Week 2 Overview — Ethics Issues and Compliance Drivers

Week 2 sets up a distinction that runs through the rest of the course: ethics and compliance are related but not identical. Compliance is what the law requires; ethics is what a company chooses to hold itself to beyond the law. Chapter 3 gives you the vocabulary and tools to spot an ethical issue before it becomes a scandal, walking through the recurring categories of workplace misconduct — misuse of company resources, dishonest treatment of stakeholders, and employee workplace issues. Chapter 4 zooms out to the systems that push organizations toward ethical conduct in the first place: mandatory laws and regulations on one hand, and voluntary self-regulation — industry codes, sentencing guidelines, global ethics standards — on the other. The Canvas Overview page frames the week around a single scenario: as part of an executive team expanding into a foreign market, you must comply with mandatory anti-bribery law while also demonstrating a broader commitment to ethics through self-regulative initiatives.

Both deliverables this week ask you to hold that same distinction in your hands. The discussion forum asks you to compare ethics and compliance directly and decide which kind of officer — ethics or compliance — would better serve an organization you know. The assignment asks you to design a training presentation that teaches both concepts to employees, forcing you to explain the difference in terms a non-expert audience can use immediately.

Overview Table of Deliverables

The table below reproduces the Week 2 Overview page's deliverable table exactly. Two assessments carry weight this week, totaling 17% of the course grade — nearly double the discussion forum's weight goes to the written assignment.

The Canvas Overview page lists four Weekly Learning Outcomes (WLOs) this week. They are reproduced verbatim below, each followed by a note on what it actually requires of you and where in the week it is assessed.

Read the four outcomes as building on each other. WLO 1 and WLO 3 are conceptual — they ask you to understand the ethics-versus-compliance distinction and where it comes from. WLO 2 and WLO 4 are applied — they ask you to turn that understanding into something usable, a training program grounded in real legal requirements. The discussion forum leans on WLOs 1 and 3; the assignment leans on WLOs 2 and 4, though in practice a strong discussion post is already rehearsing the applied thinking the assignment will demand.

The required text remains Gonzalez-Padron, T. (2025). Business Ethics and Social Responsibility for Managers (2nd ed.). University of Arizona Global Campus, available through the Constellation website. Week 2 assigns two chapters.

For a full walk-through of each chapter's frameworks, key terms, and closing questions, see the dedicated Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 deep-dive study guides on this site — this overview does not repeat that material, only where it lands in the week's work.

3.1 Articles Supporting the Discussion Forum

The Week 2 Resources page assigns four articles for the discussion forum, each addressing the ethics-versus-compliance distinction from a different angle.

• Harris, A. R. (2019, August). A Case Study in Compliance vs. Ethics. National Defense, 104(789), 3. Clarifies the practical difference between compliance and ethics using a case-study framing — directly useful for the discussion forum's compare-and-contrast directive.
• Watson, A. (2014, February). Ethics vs. Compliance: Do We Really Need to Talk About Both? Inside Counsel. Explains why some organizations staff an ethics officer while others staff a compliance officer, which is exactly the choice the discussion forum asks you to make and defend.
• Kornilovich, E. (2022, March). How Ethics and Compliance Fight Corruption. Strategic Finance, 103(9), 42+. Describes how a comprehensive ethics and compliance program helps a company avoid criminal liability for corrupt conduct, linking the week's two concepts to real legal consequences.
• Geisler, J. (2021, June). Think Beyond 'Compliance': Why Leaders Should Work to Implement a Culture of Ethics. Healthcare Financial Management, 75(5), 44+. Argues that senior management should connect ethical conduct to guiding principles and organizational purpose, not just rule-following — a useful counterpoint if your discussion post argues ethics matters more than compliance in your chosen organization.

3.2 Articles and Webpages Supporting the Assignment

The Resources page assigns one article and two webpages specifically to support the Ethics, Compliance, and Training assignment.

• Hagel, J. (2015, March 1). Ethics, Reputation, and Compliance Gain as Corporate Priorities. Journal of Accountancy. Explains how growing demand for transparency from consumers and stakeholders has pushed ethics and compliance up the corporate priority list, and how reputational risk has intensified with social media. The assignment prompt directly quotes this article — read it closely, since your paper is expected to respond to the exact passage quoted in the assignment instructions.
• MetricStream. (n.d.). 5 Best Practices for a Successful Ethics and Corporate Compliance Program. Explains why every regulated organization needs a strong ethics and corporate compliance program, offering practical structure you can adapt into your training presentation's content section.
• PowerDMS. (2020, December 29). Role of Ethics and Compliance in Corporate Culture. Explains how ethics and compliance function together to build a positive workplace culture — useful for framing your training program's desired outcomes.

3.3 Recommended (Not Required) Articles

The Resources page also lists two Recommended Resources on the ethics-versus-compliance question. Neither is required, but both are efficient supplemental sources if you need a second or third scholarly citation beyond the required readings.

• Bohinská, A. (2019). Compliance Program and Ethics Program: Does an Organization Need Both? Journal of Human Resource Management, XXII(2), 1–9. Describes the difference between a compliance program and an ethics program within a single organization.
• Mullins, K. D. (2023). Compliance Is Good, But a Culture of Ethics Is Better. Journal of Accountancy, 236(1), 15–17. Explores the connection between standards compliance and professional ethics.

Chapter 3 opens with the idea that ethical dilemmas rarely announce themselves — business decisions do not come with a red flag reading "Danger! I'm an ethical issue." The chapter builds a two-fold test for spotting one: a business issue has an ethical dimension when it has the potential to violate a commonly accepted ethical principle or stated business standard, or to inflict significant, undue, inappropriate harm on a stakeholder. From there, the chapter organizes recurring workplace misconduct into three broad categories: misuse of company resources (occupational fraud, stealing, leaking corporate intelligence, insider trading), ethical issues in company–stakeholder relationships (lying, fraud, conflicts of interest, bribery and kickbacks), and employee workplace issues (lying to employees, discrimination, harassment and bullying, health and safety violations, privacy breaches). It closes by acknowledging that recognizing an ethical issue is genuinely hard — profit pressure and personal ambition both tend to obscure the ethical dimension of a decision, and companies need environmental scanning and strategic-planning discipline to catch emerging issues early.

Chapter 4 draws the line the week is built around: mandatory requirements (laws and the regulations that enforce them) versus voluntary initiatives (industry codes, federal sentencing guidelines, global ethics standards) that a company chooses to adopt even though no one can force it to. On the mandatory side, the chapter surveys the major bodies of U.S. business law — antitrust and fair competition (Sherman, Clayton, FTC Acts), bribery and anticorruption (the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act's three provisions and five-element anti-bribery test), corporate governance (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, insider trading law, whistleblower protection), consumer protection (FTC, CPSC, FDA), and environment, health, and safety (EPA, OSHA, EEOC, DOL). On the voluntary side, it covers industry standards (FASB/GAAP, COSO), the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations (FSGO) and its seven-plus-one criteria for an effective ethics and compliance program, and global ethics standards (the UN Global Compact, OECD Guidelines, Caux Round Table Principles, and similar voluntary frameworks). The chapter closes by explaining how companies work with enforcement authorities once an investigation begins, including deferred prosecution and nonprosecution agreements.

Week 2 has two graded deliverables, each with a dedicated study guide that takes the prompt apart in full. The summaries below orient you and point you to the right companion document.

6.1 Discussion Forum — Ethics Versus Compliance

Tagged to WLOs 1 and 3, worth 6%, due Day 3 for the initial post and Day 7 for peer replies. Before posting, review Chapters 3 and 4 and the four required articles on the ethics-versus-compliance distinction. Your initial post must compare the similarities and differences between compliance and ethics, evaluate whether a compliance officer or an ethics officer would be a better fit in your current organization (or one you know well), and support your research with two additional scholarly resources beyond your selected article and the textbook, all cited and referenced in APA Style. The initial post runs 300 words minimum, due Day 3; three peer replies of 150+ words each are due by Day 7, written from the perspective of the organization's leader evaluating the classmate's choice of ethics or compliance. See the Week 2 Discussion Forum Study Guide.

6.2 Assignment — Ethics, Compliance, and Training

Tagged to WLOs 2, 3, and 4, worth 11%, due Day 7. Before writing, review Chapters 3 and 4, the Hagel (2015) article, and the MetricStream and PowerDMS webpages. Working from Hagel's observation that transparency demands have pushed ethics and compliance up the corporate priority list, you design a training presentation on ethics and compliance for an organization of your choosing (McDonald's, Starbucks, ESPN, or any organization you can substantively discuss), describing the information you would include, the training's rationale, strategic plan, content, and desired outcomes. The paper runs 4 to 5 double-spaced pages excluding title and references pages, in APA Style, with at least 4 scholarly sources beyond the course text. See the Week 2 Assignment Study Guide.

Week 2 compresses a fair amount of reading — two full textbook chapters plus six articles and webpages — into a week where the first graded post is due Day 3. Front-loading the reading is not optional; the discussion forum's research requirement (two additional scholarly resources) is hard to satisfy well if you are still reading the assigned articles the night the post is due.

OMM 640 builds from foundational concepts in Week 1 toward the operational machinery of business ethics in Week 2 and beyond. Where Week 1 likely introduced ethical theory and the stakeholder concept in general terms, Week 2 marks the shift into the specific, recurring categories of misconduct a manager will actually encounter (Chapter 3) and the concrete legal and voluntary systems that respond to that misconduct (Chapter 4). The FCPA's anti-bribery provisions, introduced in Chapter 3's coverage of bribery and kickbacks and developed fully in Chapter 4, connect directly to the week's opening scenario about expanding into a foreign market — a thread the course is likely to pick back up whenever later weeks turn to global business ethics.

The vocabulary introduced this week — ethical dimension, occupational fraud, the FCPA's five elements, mandatory versus voluntary compliance, the FSGO's seven criteria — recurs whenever later weeks discuss specific ethical issues (discrimination, environmental responsibility, corporate governance) that are, in effect, worked examples of Chapter 3's and Chapter 4's frameworks applied to a narrower topic. Treat this week's mandatory-versus-voluntary distinction in particular as a reference lens you will keep reaching for, not a one-week topic to clear and forget.

• Treating ethics and compliance as synonyms. Both deliverables depend on holding the distinction precisely — compliance is what the law requires, ethics is what an organization chooses beyond the law — rather than using the two terms interchangeably.
• Skipping the research requirement. The discussion forum specifically requires two additional scholarly resources beyond your selected article and the textbook; a post built only on personal opinion or the textbook alone will fall short.
• Choosing an assignment organization you cannot substantively research. McDonald's, Starbucks, and ESPN are suggested precisely because they are well-documented; a genuinely private or obscure organization may not give you enough public material for 4 scholarly sources.
• Missing the Hagel (2015) quote's framing. The assignment prompt is built around a specific quoted passage about transparency and reputational risk — a paper that ignores this framing and writes generic training-program content misses the assignment's anchor.
• Underestimating the reading load. Two full chapters plus six articles by Day 3 is substantial; starting the reading on Day 2 instead of Day 1 leaves too little time to actually think before writing the discussion post.