Research-Based Ethics Essay Proposal (Due: Sun, 2/3 by email*) – Directions

The purpose of the topic proposal is to open up lines of discussion between you and me. This proposal gives you an opportunity to outline your argument and ideas for your 5 page essay, and it gives me the chance to respond to your ideas, advise you of potential problems you face, and give you ideas.

This assignment is due by 1:00 P.M. on Sunday, February 3. You may turn in this assignment early, as soon as you have it ready, and I will get my feedback to you that much sooner.

*Assignment should be submitted via e-mail as an attachment. Please be sure that your file is saved as a .doc/.docx (Microsoft Word format) or a .rtf (rich text format) file. I will use the comments feature in Microsoft Word and return your proposals to you via e-mail. The proposal gives you an opportunity to spell out your ideas before you begin your rough draft, and it gives me a chance to provide you with any kind of feedback that I deem useful to you.

Directions: Your proposal will be approximately 1 page single-spaced and consist of three paragraphs that contain the following information.

In the first paragraph, identify the ethical system that you’re applying to the work in your essay. The way you define ethics–based on both your own ideas and the definitions and examples that you find–will influence the way you write about the situation. As the assignment sheet suggests, you should choose a specific ethical framework (shareholder theory, stakeholder theory, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, environmental ethics, and so on) to set up your analysis. Explain why you have chosen the specific ethical system (or combination of ethical systems) that will use in the essay.

The second paragraph should summarize the specific situation within the play or film that you will discuss. Describe why you picked this situation and how it represents an ethical dilemma. Point to specific parts of the play where this situation stands out. Also, in this paragraph, give your working thesis statement; what is your argument? As you work on the essay, you may decide to revise your thesis; in fact, you should probably revise your thesis to address complexities that come up in your research. Chapter 5 of Business Writing and pages 289-90 of The St. Martin’s Handbook provide you with some useful advice on writing thesis statements.

In your final paragraph, write two specific questions you have about this assignment. I will respond to your questions the best I can. Please do not ask questions such as “What do I need to do to get an A on this project?”; instead, your questions should be about content or structure: “How can I represent another side of this argument?” or “Where in my essay should I present opposing viewpoints to my own?”

Evaluation: Like other homework assignments, your proposal will be graded on a check-plus, check, check-minus, no credit scale.

Character Profile Assignment (Due: Tues, 1/29) – Directions

Context: For your larger ethics unit project, you will be analyzing a specific ethical dilemma in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and outlining an appropriate ethical response to this dilemma. This homework assignment should help you do some of the preparatory work for your larger essay.

Directions: Choose an important character from An Enemy of the People and write a one page (single-spaced) profile of this specific character. You can organize your profile in the manner that serves you best, but the following questions may help develop your profile:

• With which character(s) is your character in conflict?
• What are some of the key scenes where your character acts in particularly ethical or unethical ways?
• What seems to motivate this specific character?
• What sacrifices is this character willing to make in order to get what he or she wants?
• How does this specific character change over the course of the play? What factors motivate the changes in this character?

Feel free to move beyond these questions. Develop your profile with specific examples and incidents from the play’s text; be sure to reference your use of these examples (quotations, paraphrases, etc.) in MLA, APA, or Chicago style.

If you have questions about this assignment, email me.

Relevance Memo (Due: Tues, 1/22) – Directions

Assignment Scenario: Due to complaints about ethics in your department, your supervisor has asked you to lead a meeting on business ethics; moreover, she has asked you to have all of your employees read George Bragues’s “Business is One Thing, Ethics is Another: Revisiting Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees.”

As your departmental meeting approaches, you receive many complaints from employees who don’t understand why you’re having them read this journal article; therefore, you are going to write a memo, addressed to the employees of your department (make that part up) that explains the relevance and importance of Bragues’s article.  In your memo, you want to stress what you find to be the most important aspects of the article: What information, in this article, is useful to your department? Furthermore, you will probably want to reference some specific passages in the article (with quotations, paraphrases, and appropriate page references) that will help illustrate to your employees the points you want to make.

Assignment Details: The goal here is for you to communicate clearly and directly in the form of a memo. Your assignment should be set up as a memo (see pages 891-92 of The St. Martin’s Handbook, 6th edition for more information on this mode of writing). Your memo should highlight key points from Bragues’s article and be written in a focused and cohesive manner. Finally, your memo should be no longer than 1 page single-spaced; you have a limited amount of space to work with here, so be selective in what information you want to include.

Email me if you have questions.

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