Ethical Issues in the 21st Century

Ethical Issues in the 21st Century is Week 1's substantive graded discussion, tagged to Weekly Learning Outcomes 3 and 4 and Course Learning Outcomes 1 through 4, worth 6% of the course grade — the week's real academic work, distinct from the low-stakes Post Your Introduction forum due Day 1. The forum asks you to find your own scholarly or credible article about a current ethical issue in business, then use it to describe how the dilemma affects both organizations and society, and evaluate what changes could have prevented it. This guide restates the prompt, maps each requirement to Chapters 1 and 2, walks through choosing a strong article, plans the 300-word post, and closes with a sample post and a plan for the peer replies. Use it alongside the Week 1 Overview guide and the Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 deep-dive guides for full vocabulary and glossary coverage.

The Prompt, Restated

Prior to posting, review Chapters 1 and 2 and the three required articles: Liautaud (2021) on setting up an ethics advisory board, Butcher (2019) on the Business Roundtable's redefinition of corporate purpose, and Butcher (2023) on corporate citizenship. Then select a scholarly or credible article on a 21st century ethical issue — the Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources table and the Database Search Tips and How to Use Library OneSearch resources offer guidance. If unsure whether a source qualifies, ask your instructor, who has final say. Your initial post must accomplish two things.

• Directive 1 — Effects on organizations and society. Describe how an ethical dilemma — the one raised in your selected article — can affect both organizations and society.
• Directive 2 — Prevention. Evaluate what changes could have been made to prevent this ethical dilemma.

You must support your research with 2 additional scholarly resources beyond your selected article and the course textbook, all cited and referenced in APA Style — see the APA: Citing Within Your Paper and APA: Formatting Your References List resources linked from the forum. Your initial post must be a minimum of 300 words. The guided response requires you to respond to at least two classmates in a minimum of 150 words each by Day 7, taking on the role of organizational leader and offering additional suggestions for preventing the dilemma.

Chapter 1 opens with Wendel Torres, the construction-company CEO who told a friend, "Don't worry about it," about $3,500 in landscaping materials, and was later convicted of providing illegal gratuities to a public official because the friend worked in a government-contractor relationship with Torres's company. The case shows an ethical lapse rarely announces itself as one, and a single unexamined decision can carry consequences that outlast the decision itself. Apply that same lens to the dilemma you select.

2.1 Ethical Lapse and the Cost of Getting It Wrong

An ethical lapse is a short-term or temporary deviance from normal standards of conduct — but Chapter 1 stresses that even a temporary lapse can produce long-term costs. Figure 1.2 maps the business costs of ethical failures: fines for noncompliance at a minimum, then audit and legal expenses, and at the far end a loss of reputation that erodes customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, and investor confidence. Chapter 1 supplies ready-made examples: Wells Fargo's fraudulent-account scandal cost a $3 billion settlement; SAP agreed to $200 million for bribery across seven countries; Alcoa paid $384 million after a consultant bribed Bahraini officials. Whatever dilemma you choose, describe organizational effects using this same cost structure — direct financial exposure plus reputational damage — rather than a vague claim that misconduct is "bad for business."

2.2 Trust, Reputation, and the Societal Half of the Question

The prompt's "and society" half of Directive 1 is where the Edelman Trust Barometer becomes useful. Chapter 1 reports that the 2024 Barometer found business the most trusted institution globally at 63%, ahead of NGOs, government, and media — yet 61% of respondents believe business leaders are purposely trying to mislead people. That tension is the societal stake in most 21st-century dilemmas: a single company's misconduct erodes public trust in business generally, the way Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Andersen damaged public perception of the entire financial-services and accounting industries, not just the three companies involved.

2.3 The Compliance-Versus-Ethics Distinction

Chapter 1 draws a sharp line between a compliance approach — is it legal? — and a genuine ethics approach — is it right? A dilemma is often strongest when it falls into the gray area the chapter describes, where laws are lacking and the right thing to do is unclear. The Ethical Dilemma video's Max scenario is the textbook illustration: his factory's byproduct violates no anti-pollution law, yet residents near the river report illnesses. "Even though the byproduct does not violate any laws, what should they do?" If your article describes a situation technically legal but ethically contested, naming that gap explicitly strengthens your post.

2.4 The Four Dimensions of an Ethical Business — Your Menu for Directive 2

Directive 2 asks you to evaluate what changes could have prevented the dilemma. Rather than inventing a generic answer, reach for Chapter 1's four dimensions of an effective ethics and compliance program, since each names a concrete lever an organization can pull.

This table is a menu, not a checklist to exhaust — a strong 300-word post typically develops one or two dimensions in real depth rather than naming all four in passing.

Chapter 2 sharpens what "affects society" can mean by supplying the stakeholder vocabulary: a stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect or is affected by a company's activities, distinguished into primary stakeholders (customers, employees, suppliers, investors) and the broader public. A strong post names which specific stakeholder groups were harmed — employees pressured by sales quotas, customers whose accounts were opened without authorization, residents reporting illness — rather than gesturing at "society" as an undifferentiated mass.

The Compliance-Versus-CSR Distinction, Applied

Chapter 2 also distinguishes business ethics (preventing harm) from corporate social responsibility (doing good). Directive 2's prevention question sits on the ethics side of that line — what stops the harm — but note where a company's later CSR response (a public apology, a new initiative) either did or didn't address the underlying failure, since a CSR gesture after the fact does not substitute for having prevented the lapse.

The forum rewards a dilemma that is genuinely contemporary, well-documented, and specific enough to analyze in real depth within 300 words. A strong choice usually names an actual organization and a dated event or ongoing practice, not a category of misconduct in the abstract.

Where to Look

• Business Insights (Gale), EBSCOhost, or ProQuest — the same UAGC Library databases the required articles are drawn from — searched for terms like corporate scandal, data privacy violation, AI ethics, supply chain labor, greenwashing, or executive misconduct plus a recent year.
• A well-documented recent news scandal (a data breach, an AI hiring-bias controversy, a greenwashing settlement, a supply-chain labor exposé) as a starting point, then scholarly analysis of it located through the library rather than relying on the news article alone as one of your required sources.
• The chapter's own named examples — Wells Fargo, SAP, Alcoa, Infosys — as models of scale and specificity, even if you choose a different, more recent example for your own post.

Three hundred words is enough room for a real dilemma, a real effects analysis, and a real prevention argument — but only if the words are budgeted deliberately across both directives plus a source-supported introduction.

• Move 1 — Introduce the dilemma (~75 words). Name the organization, describe the specific action or decision, and cite your selected article. State plainly why this counts as an ethical dilemma rather than a simple legal violation.
• Move 2 — Directive 1: effects (~100 words). Name the direct organizational costs (fines, legal exposure, executive turnover) and the specific stakeholder groups harmed. Cite at least one additional scholarly source here.
• Move 3 — Directive 2: prevention (~100 words). Select one or two of the four dimensions of an ethical business and argue specifically what change, applied earlier, would have prevented the dilemma. Cite your remaining source here.
• Move 4 — References (does not count toward the 300-word minimum). Your selected article, the textbook if directly cited, and your two additional scholarly resources, all in APA Style.

Mechanics That Protect the Grade

• Three outside sources plus the text, all cited in-text and listed in references, APA Style.
• Both directives, not one. Effects and prevention are graded separately; a post that only narrates the scandal is half done.
• Specificity over generality. Name the organization, stakeholder groups, and dimension invoked — don't just restate the chapter's definitions.
• Word count. 300 is a floor; a post that develops both directives with genuine source support usually lands around 320–380 words before references.

The post below is a model, not a submission. It shows how both directives, three outside sources, and APA in-text citations fit inside roughly 340 words, using the Wells Fargo fake-accounts scandal that Chapter 1 itself references. Do not submit this scandal or these exact sentences as your own work — select your own scholarly or credible article on a different 21st-century ethical issue, and write the analysis in your own voice. Copying a model verbatim, even with citations added, is an academic-integrity violation.

References

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (2022). CFPB orders Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion for widespread mismanagement of auto loans, mortgages, and deposit accounts. https://www.consumerfinance.gov/
• Edelman. (2024). 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer. https://www.edelman.com/trust/2024/trust-barometer
• Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2013). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases (9th ed.). South-Western Cengage Learning.
• Gonzalez-Padron, T. (2025). Business ethics and social responsibility for managers (2nd ed.). University of Arizona Global Campus.
• Lilly, S., Foster, K., & Alexander, R. (2021). Wells Fargo's fake account scandal: A wake-up call for corporate compliance. Journal of Business Case Studies, 17(1), 1–8.
• [Replace with your own selected article and two additional scholarly resources if you choose a different ethical issue.]

Body of post: approximately 335 words (excludes reference list) — above the 300-word minimum, with the selected article, two additional scholarly sources, and the course text all cited. Replace the illustrative scandal with your own researched, cited dilemma before submitting.

The guided response asks you to review several classmates' posts and respond to at least two of them in a minimum of 150 words each, by 11:59 p.m. on Day 7. The prompt specifically frames this as a role: take on the perspective of an organizational leader and, based on your classmate's evaluation of their chosen dilemma, give advice on additional suggestions for changes to prevent it.

A Structure That Earns the Points

• Acknowledge the specific dilemma. Name the organization and the ethical issue your classmate analyzed, showing you engaged with their actual example rather than replying generically.
• Adopt the leader's voice explicitly. Write as if you are the organizational leader responsible for preventing a recurrence — first person, decision-oriented, not a third-person restatement of their post.
• Add a genuinely new prevention suggestion. Bring in a dimension of an ethical business, a stakeholder-engagement mechanism, or a related concept from Chapter 1 or 2 that your classmate's post did not already cover — extend their analysis rather than repeating it.
• Support the suggestion with a source. Draw on the week's readings or your own research to back the additional suggestion, since the guided response is graded in part on substance, not just tone.

• Choosing a topic instead of a dilemma. "Corporate fraud is unethical" is a topic; a named company, a specific decision, and identifiable harmed parties is a dilemma. The prompt wants the latter.
• Fewer than three outside sources. The prompt requires the selected article plus 2 additional scholarly resources, beyond the course textbook — a post citing only one or two total sources is under-researched.
• Describing the dilemma without evaluating prevention. Directive 2 is graded separately from Directive 1 — a post that only narrates what happened, without a specific argument for what change would have stopped it, is half the assignment.
• Vague prevention arguments. "The company should have had better ethics" restates the problem rather than proposing a lever. Name a specific dimension (top management commitment, ethical culture, stakeholder engagement, functional integration) and a specific mechanism.
• Treating the reply as agreement. A reply that only praises a classmate's choice of topic, without adopting the leader's-advice framing the prompt requests, will not satisfy the guided response's substantive-engagement requirement.
• Missing APA formatting. In-text citations and a matching reference list are both required — a source mentioned in prose but not formally cited, or cited but missing from references, is an easy and avoidable deduction.