Stressed
Project 3: Culture, Climate, and Ethical Decisions
Now that you have reflected on your progress in this course, begin your work on Project 3 by reading the scenario below. Then proceed to Step 1.
The case example provided on the video and described below is designed to set the stage for why you have been asked to examine the culture, climate, and ethics in your own organization. The ethical issue in the hypothetical case below is not the specific ethical issue you will deal with in your work for Project 3. The case example below provides a reason that prompts your organization’s leadership to ask you to do what you have been requested to do for Project 3. Of course, other reasons could also prompt such a request.
The company you will be using to discuss culture, climate and ethics for Project 3 is the company you used in Project 2 or a company that must be approved by your instructor prior to starting work on Project 3. If you do not want to use the name of your organization’s actual leader (CAO, CEO, COO) in this assignment, you may use Kate Lindsay’s name and title.
Case Scenario
The day after you hand in your situation audit, you notice the following headline in the business section of the newspaper: Employees Accused of Stealing from Company. Apparently, a group of employees who worked for a company similar to yours was routinely lying on their expense reports, claiming—and getting reimbursed for—personal expenditures, including Caribbean trips and four-star restaurants.
You nearly spit out your coffee when you read this. You work in the same sector! After completing your situation audit, you feel like you have a good grasp on the mission and values of your company, and you'd be very surprised if such behavior were tolerated. However, this article still makes you wonder about your industry as whole.
Once you get to your office, you discover that you aren't the only one interested in this story; everyone is buzzing about it. You soon receive a message from the COO's assistant stating that the COO, Kate Lindsay, wants to see you this afternoon. Why does Kate want to see you?
As you sit down in Kate’s office, Kate lives up to her reputation for being focused and direct and immediately launches into what she has to say. "You must have heard about the expense report scandal at our competitor's organization. We need to ensure that the same thing is not happening here." She continues, "I came to this organization because I considered it to be among the best—are we?" She begins reciting a list of questions: "How can we be sure what we believe and say matches what we actually do? How can we be sure we don't have a culture and climate that are viewed as unethical and unhealthy? Do we put enough emphasis on ethical and caring behavior in our decisions and our actions?"
She pauses before going on. "I'm new to this position and to this sector in general. I'm clearly responsible and accountable for the climate, culture, and ethical behavior in this organization. We need to be concerned about these issues, and I need your help figuring out where we stand and what, if anything, we should be doing differently." Your help? What does she need? You look at her expectantly.
She answers your implied question, "I read your organizational analysis last night, and given your impressive work on that, think you could handle this particular task. I'm an engineer by training and I'm methodical, thorough, and detailed," Kate says. "This report needs to reflect my—and, more importantly, this organization's—careful and thoughtful approach to these issues. So even though organizational culture, climate, and ethics may seem like soft issues, I expect strong critical thinking and an evidence-based report. I don't just want opinions. It might help to imagine yourself as an independent consultant we are counting on for both expertise and objectivity."
She glances at her phone. "I have a meeting in two minutes." She stands up. "I really need your best thinking and good advice on this in three weeks. Talk to my assistant about making an appointment to see me then, and have a 15-minute PowerPoint presentation ready along with a brief memo summarizing your points," she says. "Also, I trust you understand this is a matter that needs to be kept between us." She looks at you squarely. "I don't want to learn my questions and concerns have become the subject of general discussions in the office."
"Absolutely!" you say as Kate heads out of her office. "Oh,” she says, turning around, “and I want to see some of your work in progress as you do this project. Talk to my assistant about that as well."
You return to your desk thrilled that the COO has shared her concerns and asked you for your input. You have so many ideas and lots of questions—but you also realize you are going to need to proceed without all the information you would ideally have. You know you will need to rely only on publicly available information and not poke around in confidential work files or ask others in your office for input or advice.
How will you tackle this project? What evidence will you use to inform your understanding and strengthen your analysis? What will you tell Kate when you meet with her?
When you submit your project, your work will be evaluated using the competencies listed below. You can use the list below to self-check your work before submission.
· 1.3: Provide sufficient, correctly cited support that substantiates the writer’s ideas.
· 1.6: Follow conventions of Standard Written English.
· 2.1: Identify and clearly explain the issue, question, or problem under critical consideration.
· 2.2: Locate and access sufficient information to investigate the issue or problem.
· 2.3: Evaluate the information in a logical and organized manner to determine its value and relevance to the problem.
· 2.4: Consider and analyze information in context to the issue or problem.
· 2.5: Develop well-reasoned ideas, conclusions or decisions, checking them against relevant criteria and benchmarks.
· 5.1: Develop constructive resolutions for ethical dilemmas based on application of ethical theories, principles and models.
· 9.3: Apply the principles of employment law for ethical practices and risk mitigation.
· Step 1:
First, review the following resources:
· description of the final deliverable
· instructions on how to create a narrated PowerPoint presentation
· remaining steps to completion for this project
After you have a good idea of the scope of work for this project, consider how you will approach an analysis of your own organization:
· First, review these brief guidelines about conducting research on your organization.
· Discuss with your instructor any limiting factors you may encounter as you write this report. After you've discussed these issues with your instructor, if you believe it's best for you to research an organization other than your own, please read the guidelines about using an outside organization.
As you plan to complete this project, consider the following aspects of the work:
· the information you need
· how to get that information
· allocating appropriate time to each step
· other project management factors that may seem relevant
Project 3 Final Deliverable: Culture, Climate, and Ethical Decisions
Create a seven- to eight-slide narrated PowerPoint presentation. Include a cover page and reference section (these are not included in the length requirement) and write a two- to three-page memo to the COO (CAO, CEO, or comparable leader) that highlights the main points of your project’s findings. Include your notes for each slide in the note section of your presentation for each slide. The presentation and memo must both include proper in-text citations and a references section in APA format. In designing your presentation, refer to the guide on creating a narrated PowerPoint presentation. The memo and narrated PowerPoint are submitted in the last step.
Consider the following among the key things your presentation will need to address:
· Define concepts—Define organizational culture, climate, and ethical decisions and practices. Use the academic sources embedded in the steps or other resources of like quality, written by authoritative sources.
· Identify consequences—Describe the likely consequences of these concepts for an organization’s operations. See sample questions below.
· Describe culture and climate—Describe and differentiate between the current organizational culture and climate of your organization. See sample questions below.
· Describe approach to ethical decisions and practices—Think about the meaning of ethics and how they are applied in your organization. Does your leadership model them? Are employees placed in uncomfortable situations? How are ethics communicated?
· Assess implications for organization—Assess the implications of the above issues for your organization. For example, what does it mean to your organization’s practices that the organization has the type of culture, climate, and ethics you identified?
· Recommend actions—Recommend actions your COO (CAO, CEO, or comparable leader) should consider implementing to facilitate a shift in the organization’s culture, climate, and ethics to ensure desired or improved outcomes for your organization such as meeting its mission and values. If you don’t see a need for any changes, why?
Use these sample questions to guide your work:
· What is organizational culture? How do authorities on culture define it? How does it relate to my organization? How would I describe the culture of my organization? Does the culture need to be changed? How can that be accomplished? If not, why not?
· What is organizational climate? How do authorities define climate? Do people enjoy working here? If so, why? If not, why not? Are our motivation, evaluation and reward system perceived as fair and equitable? What effect do such measures have on climate? Do we do climate surveys? What do they indicate as key concerns? Should we measure climate? How?
· What are organizational ethics? How do authorities define ethics? How does my organization enforce ethics? Do we have fair employment practices? Are we provided clear ethical guidelines? Do we receive ethics training? How do we measure compliance? Do our leaders shape ethical decision making or not? Do we ask or imply certain marginal practices are okay? Any past scandals? How were they dealt with? What steps have been or need to be taken to eliminate recurrences?
Narrated PowerPoint Presentation
One of the things you will need to be able to do in this course is create a narrated PowerPoint presentation. What that means is that you will be recording an audio track—your spoken voice—for each slide in your presentation. First, here are some general guidelines that should help you with this task. Later in this document you will find specific instructions for various types of hardware and versions of PowerPoint.
As with any project, it is good to begin by creating an outline. This will help you determine how many slides you will need to develop and how much information you will need to present on each slide. It should also help you determine a logical order in which to present your material.
Now you are ready to begin work on your slides and your script. You may find it easiest to create a slide based on your outline and then write the script for that slide. Or you may decide to create all of your slides and then write your full script. Another alternative is to write a full script first and then create your slides.
Here are some recommendations for your slides:
· Keep slides uncluttered by using very brief bullet points—only a few key words each.
· An easy way to make your presentation look more appealing is to use one of the designs provided within PowerPoint.
· Adding images and/or clipart is another good way to add some visual interest to your presentation, but don't overuse these.
· When you are citing your sources of information on a slide, use a small font size so the citations don't detract from the primary points you are making.
· Be sure to proofread carefully: Any errors on a slide will be particularly noticeable because of the relatively small number of words.
· When you record your audio for each slide, a loudspeaker icon will appear in the middle of the slide. You can drag this icon to a better position (often the bottom right corner of the slide) so it doesn't interfere with the bullet points you have included.
Presentation Script
The script for your presentation can be a complete word-for-word documentation of what you intend to say as each slide is displayed, or it can be a much briefer set of notes that you will use as a reminder while you are recording to ensure that you cover all the points you intend to make. The latter approach is preferable, because this makes it less likely that you will sound rushed or overly scripted when you are speaking. Keep in mind that if you were making your presentation in person, you would not want to be reading your comments; instead, you would want to make eye contact with your audience.
Here are some additional recommendations for your script:
· Try to keep the amount of narration to less than two minutes per slide. If you find that you need to say more than that, it is probably a good idea to create another slide so your audience doesn't get bored.
· Make sure your script and what appears on your slide are closely related so your audience can easily follow what you have to say.
· Don't simply read the material on your slide—add value by providing additional information.
Recording the Narration
At this point, you have created and saved your slides as a PowerPoint presentation, and you have your script ready. Now it's time to record your audio.
Here are a few general recommendations before you record:
· If you are using a computer to record, consider using a headset/microphone combination rather than the computer's built-in speakers and microphone. It isn't necessary to spend a lot on a headset/mic (typically $20 or less), and you will be rewarded with better sound quality and less background noise.
· Make sure your headset/mic is installed and working. There are simple programs on both Macs and PCs that allow you to test whether recording is occurring and whether the sound quality is acceptable.
· Choose a quiet location to do your recording so that background noise is minimal.
· When you begin recording, speak clearly and conversationally without rushing.
· Remember that it's easy to redo the audio for a slide. If you're not happy with the way it sounds, you can do it over.
· Once you have completed and narrated your presentation, it is a good idea to email the file to another computer. If you are able to watch and listen to the slide show successfully on the second computer, you will know that the audio files have been successfully embedded in the presentation.
Recording Instructions
For a PC with Windows 7 or Windows 10 and PowerPoint 2010:
1. Open your presentation file in PowerPoint.
2. Click on Slide 1.
3. Click the Insert tab in your menu bar, and then choose Audio (the speaker icon at the far right).
4. When you click on the Audio icon, you should see three options. Choose "Record audio."
5. A new window will open with three recording controls. When you are ready to record, click the red "record" circle. You'll see the "total sound length" counter start to increment so you know how long you've been speaking. When you're finished, click the square "stop" button. If you now click the arrow, you'll be able to hear what you just recorded. And before you close this pop-up box, rename the audio file to something appropriate (e.g., Slide 1 Audio).
6. Now you can follow the same process (steps 2–5) for each of your remaining slides.
7. When you are finished, save the presentation. In fact, you may wish to do this after you record each slide.
8. Now play the full presentation back as a check on both your slides and your narration. To do this, click "Slide Show" in the menu bar at the top, and choose "From beginning."
9. Once you have made any final changes, save the presentation again.
For a PC with PowerPoint 2003:
1. Open your presentation file in PowerPoint.
2. Then in the slide sorter click on your first slide. (There are other ways to do this; this is just the easiest!)
3. Then go to the top of your screen in Microsoft PowerPoint. Go to Slideshow and select that. Scroll down and select Record Narration.
4. Check the microphone level and set the quality (remember that you want the quality to be good enough for your audience to hear, but it's not necessary to choose the top quality because that may make the file unmanageably large).
Warning: Do not click on the option to link the narrations; this will create a separate (not embedded) sound file. When you upload your presentation to the classroom, the sound file will be left behind on your computer.
1. Click OK and begin recording. When you finish with one slide click the left mouse button one time. Continue with your presentation one slide at a time until you are finished.
2. At the end, click Save.
3. Now play back your presentation by going to the Slideshow Menu again and select View > View Show or just press F5. If the show progresses through on its own with sound, you are 95% of the way there. Save the presentation immediately with a new file name to prevent loss.
For a Mac with PowerPoint 2010:
1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint.
2. Click on your first slide.
3. On the menu at the top of your screen, click "Insert."
4. Then choose "Audio: Record Audio."
5. This will pop up a recording window. Make sure your headset microphone, not the computer's internal microphone, is selected as the sound input device.
6. When you're ready to begin recording, click the red record button, and start speaking naturally. When you're finished recording the audio for that slide, press the stop button. "Save" the file.
7. Click on the next slide, and repeat the process.
8. Continue with your remaining slides until you are finished.
9. Do a slideshow of your presentation, listening to ensure that audio is playing back correctly for all slides. If you want to change the audio for one or more slides, just click on the slide and go through the "Insert: Audio: Record Audio" process again. The original audio will be overwritten.
10. When you are done, save the file. You can check the size of the file by choosing the "File" menu at the top, clicking "Properties" at the bottom of the list, and choosing "General."
11. You will need to be mindful of file size, since the audio component of a narrated file on a Mac can be very large. For example, in a 48MB narrated PowerPoint, 44MB might be accounted for by the audio alone. It is possible to upload very large files to LEO discussion areas, but patience will be needed because it is a time-consuming process.
For an iPhone (to record audio only):
1. The Voice Memos app that comes standard on the iPhone can be used to record your voice. Just speak normally as if you are talking on the phone. Do this for each slide.
2. Once you are finished, the app allows you to email the recorded files to yourself.
3. The files are in MPEG4 audio format which can be played on Macs or Windows.
4. Save the emailed audio files on the computer where you have your PowerPoint presentation, being sure to note the files' location.
5. Open the presentation in PowerPoint.
6. Click slide 1, then click "insert," "audio," and "audio from file."
7. Do the same with your remaining slides, matching them up with the emailed audio files.
8. Run the slide show to make sure the audio has been successfully inserted on each slide.
Step 2: Collect and Analyze Resources
Before beginning your research, there are some preliminary readings you should complete to help you develop a broad understanding of the key theories, concepts, and ideas that are relevant for this project:
Keep in mind that you are expected to use and properly cite the course readings and materials provided for that apply to your organization’s culture, climate, and ethics. Of course, the relationship of culture, climate, and ethics specific to your particular organization will need to be researched by you using sources external to the course readings and materials provided.
As you read about each of the key concepts for this project—organizational culture, organizational climate, and organizational ethics—think about the implications for industries and organizations like yours and for their leaders. Jot down ideas and questions you will need to research further to develop the expertise required to successfully complete this project. As previously suggested readings on ethics have highlighted, ethics includes many human resource focus areas: discrimination, hiring, promoting, diversity, and enforcement of a variety of federal statutes.
Once you have completed your reading and library research for this project, apply what you have learned to your organization, looking for these useful resources:
· any publicly available policies and procedures that provide helpful insights into how ethical conduct and desired organizational behaviors are managed
· any nonconfidential sources where your CEO or other leaders may have written or spoken about these topics
Next, proceed to Step 3, where you will conduct independent research.
Organizational Culture
Read Organizational Culture in the Resources section below for an overview of organizational culture. For your own practice as a current or future manager, it is important to develop a good understanding of what organizational culture is, why it is important, how to create a healthy and ethical culture, and how to deal with the challenges that are likely to arise when attempting to change a culture. Also read "Culture as the 800 lb Gorilla in Your Organization” (see Resources section), which offers some thoughts about why this is and will be an important topic for you and your organization.
As you will see in the readings, scholars have been interested in the relationships between types of organizational cultures and the likelihood of excellent organizational performance and employee commitment. You might want to examine whether there is work that focuses on the relationship between types of organizational cultures and the likelihood of ethical behaviors. One source for useful work on this topic is the Journal of Business Ethics. You can go to the UMGC Library website and use the OneSearch functionality to search for this journal. You can then search within the journal for organizational culture and then further refine your search depending upon your situation and specific interests.
Aside from the research performed on the organization you are using to complete Project 3, keep in mind that students are expected to integrate the course materials and sources from within the steps into the analysis of their organization. Accordingly, it is recommended that the annotations requested in Step 4 and the PowerPoint and memo requested in Step 5 use the course materials and sources provided in Project 3’s steps
Organizational Climate
Read the Dickson & Mitchelson (2007) article on organizational climate from the Resources section below. As you can see from this article, there is debate about exactly what organizational climate is and how to best differentiate among different types of climates. Organizational climate has been defined several ways. The reseachers Reichers and Schneider have defined it as "shared perceptions of organizational policies, practices, and procedures, both formal and informal" (Vardi, 2001). Ostroff, Kinicki, and Muhammad (2012) distinguish between psychological and organizational climate, explaining that the latter requires agreement by employees about their perceptions of the work environment. Describing an organization's climate requires an understanding of employees' shared perceptions of what people are feeling and thinking about work and the workplace. In other words, while culture is about "the way things are done around here," climate is simply "the way things are around here” (Vardi, 2001, p. 327).
Many factors contribute to climate, including the following:
· managerial and leadership styles, approaches to decision making, and methods of communicating
· relationships among employees at the group and organizational levels
· leader and manager attitudes about what employees can and should do
· attitudes about how customers should be served
Evidence that climate is perceived as relatively important, even if many find it difficult to put into words, explains why it is fairly common for organizations to ask their employees to complete a climate survey (sometimes also referred to as a general satisfaction survey). Sometimes, this request happens when organizations are experiencing conflict and leaders are under pressure to figure out what is wrong and make needed changes (a reactive approach). There are also organizations that make it a practice to conduct a climate survey on a regular basis and then use the information gathered to help identify areas of strength and those needing improvement (a proactive approach).
One type of organizational climate, sociomoral climate (SMC), shifts the focus away from traditional means of encouraging or requiring ethical conduct (for example, use of codes or penalties for misconduct) to one that emphasizes the importance of creating a workplace environment where employees want to do the right thing (Pircher Verdorfer, Steinheider, & Burkus, 2014). You might have heard people in some organizations referring to having to deal with a "climate of fear," meaning that people may be afraid to speak up and share what they are thinking or feeling because they worry about retaliation. The idea behind SMC is to seek to eliminate fear-based climates and instead create ones that emphasize care, respect, trust, and a shared commitment to ethical decisions and behaviors.
Finally, you will almost inevitably discover multiple climates in your organization, and they might not be aligned or mutually supportive. Imagine, for example, an organization where those in senior leadership positions have a shared perception that employees are generally happy, feel respected and valued, understand what is happening and why, and are completely or mostly on board with upcoming changes. Now shift to elsewhere in the same organization where you find a shared perception that leaders have absolutely no idea what they are doing, do not care about employees, and cause employees to feel confused and anxious about changes they have heard about through the grapevine. If we use climate in the natural environment as an analogy, in one group everything is sunny and beautiful, but just a little distance away, a storm is looming. Recognizing that you are likely to find multiple climates within an organization is good, but this problem adds to the complexity of figuring out how to create a situation where a commitment to ethical decisions and behavior is both a shared perception and a reality.
Business Ethics
Weber (2008) offers a practical seven-step framework for ethical decision making. His illustrative example of a plant closing and layoff decision is helpful in understanding how this framework may be applied when confronted with an ethical dilemma for which there is no perfect solution.
The task of creating and nurturing an ethical organizational culture requires leaders and managers to be proactive and strive to reduce the likelihood of ethical misconduct and the need to address an ethical dilemma. As Meinert (2014) writes, this is not a small challenge. Referencing the 2013 National Business Ethics Survey, she reports that "41 percent of US workers said they observed unethical or illegal misconduct on the job." What makes this an even bigger challenge is that managers may be the primary contributors to workplace misconduct, according to Ethics Compliance Initiative president Patricia Harned (Meinert, 2014). In response to this challenge, the Society for Human Resource Professionals (SHRM) Foundation published a book titled Shaping an Ethical Workplace Culture as a complementary resource. The author, Stephen Olson (2013), offers a simple explanation of ethics, provides guidance on how to assess one's workplace culture, identifies the building blocks of an ethical workplace, and describes three types of cultures typically found in organization—those focused on compliance, those that adopt a positive perspective toward ethics, and those that qualify as virtuous (i.e., those pursuing the "highest standards and levels of compliance").
Treviño (2008), one of the leading scholarly contributors to the work on ethical culture and climate, emphasizes the importance of integration between an organization's formal and informal systems and processes. She defines ethical culture as a "subset of the overall organizational culture that represents the interplay of multiple formal and informal cultural systems that either work together or at cross-purposes to support ethical or unethical conduct." Formal systems consist of ethics codes, ethics training, and specific incorporation of attention to ethics in the organization's decision-making processes and in performance appraisals. Informal systems include leaders and managers modeling behaviors, and shared organizational stories of success in handling difficult ethical situations. Another very simple explanation of an ethical culture and climate is offered by Michael C. Hyter, a senior partner at Korn Ferry: "What it means to me is an environment that makes it easy to do the right thing and makes it difficult to do the wrong thing" (Meinert, 2014, p.3). .
Project 3: Culture, Climate, and Ethical Decisions Step 3: Conduct Independent Research
As you did for the situation audit, adopt the perspective of an outside consultant when working on this report. This will increase your objectivity as you examine your own company.
Independently research the concepts of organizational culture, climate, and ethics. Your independent research should focus on topics relevant to your organization’s specific culture, climate, and ethics (e.g., employee surveys, relevant history, legal compliance, recent scandals, ethical concerns, training practices, organization priorities, pay practices, benefit packages, diversity considerations, advancement opportunities, and so forth).
Determine the consequences of organizational culture, climate, and ethics to your organization's operations. Would legal measures (employment laws) need to be used to reshape the culture, climate, or ethics of the organization? If so, what impact would that have on the workforce?
When you have completed this step, proceed to Step 4 to create an annotated resource list.
Developing a Consultant's Perspective
When examining an organization you know well, one of the challenges is achieving sufficient distance to ensure you are being as objective as possible. It can be helpful to think about what you would expect of an outside consultant if one were hired by your organization. Then imagine yourself in that role, assuming those same responsibilities and needing to meet the same expectations. This is what is meant by developing a consultant’s perspective.
We expect consultants to have the expert knowledge required to address a particular project or task. We also expect and need consultants to be skilled at recognizing how their own experiences, beliefs, and values, as well as those of others, can influence thinking and decisions. When thinking about situations at work, it is typical for us to have ideas about why they are as they are and, sometimes, how they might be made better. When a consultant is brought in to look at the same situation he or she may have some good preliminary ideas thanks to expert knowledge, but will need to conduct a careful investigation before reaching any conclusions or recommendations. This is what you will want to do for this project. In other words, you will need to develop the required expertise and make every effort to ensure your approach, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are sound and supportable.
To achieve sufficient distance it can be helpful to imagine that you are a consultant for another organization that is similar to yours but that you do not know. In addition, actually write down your beginning assumptions, ideas, and possible biases, and then figure out what you can do to avoid being influenced by them. Depending upon the situation, you might imagine what would happen if the organization accepted your initial hunches, analysis, or recommendations and the situation was made worse. In other words, take the time to imagine the harm you might do if your initial ideas are wrong, and then take the necessary steps to limit this possible outcome. Discussing any issues or concerns with your professor is also important.
Step 4: Create an Annotated Resource List
Create an Annotated Bibliography. An Annotated Bibliography is a list of annotated resources. For this step in the project, your Annotated Bibliography will consist of five annotated resources. You will create an annotated resource list of five key articles or sources dealing with culture, climate, and ethics. These five resources may be used in your memo and presentation. Annotating a resource means that the APA cited resource includes an explanatory notation about the resource and a brief critical analysis of its relevance to your topic.
Three of the five annotated resources must come from the course readings provided to you for this project. A project’s resources include all the course materials made available to you, including the links found in Learning Topics, for example, to the detailed sources of information used for further research or as supporting documentation for ideas that appear in a Learning Topic. Students are required to integrate course readings and other materials provided to them into their Project 3 analysis of a specific organization’s culture, climate, and ethics. The other two annotated resources are generated through your independent research, as it pertains to your specific organization’s culture, climate and ethics (e.g., employee surveys, relevant history, legal compliance, recent scandals, ethical concerns, training practices, pay practices, benefit packages, organization priorities, diversity considerations, advancement opportunities, and so forth).
Consult creating an annotated bibliography for a more detailed discussion of selecting and annotating resources. An example annotated resource is provided to view. One of the five annotated references should deal with the impact of employment laws on organizational culture, climate, and ethics.
Keep in mind that the quality of the resources matters in determining the quality of the memo and the quality of the presentation. A well-researched study or article by an acknowledged authority published in a peer-reviewed academic journal is considered primary research. The use of primary research is preferred over using an interpretation of the same academic content that is published in a newspaper column or summarized in a magazine, trade journal, or internet source—even where such secondary sources contain quotes from the original author's work or attribute their interpretation to that material.
When you have completed Step 4, submit your annotated resources list in the dropbox located in the last step of this project for review and feedback. The annotated resource list is considered with the other graded deliverables in determining the overall grade for Project 3. Then proceed to Step 5 to present your final narrated presentation and final memo.
Creating an Annotated Bibliography (Annotated Resource List)
An annotated resource includes the author, title, and other details about each work formatted and alphabetized as they would be in a reference list. In addition, each resource includes a brief description and analysis of the content (typically, about 150 words and double-spaced). An annotation usually includes the following: author expertise/background, an overview of the content, the source's strengths and weaknesses, the author's conclusions, a statement about the relevance of the source to the research topic, a comparison with other content-related studies, and an evaluation of methodology.
An example in APA style appears below the bulleted list in this Learning Topic.
Primary and Secondary Sources
In graduate-level research (and in professional endeavors), students are expected to carefully consider the sources of information for their research topics and choose appropriate sources. The following list places primary sources (original research and books written by experts) at the top of the hierarchy and materials from product and service providers, which are likely to contain bias, at the bottom. Secondary sources including general circulation and specialized publications fall in the middle:
· Peer-reviewed journal articles and primary research (i.e., original studies grounded in an acceptable and valid methodology). Primary research ranks above secondary research (i.e., using the work of others to draw findings, conclusions, and recommendations).
· Books by authors considered reputable in their fields. Scholarly books are supported by the documented research of the author and other scholars.
· Textbooks.
· Specialized publications (e.g., the Wall Street Journal, Fortune). The reader needs to be conscious of the author's point of view (biases).
· Publications that are pitching an approach or selling something, for example, products or consulting services to fix a problem or resolve an organizational issue.
Annotated Resource Example in APA Style
Ardichvili, A., Mitchell, J. A., & Jondle, D. (2009). Characteristics of ethical business cultures. Journal of Business Ethics, 854), 445–451. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-008-9782-4
The authors, all affiliated with reputable institutions of higher learning, have published extensively on the topic of building and sustaining an ethical business culture. This article defines an ethical business culture as one where employees know the difference between right and wrong and can implement ethical decisions where there are differences in options. The role of leadership, sharing stories of strong ethical decisions, providing opportunities to recognize and celebrate the organization's ethical culture, and implementing practices that reinforce ethical behavior are all deemed critical in creating and maintaining an ethical culture.
The article is of value to those seeking best practices in establishing and maintaining an ethical business culture. Despite the fact the findings in the article are neither novel nor supported by quantitative or validated empirical research, the authors do a fine job of summarizing 54 business leader and 13 academics interviews, which provides legitimacy to their claims.