Business commentary
1. Briefly summarize the NEWS article. Identify who are the persons, groups, and/or organizations that are involved. CLEARLY STATE THE MORAL ISSUE; for example, is there some kind harm being caused to an individual, or group, or business? Is this about fairness? Is someone’s, or some group’s, or some business’s moral rights being violated? Is there more than one issue? Is there some kind of conflict between one value and another value? ! !
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?2. PROVIDE ME WITH AT LEAST ONE REASON to have a belief, one way or the other, about the issue that you are explaining. In other words, to receive full credit for any commentary, you MUST state WHY IS IT A MORAL ISSUE? WHY IS IT WRONG OR WHY IS IT NOT WRONG? If you make the statement, “Wal-Mart was morally wrong to bribe Mexican officials,” you MUST TRY TO EXPLAIN, “WHY IS WAL-MART WRONG?” For example, what is wrong with bribery? It is best to assume that I do not have any beliefs about ethical behavior at all. Your job is to convince me with REASON(S).!
3. Finally, briefly suggest what YOU BELIEVE should be done about this situation, AND WHY. Explain how your suggestion is an appropriate response to the reason(s) you provided in section 2. You MUST provide reasons for whatever you believe. If you find that you cannot provide any reasons for what you believe, they I highly suggest you pick a different article. !
If you expect to receive full credit for a commentary there are a few additional things that you MUST do. Only meeting one requirement is NOT sufficient,!
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:!
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A. You MUST identify a MORAL issue (this should happen in Section 1).!
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B. AND the moral issue MUST directly and/or indirectly CORRELATE WITH the nature of BUSINESS ITSELF; for example, profit margin, corporate culture, competition between companies, competition within companies, legislative manipulation, the nature of the fiduciary relationship between employers and employees and customers, shareholders, stakeholders, losing site of the big picture, etc. If the correlation is indirect, you MUST make the connection to business as clear as possible (this can happen in Section 2). If this seems overly difficult for you to do, then this is a good sign that it might not be a business issue. If you cannot do so, you should pick a different article because failure to do so will result in no credit. !
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C. AND you MUST locate the moral issue within a CURRENT BUSINESS PRACTICE in a local, national, or international news source published within 4 weeks of turning in the assignment. Appropriate online sources include, but are not limited to NPR.org, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reuters, etc.!
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D. THE USE OF BLOGS AND/OR OPINION PIECES IS UNACCEPTABLE. If your citation has “blog” or “opinion” in the URL you will receive a 0. YOUR COMMENTARY WILL NOT EVEN BE READ. Why? Bloggers and editorials (opinions) are held to a completely different standard of reporting. That is, that they are held to no standard of reporting at all. You will not receive credit for questionable sources. No exceptions.!
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E. You MUST cite the article by including the URL at THE BEGINNING, i.e., prior to section one, of the assignment. !
F. YOU MUST NUMBER EACH SECTION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FORMAL STRUCTURE. FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN 0 POINTS AWARDED FOR THEASSIGNMENT. !
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G. If none of this makes sense to you, or it’s too much reading, then at least THOROUGHLY discuss your article. The most common mistakes include multiple claims of wrongness with no discussion as to why. Ultimately, the idea is for you to recognize moral issues in business, and then examine those issues against your own beliefs. You should be able to justify your thinking in more than platitudes, but with the underlying logic as to why “wrong” is in fact wrong and “right” is in fact right.!
The purpose of these short writing assignments is to get you to think about the issues we will be discussing in class and for you to get used to providing reasons for your views. This will facilitate informed discussion. If you thoughtfully engage the article, you will receive full credit (2) for the assignment. Those that do not thoughtfully engage the article, for example, those that do not provide a clear sense of understanding the reasons that are relevant to their view, but attempt the assignment, will receive half credit (1). Commentaries that do not engage the article at all will not receive credit (0). !
