cited references. There is no need to APA cite, just put the appropriate section in parens (). For example, if information from the Resume Fraud section is used, put (Resume Fraud) after the text as the cite. This paper should be original as turn it in wi

Project 3: Leading Ethically and Legally at Home and Abroad Step 1: Perform Ethical Analysis

Vice President Dodger has provided you with the Electropic LLC case file , which details recent events at Electropic LLC, one of Colossal’s technology companies. He has asked you to analyze the legal and ethical aspects of the case. The ethical aspects of the situation seem complex, and you realize that you need a structured way to think through the various resolutions to the case and their implications. You know that there are many different schools of ethical thought and a variety of frameworks or approaches for analyzing ethical problems, but you decide that the best approach to this particular situation is Badaracco's right versus right framework .

You’ll start by working through the right vs. right ethical analysis, considering the various options for action and the winners and losers for each option. What are your recommendations for the best ethical course of action? Be sure to analyze all four questions and all three tests of Badaracco’s framework.

When you've finished analyzing the ethical aspects of this case, continue to the next step, in which you'll consider any legal issues that could affect your decisions.

Electropic LLC

Notice: Contains Confidential Information

Electropic LLC is a respected and profitable website design and hosting company in Colossal Corporation's technology group. Melissa Aldredge has been a project manager at Electropic LLC for several years and was recently considered for promotion to a senior project manager position. Ultimately, the promotion was awarded to another long-term employee, June Pyle. June and Melissa have a history of one-upping each other and sharing an internal rivalry within the company.

Melissa recently reported internally that she had learned that June, who was given the promotion over her, had never finished her MBA degree. All of June's business cards have "MBA" after her name, and the signature line of her email reads "June Pyle, MBA."  

Electropic LLC's policy manual states that potential employees must submit transcripts for all degrees listed on their resumes. However,  this requirement was not in place 10 years ago when June Pyle was hired. June has a history of stellar performance and was promoted not because of her MBA, but because of her consistently exemplary work. June has received excellent performance evaluations during her time at Electropic LLC, and her leadership has led to increased revenue as well as positive press for the company. Her record of success is what led to her promotion.

As a result of Melissa's report, the director of human resources sent an email to all employees who were hired prior to the policy change requiring transcript validation, asking that they provide transcripts to validate their credentials. June did not respond to the director's request for transcripts and was called into the director's office. In a very tense and tearful interview, June confessed to the director that she does not have an MBA. She admitted that she was 12 credits away from completing her degree, but when her dad got sick, she had to drop out. She said that she really needed a job to support her family and she put the MBA on her resume hoping it would help her find a job. She shared that she always intended to go back to school but became so busy with work that she didn’t have time. Once she was hired, she felt that there was no turning back and she had to keep the lie going by placing "MBA" in her email signature line and on her business cards.

An MBA was not a requirement for the assistant project specialist job June was hired for 10 years ago, but four years ago, it was made a requirement for the senior project manager position she holds now. Two of the current senior project managers do not have MBA degrees because they were promoted before this requirement was in place.

Vice President Dodger has asked you to write a memo with your recommendations on how human resources should handle this issue. June has a record of excellence with Electropic LLC, and her superiors would be unhappy to lose her; however, ethical practice and the law must be considered here as well.

Badaracco’s Right vs Right Framework

There are a variety of ethical frameworks that may be used instrumentally to analyze those difficult questions that businesspersons must regularly address. Some ethical issues present clear yes or no answers, a clear right and wrong, but other ethical issues are much more difficult to address.

Professor Joseph Badaracco developed a framework for addressing those more difficult questions, and particularly those questions of "right versus right"; that is, when an ethical dilemma could result in multiple "right" responses, based in attempted adherence to multiple, conflicting ethical values that cannot simultaneously be fulfilled. Badaracco's framework aims to resolve ethical dilemmas involving conflicting yet legitimate moral values.

Step 2: Perform Legal Analysis

As you continue to sift through and consider all the details of the Electropic LLC case, Vice President Dodger reaches out with an important note:

INBOX (1 NEW EMAIL)

From: Kenneth Dodger, Vice President, Colossal Corporation

To: You

Just wanted to remind you that in addition to the ethical aspects of the Electropic LLC situation, there may be legal implications that the human resources department needs to account for before moving forward with any plan of action. To that end, you’ll need to review any relevant information about fraud and employment at will , that might affect what could or should be done about the situation at Electropic LLC.

When you’ve worked through the possible legal implications and arrived at a recommended course of action for Electropic LLC's HR department, it's time to present your analyses, recommendations, and action plan in a report.

Please use your outline and research notes to inform the writing of your report.

That’s all for now. I know this is a tricky case. Thank you for your efforts.

Ken

Résumé Fraud

Fraud, often called misrepresentation, is a very broad legal concept that incorporates a variety of types of fraud and misrepresentation, both civil and criminal. There are considerable variations across the states as to the specific categorization of types of fraud as either civil or criminal law violations, or both. The federal government criminalizes a variety of types of fraud including mail and wire fraud, bankruptcy fraud, and securities fraud. These federal laws apply to everyone in the United States, regardless of the state in which the fraud occurs. Although there is variation as to which explicit types of fraud are criminalized within each state, in all states, some types of fraud unquestionably carry both civil and criminal penalties.

Résumé fraud is a specific type of fraud that may result in civil or criminal penalties, or both, depending on which state the fraud occurs in. In its most primal form, résumé fraud is a type of common law, civil fraud wherein the intentional misrepresentations of material facts are made in a résumé, and justifiably relied upon in the hiring of an individual for employment. In the absence of any statutory provision specifically addressing résumé fraud in a given state, the common law provides the remedy for résumé fraud typically in the form of damages (monetary compensation). However, many states have statutorily imposed sanctions specifically for committing résumé fraud. For example, in New Jersey, both persons and legal entities are prohibited from intending to deceive by falsely representing the receipt of a degree, credential, or certification, which one has not actually acquired "in connection with any business, trade, profession or occupation" (N.J.S.A. 18A:3-15.2). A violation of this provision is treated as a civil law violation, and each instance of résumé fraud carries with it a $1000.00 civil fine (N.J.S.A. 18A:3-15.5). On the other hand, in the state of Kentucky, "fraudulent use of an educational record" is considered a Class A misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to 12 months in jail and fines (KY Rev. Stat. Ann. 434.442). The Kentucky statute explicitly includes making false written representations for certain educational achievements, such as a degree, in employment applications. The states do differ as to how they treat résumé fraud, but whether it is treated as a civil violation or as a criminal violation, résumé fraud is a dishonest practice that should be avoided.

At-will employees should be particularly aware that résumé fraud provides a justifiable basis for termination that may undermine otherwise legitimate arguments for wrongful discharge (or other exceptions to the employment at will doctrine). For contract employees, résumé fraud is often considered "just cause" for termination of an employee who would otherwise be protected from termination by contractual "just cause" provisions. Finally, in addition to the legal consequences of résumé fraud, the reputational damage of lying on a résumé could undermine one’s career prospects as it did for former Yahoo CEO, Scott Thompson, whose résumé represented that he had a double major, including a degree in computer science, from Stonehill College, a degree that was not awarded from until several years after he graduated. After being exposed by a Yahoo shareholder, Thompson stepped down from his position in disgrace (Mackay, 2012).

References

Mackey, M. (2012, May 15). Ex-Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson and seven other cases of resume fraud. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/15/yahoo-ceo-scott-thompsons-resume-fraud_n_1516061.html

Résumé Misrepresentations

Robert Irvine’s Stretched Résumé 

For many job seekers the first—and maybe the only—chance they get to impress a potential employer is a résumé. What are the ethics of presenting your qualifications on a sheet of paper?

Robert Irvine is a muscled chef from England who you may have seen hosting the Food Network’s popular Dinner: Impossible. It’s a good job. The TV show generates free publicity for his cookbook Mission: Cook! and affords him the credibility to open his own restaurants. That was the idea he brought to St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2008. His was to open two new restaurants in South Florida: Ooze and Schmooze. Ooze was going to be the accessible, entry-level place, and Schmooze the highbrow complement. His biography—the summary of his professional life and experiences that he presented to potential investors—was impressive. According to the St. Petersburg Times, he advertised his résumé as including the following credentials (Montgomery, 2008):

· a bachelor’s of science degree in food and nutrition from the University of Leeds

· royal experience working on the wedding cake for Prince Charles and Princess Diana

· a title of knight, as in Sir Robert Irvine, Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, handpicked by the Queen

· several Five Star Diamond Awards from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences

· a tenure as a White House chef.

Everything came to an end, though, at least temporarily, when the Food Network fired him for lies on his résumé. Here’s the truth about the items listed above:

· The bachelor’s of science degree? According to a press officer at the University of Leeds, “We cannot find any connection in our records between Robert and the university.”

· The royal wedding cake? Well, he did help pick some of the fruit that went into it.

· The knighthood? No.

· The Five Star Diamond Award? True, but it’s not the AAA’s prestigious Five Diamond Award or Mobil’s five stars. The American Academy of Hospitality Sciences is actually a guy’s apartment in New York, and the award is granted to anyone who pays a fee.

· White House chef? Kind of. But he didn’t prepare sophisticated dishes for the president or anything like that; he cooked food for the cafeteria line, serving military workers at the White House.

Certainly, Robert Irvine isn’t the first guy to stretch his résumé, but he does an excellent job of exploring the many ways people can misrepresent themselves when trying to get a job. Generally, there are two kinds of résumé abuses. Positive résumé misrepresentations are those items on a résumé that simply aren’t true:

· false credentials—These are certificates of accomplishment that don’t exist. Irvine said he had a BS degree. He didn’t. This kind of misrepresentation is especially tempting for job seekers who didn’t quite finish their degree. One of the obvious practical problems is that claims like this can be verified or disproven by human resource departments. (Or, as in Irvine’s case, by inquiring newspaper reporters.)

· false experience—Untruthfully claiming to have participated in projects. Irvine asserted that he’d been a White House chef, meaning he’d planned sophisticated menus and prepared dishes for dignitaries. He didn’t. He cooked assembly-line food in the cafeteria for White House staff workers.

· embellished experience—This is the easiest kind of résumé misrepresentation. Irvine really did work on the royal wedding cake, but only picking fruit, not actually making it. His claim, therefore, isn’t directly false, but incredibly misleading. The same could be said about the Five Star Diamond Award. While technically true, it’s not the meaningful award that people imagine it to be.

· false chronology—Anyone who’s suffered long periods of unemployment—or just been fired from a job and taken a while to find another one—has surely been tempted to adjust the dates on their résumé to make it seem as though they went smoothly from one post to another.

· false references—Listing someone to vouch for your experience who really won’t or can’t. Irvine said he’d been selected by the Queen of England for a knighthood. It never got to the point where someone actually called her to ask, but if they would’ve, she would’ve drawn a blank. Of course people don’t normally list royalty as a reference, but in everyday life, it’s easy to commit the same misrepresentation. One fraternity brother could list another as a former boss, for example.

Negative résumé misrepresentations are those items that would appear on a complete résumé, one listing all your working experience, but that conveniently get left out of the one you submit to a potential employer. If you were fired from your first job at McDonald’s years ago because you kept forgetting to take the fries out of the oil pit, no one’s going to object when you drop those months off your work history. On the other hand, if, up until two months ago, you were in charge of the vehicle fleet for a hotel and you were fired for taking your girlfriend out in the company limo after hours, leaving that off your résumé is misleading to new prospective employers.

In the case of Irvine, things worked out for him in the end. After he publicly recognized the truth and cleaned up the most outrageous resume claims, he got his TV show back.

The Ethics of Stretching the Résumé

It’s hard to define all the ethical lines dividing what should and shouldn’t be included in a job applicant’s résumé, but steps can be taken to control the situation. If you’re sitting at your desk trying to figure out whether there should be any deleting, fudging, or exaggerating, two questions can help get a hold of the situation:

1. Who will be affected by my decision?

2. Does it matter what everyone else is doing?

The first person affected by your decision is you, and everyone’s most immediate ethical responsibility is the one they hold to themselves, the responsibility to respect their own dignity and abilities. One way of taking that responsibility seriously is to look back at the jobs you’ve held and ask what kinds of tasks they entailed and how those experiences and the skills taken from them might be stated in a broad and appealing way. Irvine probably went overboard when he translated the fact that he’d chosen fruit included in a royal wedding cake into the claim that he participated in assembling and cooking it. But it also seems like it’d be a mistake to say that he’d been a fruit picker on a wedding cake job. In the culinary world, his was important fruit picking. Irvine’s mistake, in other words, wasn’t that he tried to make himself look good, it’s that he couldn’t find a way to do it without essentially lying about his experience.

The duty to present yourself positively to potential employers may also justify the decision to leave certain, let’s say, unfortunate aspects of your professional life off the résumé. Irvine doesn’t talk much about how his endeavor to create restaurants in St. Petersburg fell apart in a sorry mess. If tomorrow he goes out and tries to stir up investors for a new pair of restaurants somewhere else, he has an obligation to be honest with them about what happened last time. But if he’s looking for a job as a TV cook, or just as a cook in a restaurant, then he may be able to justify leaving that bad episode unmentioned. The reasoning? The fact that he’s bad at mounting restaurants doesn’t mean he’s a bad TV personality or an error-prone cook. The one job has little in common with the others. So if he’s applying to be a cook, he could possibly leave the negative information about his other business ventures out based on the idea that it’s simply not applicable to the employment being sought.

The duty to yourself, finally, points toward a résumé presentation that sets your accomplishments and skills in boldface while not dwelling on extraneous shortcomings.

Another person affected by your résumé decisions—the choice about how much truth to tell and hide—is the person doing the hiring. If you claim experience you don’t really have and skills you don’t possess, the supervisor who oversaw your contracting won’t just be disappointed and angry as he or she watches you stumble and trip over tasks that should be easy. The botched hiring will also reflect negatively on him when superiors evaluate his or her performance and make decisions about pay raises and promotions. They are going to suffer because you lied. There is, in other words, a loser when you scam to get a job that you’re not really qualified for. Moreover, that harm accrues to the company as a whole. Maybe costs will increase because more training than expected will be necessary. Maybe an account will be lost when you fumble an assignment that should be automatic.

Your potential future workmates also have a stake in your application for a job. If you claim, as Irvine did, to have worked on the Charles and Diana wedding cake, it seems fair for your boss to assume you’ll be able to manage producing first-rate cakes for ordinary people. If you can’t, if you have no idea how to serve up even a simple layer cake, someone else on the team is going to have to step in and do your work for you. They probably won’t get your paycheck at the end of the month, however.

Other applicants for a job also have a stake in your own application. It’s a competitive world, and while you’re the one who can best make the case for your ability, making false claims doesn’t just give you an opportunity you may not otherwise receive: it takes an opportunity away from someone else.

What’s Everyone Else Doing?

The first step in getting control of your résumé’s relation with the hard truth is working through how any particular decision affects those involved. The second step is determining whether it matters what everyone else is doing. The question is important because applying for jobs doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If everyone stretches their qualifications to the extent Irvine demonstrated, then obviously you may want to consider whether you need to do the same just to get a fair shake.

A web page with a very truthful URL, Fakeresume.com, takes up the question about how much fibbing is going on out there: “Over 53 percent of job seekers lie on their résumés. Over 70 percent of college graduates admit to lying on their résumés to get hired. Can you afford not to know the techniques, tricks, and methods they use?” (“The Ugly Truth,” n.d.).

Fair question. Of course no one knows exactly how much cheating goes on, but as Irvine exemplifies, there’s definitely some out there. So should you get in on it? The argument in favor roughly corresponds with the web page’s pitch. If everyone’s doing it—if exaggeration is expected—then employing the same misrepresentations that guide everyone else isn’t really lying. Like driving sixty down a fifty-five miles-per-hour highway when all the other cars are going that fast too, your exaggerations are following the rules as everyone seems to understand them. From this point of view, you may even have a duty to exaggerate, because not doing so, as the web page claims, isn’t being an ethical hero, it’s just being outsmarted. And in a competitive environment, you at least have the moral obligation to not let yourself be snookered.

On the other side, where do these percentages—53 percent, over 70 percent—come from? The web page doesn’t say, and if they’re not true, then doesn’t the whole argument reduce to an excuse to lie?

In the case of Fakeresume.com, it couldn’t be more obvious what’s going on. The site is offering you a way to not tell the truth and not feel bad about it. Instead of offering moral guidance, it’s inventing a way for you to justify taking the easy path, to justify padding the résumé without having to consider whether that’s the right thing to do.

In the midst of résumé-stretching dilemmas, what other people are doing matters. Hiring is relative; there’s hardly anyone who’s perfect for any job, and recruiters take the applicant who’s best suited. Your obligation—to yourself and to the recruiter—is to show why you may be the best suited of the applicants. That may mean (using the language of Fakeresume.com) using the résumé-enhancing techniques commonly employed. It doesn’t mean, however, just imagining that everyone else is lying their pants off and then using that as an excuse to lie yourself.

Résumé Verification and the Law

One problem Robert Irvine faced was his very public personality. To stir up interest in the restaurants he planned for St. Petersburg, he had to stir up interest in himself. All the commotion drew the attention of a local newspaper reporter who ended up blowing the whistle on the résumé exaggerations and concoctions.

More ordinarily, job applicants don’t need to worry about reporters prying into their claims. Most medium and larger companies do, however, pass résumés through human resources departments which typically confirm the significant, objective claims of job seekers. Items like degrees obtained can typically be verified, as well as dates of previous employment and job titles. Every company will follow its own internal guidelines, of course, so it’s impossible to make a table listing the misrepresentations that will and won’t slip through. But it’s certain that objectively false information may come to light sooner or later.

If false information does come to light, are there legal complications? Probably not. Because résumés aren’t binding, signed agreements between the applicant and employer, they’re generally protected by free-speech guidelines. In the case of Irvine, if he claimed he was Superman, there’s nothing the police could do about it. That said, efforts have been made to take some action against the most extreme cases of résumé misrepresentations. A number of legislative measures have been proposed to punish those who lie about a military record and honors received. In Washington State in 2006, legislation was advanced to fine and briefly imprison applicants found guilty of claiming advanced degrees they didn’t actually earn, though the measure ultimately failed (Heckman, 2006).

Most résumé misrepresentations don’t cross into illegality. This is one of those areas in the business world where legal right and wrong diverges clearly from ethical right and wrong.

Ethical Egoism and Résumé Misrepresentations

Ethical egoism means your moral responsibility is to act in your own interest no matter what that may require. This provides a license for outright résumé invention (a false BS degree and imaginary knighthood for Irvine). But, as is always the case with egoism, the question must be asked whether job seekers really serve their own interests when they claim things that may later be revealed to be false or when they land jobs they later won’t be able to perform because their qualifications were fake.

One specific warning for the egoist comes from the admissions department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One of the world’s elite universities, the task of selecting each year’s freshman class is as daunting as it is important for a school dedicated to preserving its reputation. The head of that office in 2007 was Marilee Jones. One of her central skills was the ability to distinguish high schoolers who’d truly excelled from those who got great grades by taking easy classes. Her widely admired skill, in other words, was filtering out grade sheets (which are students’ résumés) that misleadingly stretched the students’ classroom accomplishments. She went on using that skill until it was discovered that twenty-eight years earlier, when she’d first applied to work at the school, she’d invented a few degrees for herself. She was fired on the spot (Bombardieri & Ryan, 2007).

Employment at will is a doctrine of common law that allows either the employee or the employer to terminate an employment relationship at any time, for any reason, with or without notice, and even for a morally reprehensible reason, so long as the ending of the relationship does not fall into an exception to the employment-at-will doctrine.

Employment at will is the prevailing legal doctrine concerning employment relationship termination in 49 US states (not Montana). In the overwhelming majority of the United States, employment at will and its exceptions govern the rules by which one may legally terminate an employee.

The generally accepted exceptions to employment at will include

· express contract,

· implied contract,

· promissory estoppel,

· public policy violations, and

· good faith and fair dealing.

We discuss these five exceptions below.

Express Contract Exception

If an employer terminates an employee in violation of the terms of an express contract between the employer and employee, then the employee can sue the employer for breach of contract (and, in some states, wrongful termination).

For example, an employment contract guarantees that the employee will be employed by the employer for a definite duration of time, with cognizable boundaries, such as a "one-year period" or "for six months." The employer terminates the employee before the stated period has expired, and that termination is not otherwise permitted by the contract.

Likewise, consider a case where an employment contract states that an employee can be terminated only "for cause" or "for just cause," and the employee is terminated without cause.

Implied Contract Exception

Implied contracts are contracts created by the conduct of the parties, which include any representations or assurances made by the employer prior to or during the term of employment. In some states, an implied contract is an exception to the employment-at-will doctrine.

For example, if an employer provides an employee handbook to a new employee, the provisions in the handbook may be considered part of the contractual relationship. Often, such handbooks outline a procedure for performance review, discipline, and discharge of the employee. An employer who fails to live up to procedural obligations prior to discharging an employee could be liable.

Promissory Estoppel Exception

In many states, promissory estoppel acts as an exception to the employment-at-will doctrine. That is, when an employer makes a promise to an employee of employment or a period of employment, and the employee relies on that promise to his detriment, and it leads to injustice, then an employee may be able to have that promise enforced regardless of employment at will.

For example, John is offered a job with Widget Co. He discusses with Widget's manager that, to take the job, he needs to move from California to New Jersey and give up an already lucrative position with benefits. The manager assures John that he will have gainful employment and a substantially larger income with Widget Co. for at least a year if he makes the move. In reliance on this promise, John quits his job and moves to New Jersey to begin work at Widget Co. After one week, John is laid off. Despite being an employee at will, John may be able to recover under the theory of promissory estoppel.

Public Policy Violations Exception

Most states in the United States prohibit an employer from firing an employee if the reason for the action violates some readily accepted public policy. This prohibition prevents an employer from terminating an employee for exercising a legal right, including a right contained in state and federal laws; or for failing to perform an illegal act for the employer.

Firing an employee for performing some public duty (showing up to jury duty), for exposing illegal conduct (such as reporting violation of some law to the employer or a government agency), or for exercising her rights as a US or state citizen (such as voting) are all against public policy.

This exception to employment at will encompasses the inability to terminate an employee if doing so would violate her state or federal statutory rights. If an employee is terminated because of her race, this may be a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and so an otherwise at-will employee would have a claim against the employer for violating a federal statute.

Moreover, it is against public policy to terminate an employee for refusing to commit an illegal act, such as a crime.

Good Faith and Fair Dealing Exception

A minority of states impose upon the employer a duty to exercise good faith and fair dealing in regard to all employees. This doctrine, to varying degrees, means that an employer must treat an employee fairly in the decision to fire her. This generally means that an employer would violate these duties in firing an employee without due cause or justification.

The preceding five generally accepted exceptions to employment at will allow injured parties to seek recovery even in the face of the employment-at-will doctrine. As such, they limit the circumstances by which an employer can terminate an employee.

Step 3: Write Your Electropic LLC Report

Use your outline and research notes to prepare your report. Be sure to meet the following requirements laid out by the VP:

· Using Badaracco’s right vs. right framework and your legal analysis, prepare a report.

· Include APA-formatted in-text citations and an APA-formatted reference list (do not format the body of the report using APA style, just the reference list). See references and citations  for details.

· Include in your report a detailed analysis of all four questions and three tests of the Badaracco framework; also include an analysis of the legal issues.

· Include a specific recommendation on what actions, if any, HR should take based on your legal and ethical analysis and conclusions.

· The report should be no more than 10 pages (double spaced, 12-point font; the reference list does not count toward page limit).

· Title your file using this protocol: lastname_Electropic_date.docx.