. The tension between these frameworks captures the genuine dilemma the decision-maker faced — there was no choice available that satisfied both frameworks simultaneously.” This is precisely the kind of analysis the assignment is designed to elicit.
- Cite your sources for each theoretical framework. Every claim about what utilitarianism or deontology requires needs a citation from a peer-reviewed source or scholarly text, not from a general ethics website.
Verified External Resource: Markkula Center for Applied Ethics — Santa Clara University
The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University maintains a comprehensive, peer-reviewed online resource on ethical frameworks and their application to real-world cases. Available at scu.edu/ethics/ethics-resources/ethical-decision-making/, the resource includes framework-specific guides for applying utilitarianism, rights-based ethics, fairness and justice frameworks, virtue ethics, and common good approaches to practical ethical analysis. The Center also maintains case studies in business ethics, technology ethics, and organizational ethics relevant to workplace dilemmas. Note that while the Center’s web resources can orient your theoretical discussion, your two required sources must be peer-reviewed scholarly articles or books — the Journal of Business Ethics (Springer, available through most university library databases) is the primary peer-reviewed outlet for applied business ethics research and is the strongest source type for this assignment.
Structuring the 5–6 Page Report — What Goes in Each Section and How Much Space Each Gets
The assignment specifies required structural elements: introduction, body, conclusion, and reference list. It explicitly states that an abstract and table of contents are not required. The cover page is required and includes your name, course name, assignment name, title, instructor’s name, and date. Page numbers go in the upper right corner. All of this should be formatted per APA 7th edition student paper standards before you begin writing content.
| Section | Content Required | Approximate Length | Common Mistakes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | Introduce the situation and its organizational context in two to three sentences. State the purpose of the paper — that it will identify the ethical dilemma, describe what makes it an ethical issue, and apply a named decision-making model. Include a brief thesis statement that signals your conclusion about the ethical dimensions of the case. Do not provide extensive background on the organization or the industry — the introduction should position the analysis, not tell a story. | 150–200 words (approximately half a page). Proportional to the paper’s analytical focus. Resist the instinct to over-contextualize; use the space for the analytical claim instead. | Starting with broad statements about “the importance of ethics in business today” before reaching the specific situation. Beginning introductions with general observations delays the analytical content and uses space that the rubric requires to be filled with case-specific analysis. |
| Situational Background | Describe the situation with enough factual specificity to ground the subsequent ethical analysis. Identify the organization (or a sufficiently specific description if anonymized), the time period, the key actors and their roles, the decision or action that constitutes the ethical situation, and the outcome. This section provides the facts; it does not interpret or evaluate them. Keep it tight — the assignment is not a case study narrative, it is an ethical analysis that uses the case as its dataset. | 250–350 words (approximately three-quarters of a page). More than this becomes narrative filler that displaces analytical content. Less than this may not provide sufficient factual grounding for the analysis. | Using this section to evaluate the situation before identifying the dilemma analytically. Statements like “this was clearly unethical” in the background section are assertions, not analysis. Reserve evaluative claims for the sections where you have the theoretical framework to support them. |
| Ethical Dilemma Identification | Name the primary ethical dilemma precisely — not the general topic (workplace fairness, data privacy) but the specific tension in this specific situation. Identify the competing obligations, the decision-maker who faced them, and what was at stake on each side. Describe how the dilemma impacted decision-making: what pressures did it create, what options did it foreclose, what made the “right” course of action difficult to choose? Cite at least one scholarly source here that supports your characterization of the dilemma type. | 300–400 words (approximately one page). This is one of the three required analytical elements and deserves dedicated space with its own section heading. | Conflating dilemma identification with situational background. These are different sections with different analytical purposes. The background provides facts; the dilemma identification provides a structural characterization of the ethical conflict within those facts. |
| Ethical Analysis (Theory + What Makes It an Ethical Issue) | Apply one to two ethical theories to the dilemma. Explain which ethical dimension(s) are engaged — harm, fairness, honesty, autonomy, competing duties — and cite theoretical support for why those dimensions constitute ethical (not merely legal or financial) obligations. This section answers the assignment’s explicit question: what makes this an ethical issue? Ground every claim about ethical theory in a cited scholarly source. Do not assert that a theory says something without citing the source that establishes what the theory holds. | 400–500 words (approximately 1.25–1.5 pages). This is the theoretically dense section — cite thoroughly, apply specifically to the case, and do not drift into general theory description without case connection. | Spending the entire section describing ethical theories in the abstract without connecting them to the specific facts of the situation. This is the most common analytical failure in ethics papers — and the most easily avoided by asking after each theoretical claim: “and in this specific situation, that means…” |
| Decision-Making Model Application | Name the model, briefly explain why you chose it for this case (one to two sentences), and then apply each step or component of the model to the specific facts of your situation. Each step produces a finding about the case. The section should conclude with what the model recommends or reveals — either a specific course of action the decision-maker should have taken, or an explanation of why the decision-maker acted as they did, depending on the model’s structure. | 400–500 words (approximately 1.25–1.5 pages). Match the depth of application to the number of components in the model — a four-component model should produce four distinct analytical statements about the case. | Applying the model to what should have been done without adequately analyzing what actually happened. The model should illuminate the real decision, not just describe an ideal decision in the abstract. Use the model to analyze the actual case, then draw conclusions about what the analysis reveals. |
| Conclusion | Synthesize the findings from the dilemma identification, ethical analysis, and model application sections. State what the analysis reveals about the case — what went wrong, why, and what the ethical obligations were. Address implications for how organizations or individuals should handle similar situations. Do not introduce new case facts or new theoretical frameworks in the conclusion. The conclusion answers: given everything the analysis has produced, what do we know about this ethical situation and its implications? | 200–300 words (approximately half to three-quarters of a page). Conclusions should be proportional — concise synthesis, not repetition of body content. | Ending with a vague statement about “the importance of ethical decision-making in business” that could conclude any ethics paper. The conclusion should be specific to the analysis you have just conducted and the specific case you have analyzed. |
APA 7th Edition Requirements for This Assignment — What Two Scholarly Sources Must Accomplish
The assignment requires a minimum of two relevant scholarly sources. Two is the minimum; the analytical depth the assignment requires will typically necessitate more. If your paper makes claims about what utilitarianism holds, what virtue ethics requires, what a specific decision-making model involves, and what empirical research says about organizational ethics failures, each of those claims needs a citation. Two sources can cover two different analytical areas — one theoretical, one empirical or model-specific — but they will not cover every claim in a well-developed 5–6 page analysis.
Source Types That Qualify as Scholarly
- Peer-reviewed journal articles: The Journal of Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, the Journal of Business Ethics Education, and the Academy of Management Review all publish peer-reviewed research directly applicable to this assignment. Access through your institution’s library database (JSTOR, EBSCO, ProQuest).
- Scholarly books and textbooks: A textbook used in your course or a monograph on business ethics by an identified academic author with publisher credentials. Cite the specific chapter and page range, not the entire book.
- Foundational ethical theory texts: For Kantian deontology, Mill’s utilitarian works, Rawls on justice — these are primary philosophical sources appropriate for supporting theoretical claims. Cite the edition you are using.
- Government and regulatory reports on documented ethical failures: A SEC enforcement action, an OSHA investigation report, or a congressional hearing transcript can serve as a primary source for the facts of an organizational case. These are not scholarly sources for theoretical claims, but they are credible primary sources for establishing case facts.
Source Types That Do Not Qualify
- Ethics websites and online articles without peer review: The Markkula Center’s website provides useful orientation but does not count as a peer-reviewed scholarly source. Neither do Forbes, Harvard Business Review (the practitioner articles, not the academic journal), or general psychology/ethics blogs.
- Wikipedia and encyclopedias: These are not peer-reviewed and are not appropriate scholarly sources for any component of this assignment.
- News articles: A news article can establish that an event occurred, but it cannot serve as a scholarly source for the theoretical claims your analysis requires. If you use news articles to document case facts, clearly distinguish their function from your scholarly sources, which support your theoretical analysis.
- Sources older than five to seven years for empirical claims: Empirical research on organizational ethics evolves. Use current research for claims about how ethical decision-making works in organizations. Foundational philosophical texts are exempt from currency requirements — Kant’s categorical imperative does not have an expiration date.
APA 7th Edition Student Paper Format Checklist
The assignment specifies APA 7th edition compliance. Key requirements for student papers that differ from professional papers: no running head (removed in APA 7th for student papers), page numbers in the upper right corner of every page (including the cover page at page 1), title page includes student name, instructor name, course name, institution, and date. Body text is double-spaced throughout, including after headings and between reference entries. One-inch margins on all sides. 12-point font (Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, or Georgia are all acceptable in APA 7th). References page begins on a new page with the heading “References” centered and bolded. Use hanging indent format for all reference entries: first line flush left, subsequent lines indented 0.5 inch.
Common Errors That Cost Points — and How to Correct Each One Before Submitting
| # | The Error | Why It Costs Points | The Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Choosing a situation with no genuine ethical dilemma | If the situation involves straightforward misconduct with an obvious right answer — someone lied, cheated, or broke the law, and they should not have — there is no genuine dilemma to analyze. The assignment requires a situation where competing legitimate obligations are in tension. A paper that treats obvious misconduct as an ethical dilemma has no dilemma to apply a decision-making model to, because the model’s output is predetermined. | Before committing to a situation, run a simple test: can you articulate two different ethical frameworks that produce two different conclusions about the right course of action? If yes, you have a dilemma. If every framework you can think of points to the same obvious answer, choose a different situation. Situations involving competing stakeholder interests, disclosure decisions, role conflicts, and short-term vs. long-term trade-offs typically produce richer dilemmas than situations of clear misconduct. |
| 2 | Treating the decision-making model application as a summary section | This is the single most common error in ethics papers that use decision-making models. Students describe the model — list its steps, explain what each step means in the abstract — and then write a separate paragraph about the case. The model and the case exist as parallel tracks that never meet. The rubric for model application evaluates whether you use the model as an analytical tool against a specific case, not whether you know what the model contains. | Write the model application section using the model’s steps as your organizing structure. For each step, write one to three sentences that apply that step to the specific facts of your situation. Do not describe the step and then discuss the case — merge them. Every sentence in the model application section should name either a component of the model or a fact from the case, and ideally both. |
| 3 | Describing what makes something an ethical issue by asserting it is wrong | Asserting “this was unethical because it caused harm” or “this was an ethical issue because people were treated unfairly” is not an analytical description — it is a label. The assignment asks you to describe what makes the situation an ethical issue, which requires engaging with the ethical framework that identifies why harm or unfairness has moral weight in the first place. The answer to “what makes this an ethical issue” must connect to an ethical theory, not just assert a conclusion. | For each ethical claim, ask: which theoretical framework establishes this as a moral obligation? A consequentialist would say harm matters because… A deontologist would say unfairness matters because… Write the answer to that question. Every assertion about the ethical character of the situation should be supported by a cited theoretical framework that explains why the assertion is ethically grounded, not just intuitively felt. |
| 4 | Failing to meet the five-year recency requirement | The assignment specifies that the ethical situation must have occurred within the past five years. Using a well-known historical case — Enron (2001), the Challenger disaster (1986), or pre-2021 corporate misconduct cases — does not satisfy this requirement regardless of how well documented it is. Instructors who grade papers on well-worn historical cases from outside the five-year window will deduct points for failing to meet the situational criteria. | If you are using a case from another organization, verify the timeline before writing. The case must involve an ethical decision or situation that occurred between 2021 and 2026. There are ample documented organizational ethics cases within this window: AI-related disclosure failures, pandemic-era employer conduct, supply chain human rights issues, data privacy decisions by technology companies, financial misconduct cases under regulatory investigation, and workplace harassment documentation failures. Choose any of these and verify the dates. |
| 5 | Applying only one ethical theory and calling it an analysis | A paper that applies utilitarianism to the case and concludes that the decision was ethically wrong has produced one analytical finding. If the rubric assesses theoretical breadth, a single-theory application will not satisfy it. More importantly, using only one framework misses the analytical value the assignment is designed to produce: the insight that different frameworks illuminate different aspects of the dilemma, and that their convergence or divergence tells you something about the nature of the ethical issue. | Apply a minimum of two ethical frameworks. Identify which frameworks apply most naturally to your dilemma type (consequentialist frameworks for harm-based dilemmas; deontological frameworks for duty-conflict situations; stakeholder theory for organizational decisions with broad social impact) and use two that produce the most analytically productive comparison. Note whether they converge or diverge and explain what that tells you about the dilemma’s structure. |
| 6 | Using non-scholarly sources to support theoretical claims | Many students cite general ethics websites, popular business publications, or textbook companion sites when explaining what utilitarianism or deontology holds. These citations will not satisfy the scholarly source requirement. The rubric for sources evaluates whether citations come from peer-reviewed academic literature. A citation to a philosophy website for the claim that Kant’s categorical imperative requires treating persons as ends is not a scholarly citation for that claim — a citation to a peer-reviewed philosophy or ethics journal is. | Access your institution’s library database and search for peer-reviewed sources before writing. For ethical theory foundations, search your institution’s JSTOR or EBSCO access for the Journal of Business Ethics or Business Ethics Quarterly. For decision-making model sources, search for the model’s author — Rest, Kidder, Jones, Potter — in an academic database and cite the peer-reviewed source where the model is developed. Do not rely on general web sources for any theoretical claim. |
Pre-Submission Checklist for the Situational Analysis — Ethics in the Workplace
- Situation is real, occurred within the past five years, and involves a genuine ethical conflict (not just misconduct with an obvious right answer)
- The ethical dilemma is precisely named — both sides of the tension are identified, not just the general topic
- The dilemma’s impact on decision-making is described — not just that a choice was difficult, but what specific pressures the conflict created
- What makes the situation an ethical issue is grounded in ethical theory — not asserted, but connected to a framework that establishes why it has moral weight
- At least two ethical theories are applied to the case, with their convergence or divergence noted and explained
- A named decision-making model is chosen and justified for this specific case type
- Each step of the model is applied to the specific facts of the situation — not described in the abstract and then separately discussed
- The model application section produces a specific conclusion or finding about the real case
- Introduction states the paper’s purpose and analytical claim — not just announces “I will discuss…”
- Conclusion synthesizes findings specific to this case — not general statements about the importance of ethics
- Minimum two peer-reviewed scholarly sources cited — not websites, popular publications, or Wikipedia
- Every theoretical claim has a citation at the point of the claim — not only at the end of paragraphs
- APA 7th edition student paper format: no running head, page numbers upper right, hanging indent on references
- Cover page includes all required elements: name, course name, assignment name, title, instructor’s name, date
- Paper is 5–6 content pages, double-spaced, 12-point font, one-inch margins
FAQs: Situational Analysis — Ethics in the Workplace
What Separates a High-Scoring Ethics Paper from a Passing One
The papers that score at the top of the rubric for this assignment share three consistent qualities. First, they maintain analytical precision throughout: the dilemma is named with structural specificity (not just “an ethical conflict”), the ethical theories are applied to the facts of the case (not described in the abstract), and the decision-making model produces specific findings about the specific situation (not generic conclusions about how the model works). Precision at every stage is what separates analysis from description.
Second, high-scoring papers maintain the distinction between what happened and why it was ethically significant. The background section describes events; the analysis explains their moral weight using theoretical frameworks that the paper cites from peer-reviewed sources. Students who collapse these two tasks — who explain what happened and why it was wrong in the same breath, without the theoretical scaffolding that establishes the moral significance — produce papers that read as informed opinion rather than academic analysis.
Third, high-scoring papers use the decision-making model as an analytical tool, not an organizational template. They do not describe the model and then describe the case — they use the model’s structure to generate findings about the case that would not be visible without the model. That generative quality — the model revealing something about the situation that the narrative alone would not — is what demonstrates that you have applied the framework rather than referenced it.
If you need professional help selecting and framing an ethical situation, developing the dilemma analysis, applying ethical theories and decision-making models with case-specific precision, identifying and formatting peer-reviewed sources, or editing a draft for analytical depth and APA compliance, the team at Smart Academic Writing covers business ethics, applied ethics, and organizational behavior papers at all academic levels. Visit our case study writing service, our essay writing service, our research paper writing service, our APA citation help service, or our editing and proofreading service. You can also see how the service works or contact us with your assignment details and deadline.