BADM 304 Business Ethics

Using an organized approach in analyzing a case will make the entire process easier and can increase your learning benefits.

1. Read the case thoroughly. To understand fully what is happening in a case, it is necessary to read the case carefully and thoroughly. You may want to read the case rather quickly the first time to get an overview of the industry, the company, the people, and the situation. Read the case again more slowly, making notes as you go.

When you are doing the detailed reading of the case study, look for the following:

a) Opening paragraph: introduces the situation.

b) Background information: industry, organization, products, history, competition, financial information, and anything else of significance.

c) Specific (functional) area of interest: marketing, finance, operations, human resources, or integrated.

d) The specific ethical problem: or decision(s) to be made.

e) Alternatives to address (not solve): what may or may not be stated in the case.

f) Conclusion: discusses any constraints or limitations, and the urgency of the situation.

2. Define the central issue and state the problem. Many cases will involve several issues or problems. Identify the most important problems and separate them from the more trivial issues. After identifying what appears to be a major underlying issue, examine related problems in the functional areas (for example, marketing, finance, personnel, and so on). Functional area problems may help you identify deep-rooted problems that are the responsibility of top management.

a) What appears to be the problem(s) here?

b) How do I know that this is a problem? Note that by asking this question, you will be helping to differentiate the symptoms of the problem from the problem itself. Example: while declining sales or unhappy employees are a problem to most companies, they are in fact, symptoms of underlying problems which need to be addressed.

c) What are the immediate issues that need to be addressed? This helps to differentiate between issues that can be resolved within the context of the case, and those bigger issues that need to be addressed at another time (preferably by someone else!).

d) Differentiate between importance and urgency for the issues identified. Some issues may appear to be urgent, but upon closer examination are relatively unimportant, while others may be far more important (relative to solving our problem) than urgent. You want to deal with important issues in order of urgency to keep focused on your objective. Important issues are those that have a significant effect on:

i. profitability,

ii. strategic direction of the company,

iii. source of competitive advantage,

iv. morale of the company's employees, and/or

v. customer satisfaction.

3. Analyze case data. In analyzing the case data, you are trying to answer the following:

a) Why or how did these issues arise? You are trying to determine cause and effect for the problems identified. You cannot solve a problem that you cannot determine the cause of! It may be helpful to think of the organization in question as consisting of the following components:

i. resources, such as materials, equipment, or supplies, and

ii. people who transform these resources using

iii. processes, which create something of greater value.

b) Now, where are the problems being caused within this framework, and why?

c) Who is affected most by this issues? You are trying to identify who are the relevant stakeholders to the situation, and who will be affected by the decisions to be made.

d) What are the constraints and opportunities implicit to this situation? It is very rare that resources are not a constraint, and allocations must be made on the assumption that not enough will be available to please everyone.

e) What do the numbers tell you? You need to take a look at the numbers given in the case study and make a judgment as to their relevance to the problem identified. Not all numbers will be immediately useful or relevant, but you need to be careful not to overlook anything. When deciding to analyze numbers, keep in mind why you are doing it, and what you intend to do with the result. Use common sense and comparisons to industry standards when making judgments as to the meaning of your answers to avoid jumping to conclusions.

4. Identify/generate alternatives. The list should involve all the relevant alternatives that could solve the problem(s) that were identified in step 2. Use your creativity in coming up with alternative solutions. Even when solutions are suggested in the case, you may be able to suggest better solutions.

Things to remember at this stage are:

a) Be realistic! While you might be able to find a dozen alternatives, keep in mind that they should be realistic and fit within the constraints of the situation.

b) Not making a decision pending further investigation is not an acceptable decision for any case study that you will analyze. A manager can always delay making a decision to gather more information, which is not managing at all! The whole point to this exercise is to learn how to make good decisions, and having imperfect information is normal for most business decisions, not the exception.

c) Doing nothing as in not changing your strategy can be a viable alternative, provided it is being recommended for the correct reasons.

d) Keep in mind that any alternative chosen will need to be implemented at some point, and if serious obstacles exist to successfully doing this, then you are the one who will look bad for suggesting it.

Once the alternatives have been identified, a method of evaluating them and selecting the most appropriate one needs to be used to arrive at a decision.

5. Select the best alternative. Evaluate each alternative in light of the available information. If you have carefully taken the proceeding steps, a good solution to the case should be apparent. Resist the temptation to jump to this step early in the case analysis. You will probably miss important facts, misunderstand the problem, or skip what may be the best alternative solution. You will also need to explain the logic you used to choose one alternative and reject the others.

6. Evaluation of Alternatives 

If you have done the above properly, this should be straightforward. You measure the alternatives against each key decision criteria. Often you can set up a simple table with key decision criteria as columns and alternatives as rows, and write this section based on the table. Each alternative must be compared to each criteria and its suitability ranked in some way, such as met/not met, or in relation to the other alternatives, such as better than, or highest. This will be important to selecting an alternative. Another method that can be used is to list the advantages and disadvantages (pros/cons) of each alternative, and then discussing the short and long term implications of choosing each. Note that this implies that you have already predicted the most likely outcome of each of the alternatives. Some students find it helpful to consider three different levels of outcome, such as best, worst, and most likely, as another way of evaluating alternatives.

Develop/recommend an implementation plan. The final step in the analysis is to develop a plan for effective implementation of yo