[SOLVED] Case Study 2: Democracy in Business

PHIL 1317 Business Ethics 1
Case Study 2: Democracy in Business
To receive credit, this assignment must be turned in online under the assignment ‘Case Study 1’
on Canvas (smu.instructure.com). This assignment will constitute 10% of your final grade.
The assignment is DUE by 11:59 PM on Saturday, April 9.
INSTRUCTIONS:
– LENGTH: Your paper should be between 750 and 900 words. (You will lose 10% of your
paper grade for each 10 words outside of this range, up to 100% max, so edit ruthlessly.)
Do not pad your word count with repetition or lengthy quotations. Bibliographic
information such as a ‘Works Cited’ page does not count toward the word limit.
– CONTENT: A good paper will:
o address all of the tasks that the main assignment (on the next page) asks you to—
no more, no less. Don’t write less than you need to fully explain your answers, but
don’t write more than you need to in order to pad out a section.
o draw explicitly on course readings and lecture notes to complete the assignment
in a way that demonstrates a thorough understanding of the material and goes
beyond what someone who had not taken the course could easily come up with.
o give clear answers that are well supported and offer reasons for those answers
that are fully explained. You won’t be graded on which policies you defend, but on
your ability to clearly and explicitly articulate compelling reasons for your position.
– STYLE: Write in way that is clear, simple, grammatical, and easy to understand. (A good
test is to have someone not in the class read the paper to see if they can understand it
completely.) Explain complex ideas and define all jargon. Assume your reader is naïve,
and that any authors you engage with are neither stupid nor evil. Finally, using the firstperson voice is often both appropriate and necessary in order to state your own view;
avoiding it is a silly prejudice that can lead to awkward results and unclarity.
– REFERENCES: If you use or consult any sources at all, you must cite them, including titles
and page numbers/URLs. Any sources you consult should be reliable (e.g., academic
journals, reputable news outlets, educational/non-profit sources). If you aren’t sure
about a source or citation, ask me about it before submitting your paper. You may use
any established style of citation that you like, but you must use it consistently.
– PLAGIARISM: Your paper must be your own original work in its entirety. Both the
receiving and the giving of unauthorized help constitute cheating. If you rely on outside
sources of any type (e.g., readings or notes or tutors or sample essays or even your own
past work from this or any other class), you must include a citation. Direct quotations of
any length must be in quotation marks. For more details on the course and university
policies regarding academic integrity, see the syllabus and the Student Handbook.
PHIL 1317 Business Ethics 2
MAIN ASSIGNMENT: First, read Case 31, “Democracy in Business: The Mondragon Workers
Cooperative” by Tom McNamara, Cyrlene Classen, and Irena Descubes (available as a PDF on
Canvas). Then, complete each of the following tasks:
– Task 1 (Introduction): State your thesis and explain how your paper will be laid out. Very
briefly preview the contents of your paper, laying out clearly for the reader the basic
structure and organization of your paper, along with its key claims, in order to allow the
reader to see where you are headed and to easily follow your line of reasoning
throughout. Be up front and explicit; there should be no big surprises for the reader later
in the paper. (If you are unsure how to begin, you may consider writing this section after
you have already written the later sections of the paper and completed Tasks 2 and 3.)
– Task 2 (Setup): Present the morally relevant facts of the situation. Briefly describe the
overall structure of Mondragon and the economic and organizational challenges it
currently faces, drawing on the case study text but focusing on only the most important
and morally relevant facts of the case. Your aim should be to allow a reader who has not
read the case study to understand what you are talking about, including any key facts or
ideas you reference in later parts of the paper. (Be brief; this should not be the longest
section of your paper.)
– Task 3 (Analysis): Analyze the case by applying ethical concepts from class. Imagine that
you are a consultant to Mondragon. Your task is a lay out a list of action steps that the
management of Mondragon can take in order to avoid the twin pitfalls of what is known
as the “degeneration thesis” (discussed in the case study). In short, you should propose
clear steps that Mondragon can take to adhere to its core principles of worker ownership
and democracy, while at the same time finding strategies that will allow it to meet the
economic challenges it currently faces. For this task, you should lay out a clear set of
proposals. Do not, however, simply provide a bare list of proposals. Rather, for each
proposal, you must walk the reader through what the proposal involves and how you
decided on each proposal, clearly elaborating the reasons that support its adoption—in
particular how each proposal helps it meet its current challenges while upholding the core
values of the company. Throughout, you should avoid relying on any unstated or
unsupported assumptions. You must also explain or provide definitions for any jargon,
acronyms, or technical terms that you use; don’t assume your reader knows what you
referring to unless you have already explained it in a way that is easy to understand. An
excellent essay will accomplish this task while drawing on and making explicit use of and
connections to ideas and examples from course readings, videos, and/or lectures. (This
will likely be the longest section of your paper, so it may make sense to use more than
one paragraph for this section, but this will depend on its length and content, so use your
best judgment.)