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Case Studies

More than 70 cases pair ethics concepts with real world situations. From journalism, performing arts, and scientific research to sports, law, and business, these case studies explore current and historic ethical dilemmas, their motivating biases, and their consequences. Each case includes discussion questions, related videos, and a bibliography.

A Million Little Pieces

James Frey’s popular memoir stirred controversy and media attention after it was revealed to contain numerous exaggerations and fabrications.

Abramoff: Lobbying Congress

Super-lobbyist Abramoff was caught in a scheme to lobby against his own clients. Was a corrupt individual or a corrupt system – or both – to blame?

Apple Suppliers & Labor Practices

Is tech company Apple, Inc. ethically obligated to oversee the questionable working conditions of other companies further down their supply chain?

Approaching the Presidency: Roosevelt & Taft

Some presidents view their responsibilities in strictly legal terms, others according to duty. Roosevelt and Taft took two extreme approaches.

Appropriating “Hope”

Fairey’s portrait of Barack Obama raised debate over the extent to which an artist can use and modify another’s artistic work, yet still call it one’s own.

Arctic Offshore Drilling

Competing groups frame the debate over oil drilling off Alaska’s coast in varying ways depending on their environmental and economic interests.

Banning Burkas: Freedom or Discrimination?

The French law banning women from wearing burkas in public sparked debate about discrimination and freedom of religion.

Birthing Vaccine Skepticism

Wakefield published an article riddled with inaccuracies and conflicts of interest that created significant vaccine hesitancy regarding the MMR vaccine.

Blurred Lines of Copyright

Marvin Gaye’s Estate won a lawsuit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for the hit song “Blurred Lines,” which had a similar feel to one of his songs.

Bullfighting: Art or Not?

Bullfighting has been a prominent cultural and artistic event for centuries, but in recent decades it has faced increasing criticism for animal rights’ abuse.

Buying Green: Consumer Behavior

Do purchasing green products, such as organic foods and electric cars, give consumers the moral license to indulge in unethical behavior?

Cadavers in Car Safety Research

Engineers at Heidelberg University insist that the use of human cadavers in car safety research is ethical because their research can save lives.

Cardinals’ Computer Hacking

St. Louis Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa hacked into the Houston Astros’ webmail system, leading to legal repercussions and a lifetime ban from MLB.

Cheating: Atlanta’s School Scandal

Teachers and administrators at Parks Middle School adjust struggling students’ test scores in an effort to save their school from closure.

Cheating: Sign-Stealing in MLB

The Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scheme rocked the baseball world, leading to a game-changing MLB investigation and fallout.

Cheating: UNC’s Academic Fraud

UNC’s academic fraud scandal uncovered an 18-year scheme of unchecked coursework and fraudulent classes that enabled student-athletes to play sports.

Cheney v. U.S. District Court

A controversial case focuses on Justice Scalia’s personal friendship with Vice President Cheney and the possible conflict of interest it poses to the case.

Christina Fallin: “Appropriate Culturation?”

After Fallin posted a picture of herself wearing a Plain’s headdress on social media, uproar emerged over cultural appropriation and Fallin’s intentions.

Climate Change & the Paris Deal

While climate change poses many abstract problems, the actions (or inactions) of today’s populations will have tangible effects on future generations.

Cover-Up on Campus

While the Baylor University football team was winning on the field, university officials failed to take action when allegations of sexual assault by student athletes emerged.

Covering Female Athletes

Sports Illustrated stirs controversy when their cover photo of an Olympic skier seems to focus more on her physical appearance than her athletic abilities.

Covering Yourself? Journalists and the Bowl Championship

Can news outlets covering the Bowl Championship Series fairly report sports news if their own polls were used to create the news?

Cyber Harassment

After a student defames a middle school teacher on social media, the teacher confronts the student in class and posts a video of the confrontation online.

Defending Freedom of Tweets?

Running back Rashard Mendenhall receives backlash from fans after criticizing the celebration of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in a tweet.

Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large

Dennis Kozlowski was an effective leader for Tyco in his first few years as CEO, but eventually faced criminal charges over his use of company assets.

Digital Downloads

File-sharing program Napster sparked debate over the legal and ethical dimensions of downloading unauthorized copies of copyrighted music.

Dr. V’s Magical Putter

Journalist Caleb Hannan outed Dr. V as a trans woman, sparking debate over the ethics of Hannan’s reporting, as well its role in Dr. V’s suicide.

East Germany’s Doping Machine

From 1968 to the late 1980s, East Germany (GDR) doped some 9,000 athletes to gain success in international athletic competitions despite being aware of the unfortunate side effects.

Ebola & American Intervention

Did the dispatch of U.S. military units to Liberia to aid in humanitarian relief during the Ebola epidemic help or hinder the process?

Edward Snowden: Traitor or Hero?

Was Edward Snowden’s release of confidential government documents ethically justifiable?

Ethical Pitfalls in Action

Why do good people do bad things? Behavioral ethics is the science of moral decision-making, which explores why and how people make the ethical (and unethical) decisions that they do.

Ethical Use of Home DNA Testing

The rising popularity of at-home DNA testing kits raises questions about privacy and consumer rights.

Flying the Confederate Flag

A heated debate ensues over whether or not the Confederate flag should be removed from the South Carolina State House grounds.

Freedom of Speech on Campus

In the wake of racially motivated offenses, student protests sparked debate over the roles of free speech, deliberation, and tolerance on campus.

Freedom vs. Duty in Clinical Social Work

What should social workers do when their personal values come in conflict with the clients they are meant to serve?

Full Disclosure: Manipulating Donors

When an intern witnesses a donor making a large gift to a non-profit organization under misleading circumstances, she struggles with what to do.

Gaming the System: The VA Scandal

The Veterans Administration’s incentives were meant to spur more efficient and productive healthcare, but not all administrators complied as intended.

German Police Battalion 101

During the Holocaust, ordinary Germans became willing killers even though they could have opted out from murdering their Jewish neighbors.

Head Injuries & American Football

Many studies have linked traumatic brain injuries and related conditions to American football, creating controversy around the safety of the sport.

Head Injuries & the NFL

American football is a rough and dangerous game and its impact on the players’ brain health has sparked a hotly contested debate.

Healthcare Obligations: Personal vs. Institutional

A medical doctor must make a difficult decision when informing patients of the effectiveness of flu shots while upholding institutional recommendations.

High Stakes Testing

In the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act, parents, teachers, and school administrators take different positions on how to assess student achievement.

In-FUR-mercials: Advertising & Adoption

When the Lied Animal Shelter faces a spike in animal intake, an advertising agency uses its moral imagination to increase pet adoptions.

Krogh & the Watergate Scandal

Egil Krogh was a young lawyer working for the Nixon Administration whose ethics faded from view when asked to play a part in the Watergate break-in.

Limbaugh on Drug Addiction

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh argued that drug abuse was a choice, not a disease. He later became addicted to painkillers.

U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte’s “over-exaggeration” of an incident at the 2016 Rio Olympics led to very real consequences.

Meet Me at Starbucks

Two black men were arrested after an employee called the police on them, prompting Starbucks to implement “racial-bias” training across all its stores.

Myanmar Amber

Buying amber could potentially fund an ethnic civil war, but refraining allows collectors to acquire important specimens that could be used for research.

Negotiating Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy lawyer Gellene successfully represented a mining company during a major reorganization, but failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest.

Pao & Gender Bias

Ellen Pao stirred debate in the venture capital and tech industries when she filed a lawsuit against her employer on grounds of gender discrimination.

Pardoning Nixon

One month after Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency, Gerald Ford made the controversial decision to issue Nixon a full pardon.

Patient Autonomy & Informed Consent

Nursing staff and family members struggle with informed consent when taking care of a patient who has been deemed legally incompetent.

Prenatal Diagnosis & Parental Choice

Debate has emerged over the ethics of prenatal diagnosis and reproductive freedom in instances where testing has revealed genetic abnormalities.

Reporting on Robin Williams

After Robin Williams took his own life, news media covered the story in great detail, leading many to argue that such reporting violated the family’s privacy.

Responding to Child Migration

An influx of children migrants posed logistical and ethical dilemmas for U.S. authorities while intensifying ongoing debate about immigration.

Retracting Research: The Case of Chandok v. Klessig

A researcher makes the difficult decision to retract a published, peer-reviewed article after the original research results cannot be reproduced.

Sacking Social Media in College Sports

In the wake of questionable social media use by college athletes, the head coach at University of South Carolina bans his players from using Twitter.

Selling Enron

Following the deregulation of electricity markets in California, private energy company Enron profited greatly, but at a dire cost.

Snyder v. Phelps

Freedom of speech was put on trial in a case involving the Westboro Baptist Church and their protesting at the funeral of U.S. Marine Matthew Snyder.

Something Fishy at the Paralympics

Rampant cheating has plagued the Paralympics over the years, compromising the credibility and sportsmanship of Paralympian athletes.

Sports Blogs: The Wild West of Sports Journalism?

Deadspin pays an anonymous source for information related to NFL star Brett Favre, sparking debate over the ethics of “checkbook journalism.”

Stangl & the Holocaust

Franz Stangl was the most effective Nazi administrator in Poland, killing nearly one million Jews at Treblinka, but he claimed he was simply following orders.

Teaching Blackface: A Lesson on Stereotypes

A teacher was put on leave for showing a blackface video during a lesson on racial segregation, sparking discussion over how to teach about stereotypes.

The Astros’ Sign-Stealing Scandal

The Houston Astros rode a wave of success, culminating in a World Series win, but it all came crashing down when their sign-stealing scheme was revealed.

The Central Park Five

Despite the indisputable and overwhelming evidence of the innocence of the Central Park Five, some involved in the case refuse to believe it.

The CIA Leak

Legal and political fallout follows from the leak of classified information that led to the identification of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The Collapse of Barings Bank

When faced with growing losses, investment banker Nick Leeson took big risks in an attempt to get out from under the losses. He lost.

The Costco Model

How can companies promote positive treatment of employees and benefit from leading with the best practices? Costco offers a model.

The FBI & Apple Security vs. Privacy

How can tech companies and government organizations strike a balance between maintaining national security and protecting user privacy?

The Miss Saigon Controversy

When a white actor was cast for the half-French, half-Vietnamese character in the Broadway production of Miss Saigon , debate ensued.

The Sandusky Scandal

Following the conviction of assistant coach Jerry Sandusky for sexual abuse, debate continues on how much university officials and head coach Joe Paterno knew of the crimes.

The Varsity Blues Scandal

A college admissions prep advisor told wealthy parents that while there were front doors into universities and back doors, he had created a side door that was worth exploring.

Providing radiation therapy to cancer patients, Therac-25 had malfunctions that resulted in 6 deaths. Who is accountable when technology causes harm?

Welfare Reform

The Welfare Reform Act changed how welfare operated, intensifying debate over the government’s role in supporting the poor through direct aid.

Wells Fargo and Moral Emotions

In a settlement with regulators, Wells Fargo Bank admitted that it had created as many as two million accounts for customers without their permission.

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Applying Cases to Solve Ethical Problems: The Significance of Positive and Process-Oriented Reflection

Alison l. antes.

Northern Kentucky University

Chase E. Thiel

The University of Oklahoma

Laura E. Martin

Midwestern State University

Cheryl K. Stenmark

Angelo State University

Shane Connelly

Lynn d. devenport, michael d. mumford.

This study examined the role of reflection on personal cases for making ethical decisions with regard to new ethical problems. Participants assumed the position of a business manager in a hypothetical organization and solved ethical problems that might be encountered. Prior to making a decision for the business problems, participants reflected on a relevant ethical experience. The findings revealed that application of material garnered from reflection on a personal experience was associated with decisions of higher ethicality. However, whether the case was viewed as positive or negative, and whether the outcomes, process, or outcomes and processes embedded in the experience were examined, influenced the application of case material to the new problem. As expected, examining positive experiences and the processes involved in those positive experiences resulted in greater application of case material to new problems. Future directions and implications for understanding ethical decision-making are discussed.

Across professional fields, individuals regularly encounter ethical situations and must make judgments about how to respond to these challenging workplace problems ( Ashforth & Anand, 2003 ). Making sense of the causes and implications of these complex, uncertain situations, understanding conflicting interests, goals, and motivations, and anticipating potential courses of action represent just some of the demands of thinking through ethical problems ( Waples & Antes, 2011 ). The nature of the thinking processes underlying ethical decision-making has been of principal interest to scholars concerned with understanding and improving the ethical capacity of professionals (e.g., Mumford, Connelly et al., 2008 ; Ritter, 2006 ; Rest, 1986 ; Sonenshein, 2007 ). Mumford and colleagues (2008) described ethical decision-making as a sensemaking phenomenon involving several social-cognitive processes that allow one to make sense of the elements of the situation, consider potential outcomes, and choose a course of action, and their model has received considerable empirical support ( Waples & Antes, 2011 ).

One central process of the sensemaking model ( Mumford, Connelly et al., 2008 ) is self-reflection – drawing upon and examining stored knowledge about oneself, ethical problems, and experiences – to inform ethical decision-making. Drawing upon, examining, and utilizing self-relevant knowledge and experiences facilitates the complex cognition underlying problem-solving, decision-making, and learning ( Anseel, Lievens, & Schollaert, 2009 ; Dörner & Schaub, 1994 ; Mezirow, 1990 ; Strack & Förster, 1998 ), but self-reflection processes specifically pertaining to ethical decision-making have received limited examination.

Given that ethical problems are social and self-relevant, reflection on personally relevant experiences or cases may provide a particularly critical source of knowledge to inform ethical decision-making ( Anderson & Conway, 1993 ; Kolodner, 1992 ; 1993 ). In fact, the primary intent of the widely applied case method approach to ethics instruction is to construct a more complete, complex collection of cases that can later be reflected upon and applied to solve ethical problems ( Jonassen & Hernandez-Serrano, 2002 ; McWilliams & Nahavandi, 2006 ; Pimple, 2007 ), but relatively little is known about the process of reflecting upon stored personal cases even though it is of key importance for understanding ethical decision-making and techniques for enhancing ethical decision-making.

Therefore, the purpose of the present study is two-fold. First, we explicitly examine whether applying information garnered from reflection on personal cases is related to the ethicality of decisions made regarding new ethical problems. Additionally, we investigate the effect of the nature of the case – whether it is viewed as positive or negative – and the strategy – examination of processes, outcomes, or processes and outcomes – applied to reflecting on elements embedded in the experience.

When confronted with addressing an ethical problem, individuals might recall cases from personal experience or those learned vicariously through others or from ethics courses and then reflect on the ethical standards, principles, or guidelines, and personal values embedded within the case. According to Mumford et al. (2008) , recalling and reflecting on personal experiences and the standards, values, actions, actors, causes, and contingencies found within cases, provides an important source of information to be utilized to make sense of a new situation and arrive at a decision. Thus, self-reflection is critical for drawing on relevant experiences to provide an understanding of the problem and to examine possible solutions.

However, drawing upon one's stored knowledge and experience to be utilized for ethical decision-making is inherently complex ( Daudelin, 1996 ; Dörner & Schaub, 1994 ). This stored information and examination of it is influenced by emotions, self-perceptions, and personal values, beliefs, and understandings of ethical problems ( Waples & Antes, 2011 ). Consider the contrast of drawing upon this type of personally relevant knowledge and drawing upon knowledge pertaining to something like the state capital of a particular state—clearly these types of knowledge differ considerably. Ethically-relevant cases are emotional and subjective and recalling and examining this information involves personal biases, subjective evaluations, and personal perceptions ( Ashton-James & Ashkanasy, 2008 ; Gaudine & Thorne, 2001 ; Haidt, 2001 ; Sonenshein, 2007 ). Therefore, the nature of the cases drawn upon and the strategies used to examine them are likely to play a central role in whether and how that information is applied to new problems ( Rubin & Berntsen, 2003 ). However, because stored cases provide material that can be analyzed, adapted, and applied to make sense of new problems, they are expected to facilitate ethical decision-making when case material is applied to inform decision-making for new problems. Based on these observations, we propose the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Applying material from reflection on personal cases to new problems will improve decision ethicality.

Affective Framing of Cases

Although reflection on past cases is expected to aid ethical decision-making, not all approaches for thinking about case material are likely to prove equally effective. In particular, we expected that the affective frame and reflection strategy applied to case material would influence the application of that material to new problems. Examination of personally relevant cases is a challenging, cognitively demanding process that requires a person to actively examine past behaviors, actions, and decisions. If experiences are perceived as negative, individuals may not as actively engage in analysis of these cases because they threaten self-appraisals ( Levin, Schneider, & Gaeth, 1998 ; Sedikides & Green, 2004 ), which will ultimately hinder the use of the case material for new problems.

The effect of the positively or negatively framed case material is particularly of interest given that the case method often relies upon negative exemplars of ethical transgressions. The underlying assumption of the case method is that the case material is stored to be later recalled and applied to new problems ( Gentner, Loewenstein, & Thompson, 2003 ), but if negatively framed material is threatening and less likely to be applied for new decision-making efforts, this approach to case study may be problematic. The effectiveness of the case method approach depends upon students identifying with and engaging in analysis of case experiences ( Pimple, 2007 ). If negative experiences are less personally engaging, this key condition is not met. Given that positive experiences are likely to be more actively analyzed, we proposed a second hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Reflection on positive as opposed to negative experiences will result in greater application of case material to new problems.

In addition to applying a negative or positive frame to experiences, individuals might apply different analytic tactics for reflecting upon cases that they recall ( Nokes & Ohlsson, 2005 ). Given that there are many different elements of a case that might be examined in reflecting on that experience, the thinking strategies most effective for examining case material are critical for understanding ethical decision-making and how to facilitate reflection on case material. One general approach that might be applied is to emphasize the outcomes of a case or to examine the processes embedded within the experience ( Escalas & Luce, 2003 ; Pham & Taylor, 1999 ; Taylor, Pham, Rivkin, & Armor, 1998 ); or individuals might apply a strategy where they examine both outcomes and processes. Outcome-oriented reflection focuses on end results and how things within a case scenario turned out; whereas process-oriented reflection focuses on steps and elements prior to the end results.

Given that outcomes and consequences are commonly the focus of ethics programs, codes, and problems ( Stansbury & Barry, 2007 ; Yongqiang, 2008 ), it may be common for analysis of cases to emphasize outcomes and thus overstress deliberate, mechanical thinking. However, to effectively examine and extract information from an ethical experience to inform a new problem, thinking about processes, or elements, involved in the case may provide insight into the more undefined elements, embedded moral beliefs and social elements, and intuitive aspects of ethical decision-making ( Marquardt & Hoeger, 2009 ; Reynolds, 2006 ).

Overall, a process-oriented strategy will result in more nuanced thinking and thus facilitate ethical decision-making for new problems. It is also plausible to argue that a combined process and outcome-oriented reflection strategy would be most effective, because it might foster more complete analysis of concrete elements and reflection on the less defined elements. Nonetheless, we expect that because process-only reflection will facilitate thinking in a more divergent manner, it will result in the most relevant information to be applied for ethical decision-making; although, the less effective thinking resulting from outcome-only analysis, maybe be offset by also applying a process-oriented strategy. Thus, we proposed a third hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: A process-oriented reflection strategy will result in greater application of case material than an outcome-oriented reflection strategy, while a combined process-outcome reflection strategy will result in greater application than outcome-oriented reflection but less than process-only reflection.

People readily apply affective frames to experience ( Levin, Schneider, & Gaeth, 1998 ; Martin, Stenmark et al., 2011 ; Van Schie & Van Der Pligt, 1995 ). Thus, we were interested in the combined effect of affective framing and reflection strategy. Given our propositions that a positive experience is more likely to be actively analyzed and process-oriented reflection will also facilitate analysis, we expected that process-oriented reflection on positive cases would yield the greatest application of material from reflection ( Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2003 ; Janiszewski, Silk, & Cooke, 2003 ). We expected outcome analysis to be ineffective no matter the affective frame, but we did expect that combining process-oriented reflection with outcome-oriented analysis might be particularly valuable when examining a negative experience because it might provide a mechanism for offsetting the threat associated with examination of the case. Therefore, we proposed the following interaction hypothesis:

Hypothesis 4: A positively framed case examined with a process-oriented reflection strategy will result in the greatest application of case material to new problems, followed by a negatively framed case examined with a combined process-outcome reflection strategy.

One-hundred and thirty-four undergraduate students (52% males; 75% Caucasian) from a large southwestern university participated in this study. Participation was voluntary and students received extra credit in their courses for participating. The sample consisted of 82% business majors, and the average participant was 22 years old. The participants reported having been employed for an average of five years, and 60% of participants reported having had completed an ethics course.

Undergraduate students were recruited in their business courses via verbal and written study announcements. The study was presented as an investigation of problem-solving on critical thinking exercises. Students were told that participation was voluntary and would require a three hour time commitment. Students then signed up for one of the scheduled sessions.

Upon arriving at the study location, participants were briefed about the general study purpose and procedures, and they were provided with an informed consent document. After confirming their desire to participate, each participant was provided with a packet of study materials, which were randomly assigned to contain the materials for the different experimental conditions. Before completing the materials inside of the packet at their own pace, the participants were asked to complete a verbal reasoning test, which was timed by the study proctor. Following this five minute timed test, participants completed the packet of materials according to the instructions provided on their materials.

Inside the packet of materials participants found a series of low-fidelity simulation business scenarios ( Motowidlo, Dunnette, & Carter, 1990 ). The context for the hypothetical business was a small retail store which was selected because most undergraduate students have experience working in retail. Before the problems to be addressed by participants were presented, an introduction to the company and industry was provided. Additionally, background information was provided regarding the managerial role that the participants were to assume in the scenarios (see Appendix A ). In each scenario, the manager was presented with an ethical problem that had major implications for the company and their position. The ethical problems in each of the scenarios represented one of each of the four dimensions in a taxonomy of ethical misconduct developed by Helton-Fauth, Gaddis et al. (2003) .

These dimensions, originally developed for misconduct in research, generalize across a number of professional fields ( Kligyte, Marcy, Sevier, Godfrey, & Mumford, 2008 ; Stenmark, Antes et al., 2010 ), and include data management, study conduct, professional practices, and business practices. In this study, the data management scenario presented a situation that required the manager to decide how to handle reporting data from a selection instrument when fabrication of the data would benefit his/her preferred course of action (see Appendix B ). The study conduct dimension, a dimension focusing on the treatment of individuals (i.e., research participants) for which a professional has responsibility, was translated into a business context. In this scenario, the manager had to make a decision about the treatment and wellbeing of employees. In the business practices scenario, a conflict of interest was presented wherein the manager must make a decision about selling a new product manufactured by a relative's company. Finally, the professional practices scenario required the manager to make a decision about how to handle a mistake that he/she made that would affect pay raises given to employees. All participants responded to each of the four scenarios, and presentation of these scenarios was counterbalanced to avoid order effects.

After reading each scenario, participants were asked to recall and reflect upon a relevant case from their experience and respond to several prompt questions about that instance. It was in the reflecting on the experience that the independent variables—affective frame and analytic approach—were manipulated. These manipulations are described in the next section. In addition to instructions to recall and reflect upon a relevant past experience, participants in all conditions were also provided with an example of the type of situation they were to recall and think about to clarify the instructions and encourage reflection on appropriate, relevant information. For example, for the data management scenario, participants were prompted to think about a situation where they were faced with a problem about submitting some kind of information, such as submitting a time card, grades, or reporting previous employers or salary on an application, where there was a temptation to change things slightly before turning over the information. After recalling and reflecting on the experience, participants returned to the new business problem and indicated what decision they would make and why.

The packet of materials also contained covariate measures used to capture individual differences, such as trait affect and task engagement, which might influence performance on the business scenarios. After completing the scenarios and covariate measures, participants placed their study materials back into their envelopes and turned in their packets to the study proctor. Participants were then given a debriefing form and thanked for their participation.

Manipulations

The manipulations in this 2 × 3 experiment influenced the affective frame – positive or negative – and the analytic strategy – process, outcome, or process-outcome – employed by participants when they recalled and thought about a prior, relevant experience. The manipulations were embedded in the instructions and prompt questions provided to participants to guide their thinking. Specifically, the affective frame manipulation was embedded within the instructions for the type of case that participants were to recall and think about. The instructions either indicated that the participant should recall an experience that he/she felt was positive or negative.

After prompting participants to recall a negative or positive case, several questions manipulated the analytic strategy applied to think about the case. Participants were asked to write out their thinking with regard to these questions. In the process-oriented condition, participants responded to three questions about the processes involved in the prior experience. For example, participants were asked about factors that they considered in working through the prior situation and why those factors were important. In the outcome-oriented condition, participants were asked to respond to three questions about the consequences of the decisions in the previous situation. For instance, they were asked to consider whether the prior decisions were effective. Participants in the process and outcome condition thought about both processes and outcomes of the prior experience by responding to three questions—one process, one outcome, and one two-pronged process-and-outcome question.

Manipulation checks were performed to confirm that participants appropriately followed the instructions and experienced the intended manipulations. The checks were performed by content coding the participants’ responses to the prompt questions. The judges were four doctoral graduate students in industrial and organizational psychology who were familiar with the ethics and ethical decision making literature but not the study hypotheses under examination. The judges completed a five hour training session where they were learned the definitions of affective frame and analytic strategy and were provided with examples. Then the judges practiced scoring the responses and discussed discrepancies before continuing to code all of the responses.

The manipulation check score for analytic strategy was assigned by indicating the extent to which the response provided by the participants was oriented towards processes (scored as 1), processes and outcomes (scored as 2), or outcomes (scored as 3). Affective frame was scored on a 5-point scale according to whether the case described by the participant was negative or positive, with 1 being very negative to 5 being very positive. Inter-rater agreement was assessed via intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC), and revealed adequate agreement with an average ICC of .62 for analytic strategy and .82 for affective frame. A t-test comparing the mean scores revealed that participants in the negative condition described more negative cases ( M = 2.57, SD = .46) compared to participants in the positive condition ( M = 2.89, SD = .51), t (135) = 3.79, p < .01. A comparison of means for the analytic strategy manipulation check revealed statistically significant differences among the conditions, F (2, 134) = 9.86, p < .01. Post-hoc analysis using Fisher's least significant differences method indicated that the process condition ( M = 1.95, SE = .08) was statistically significantly different ( p < .01) from the outcome condition ( M = 2.43, SE = .08) but not from the process-and-outcome combined condition, although the mean for the process-and-outcome condition was in the middle as expected ( M = 2.09, SE = .08). The outcome condition was statistically significantly different ( p < .01) from the process-and-outcome combined condition.

Dependent Variables

Given that each participant recalled and reflected on their own cases and then generated a solution for the business problems, participants were asked to respond in an open-ended fashion to allow a range of potential responses. Therefore, the written responses generated by participants were coded for the dependent variables of interest. To prepare for scoring the dependent variables, the judges completed 10 hours of training. Judges were familiarized with the definitions of the dependent variables to be coded, and they received rating scales that provided benchmarks for scoring the participants’ responses (Redmond, Mumford, & Teach, 1993). The benchmarks provided exemplars obtained from the participants’ materials demonstrating responses that should be scored as 1 (low), 3 (moderate), and 5 (high) on the rating scales. In this training, the judges practiced coding the participants’ responses and discussed discrepancies until they were clear on the definitions and use of the benchmark rating scales.

To obtain ethicality scores for the decision made with regard to the business problems, the judges rated the participants’ written responses describing their decisions on each problem. Ethicality was scored on a 5-point scale, with 1 representing low ethicality; 3 representing moderate ethicality, and 5 representing high ethicality. The participants’ decisions were examined for their ethicality according to the following criteria. Decisions must show regard for the welfare of others, attention to personal responsibilities, and adherence to professional guidelines and social obligations. Thus, responses of high ethicality were those that reflected these criteria to a large extent, moderately ethical decisions reflected these elements to some extent, while low ethicality scores were assigned to decisions that showed little or no regard for others, a focus on personal gain, and failure to adhere to professional standards of conduct. The judges showed high inter-rater agreement in their ratings of the ethicality of the decisions. Averaged across the four scenarios, the intra-class correlation coefficient was .81.

Application of Case Material

The other dependent variable scored by the judges was application of the reflected on case material to the new problem. To obtain scores for application, the judges scored whether aspects of the recalled case – written about in the responses to the manipulation questions – were referred to, present, or connected to the decisions made for the new business scenarios. Application was scored on a 5-point scale, with little or no presence of application receiving a low score of 1 or 2, moderate application receiving a score of 3, and a great deal of application received a score of 4 or 5. For example, when participants noted similarities or differences between the two situations in terms of what actually happened, what they wished to happen, or what they expected to happen, they would receive higher scores on the application score. Other markers indicating application of the reflection to the current decision scenario were references to the reflection scenario in the decision and clear parallels between, or divergence from, the actions or decisions in the two situations, such as repeating past behavior, or avoiding past behavior, having learned from past experience. The intra-class correlation coefficient (.74) across the four scenarios indicated that the judges showed high agreement in their application scores.

Several individual difference variables were measured to control for their potential influence on participants’ performance. Given the written nature of the research task, verbal reasoning was measured using the Employee Aptitude Survey ( Ruch & Ruch, 1980 ). On this measure, participants receive 5 minutes to read six sets of facts and determine the accuracy of conclusions arising from the facts. Coefficient alpha for the scale was α = .85.

Trait affect was also examined because of the potential for the positive-negative framing manipulation to induce affective reactions. Trait affect was measured using the Positive and Negative Affect Scale ( Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988 ). This 20-item (10 positive and 10 negative) measure captures positive (α = .83) and negative (α = .84) affect by asking people to report, on a 5-point scale, the extent to which the positive and negative adjectives (e.g., excited and irritable) describe how they have felt over the past month.

Task engagement was assessed using a 7-item scale (e.g, “Did you try to fully complete all of the activities in this experiment?”). Participants reported, on a 5-point scale, their level of engagement and interest in study participation, as task motivation influences the effectiveness of manipulations and participant responses. The scale reliability for this measure was .67.

Finally, given the nature of the research task, the extent to which participants responded in a detailed, complete manner to the open-ended writing tasks was assessed. These scores were obtained by asking the judges to rate, on a 5-point scale, the extent to which the participants’ responses demonstrated depth and detail. The intra-class correlation coefficient of .87 was obtained for these ratings, revealing agreement among judges with respect to response elaboration.

As noted above, four ethical decision-making scenarios were included to examine decision-making on several different types of ethical problems. Because the pattern of results for ethicality and application of case material did not differ across the types of ethical problems, the final analyses were conducted at the aggregated level by averaging the scores across the four scenarios. The covariates were also examined prior to the final analyses, and they were retained if they produced p-values equal to or less than .10. The only covariate retained in the final analyses was elaboration.

A regression analysis examined whether application of case material was associated with decisions of greater ethicality. In this analysis, elaboration was entered as a predictor of ethicality in the first block to control for its influence, followed by application of case material in the second block. To examine the effects of affective frame and analytic strategy an analysis of covariance was conducted with application of case material as the dependent variable and elaboration as a covariate.

As reported in Table 1 , application scores were used to predict the ethicality of decisions, after controlling for elaboration. In support of Hypothesis 1, which stated that the application of case material to a new problem would be associated with decisions of greater ethicality, application of case material was a statistically significant predictor of decision ethicality ( β = .24, p < .05). The model consisting of elaboration and application of case materials accounted for nine percent of the variance in ethicality scores.

Regression Analysis Predicting Ethicality from Application of Case Material

β = standardized beta coefficient

It is of note that this R-squared value, although statistically significant, is small. However, this value is not of great concern in the present study because the Mumford et al. (2008) model stresses the operation of multiple processes that facilitate ethical decision-making, and just one process has been singled out for examination in this study. Moreover, this R-squared value is based on just two predictors, and the beta coefficient reflecting the effect size for reflection application is sizable.

In addition to proposing that applying case material to a new problem would facilitate ethical decision-making, we proposed that reflection on different types of cases and different approaches for thinking about those cases would affect the extent to which individuals applied case material. Table 2 presents the results obtained in the analysis of the effects of affective frame and analytic strategy.

Analysis of Covariance for Application of Case Material

Note. df = degrees of freedom; F = F-ratio; η p 2 = partial eta-squared; p = p-value.

Hypothesis 2 and 3 were main effect hypotheses, suggesting that affective framing would produce a significant effect for application of case material, such that reflection on positive cases would result in greater application compared to negative cases. Although the pattern of results suggested that application was higher for positively framed cases, it was not statistically significant relative to negative cases. Similarly, the main effect for analytic strategy was not statistically significant, although, as proposed, the pattern suggested that process and process-outcome strategies resulted in greater application than outcome strategies. As shown in Table 2 , the interaction effect, proposed by Hypothesis 4, was statistically significant, F (2, 127) = 3.56, p < .05.

Examination of the cell means (adjusted for elaboration) for application of case material provides evidence for the nature of the interaction effect (see Table 3 ). As proposed by Hypothesis 4, positively framed cases examined with a process-oriented reflection strategy resulted in the greatest application of case material to new problems ( M = 2.96, SE = .15), followed by negatively framed cases examined with a process-outcome reflection ( M = 2.54, SE = .15). Much less case application resulted when reflecting only on processes ( M = 2.33, SE = .15) or outcomes ( M = 2.36, SE = .15) with regard to negative cases, and reflection on outcomes was no more effective when examining positive cases ( M = 2.36, SE = .15).

Adjusted Means for Affective Frame and Analytic Strategy on Application of Case Material

Note. SE = standard error.

In summary, Hypothesis 1 was supported. Applying case material from experiences was associated with more ethical decisions. The main effect hypotheses (Hypotheses 2 and 3) were not supported. However, the interaction hypothesis (Hypothesis 4) was supported. The findings indicated that examining processes involved in positive cases resulted in greater application of case material to new problems. The findings also suggested that when individuals reflected on the outcomes of past experiences, also thinking about processes compensated to some extent for the limited application of case material observed when only thinking about outcomes. This compensatory mechanism was especially prominent when thinking about past negative experiences, likely because they permitted the individual to engage in reappraisal of a personally threatening event ( Wisco & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2009 ).

We examined the effect of recalling positive or negative cases and the strategy used to examine those cases on the use of that case material for solving new problems. We found that when case material was applied to a new problem, it was associated with more ethical decisions. However, the nature of the cases and the manner in which they were reflected on influenced whether the case material was applied. Specifically, examining positive experiences and thinking about the processes involved in those cases encouraged the application of material to a new problem. Understanding the effects of the nature of cases and the manner in which they are examined is critical for understanding ethical decision-making processes.

Moreover, these findings with respect to case reflection to inform ethical decision-making pose some questions with respect to case methods utilized in classroom instruction to facilitate ethical problem-solving and ethical behavior among professionals ( Bell & Kozlowski, 2008 ; Gravin, 2007 ; Henson, Kennett, & Kennedy, 2003 ; Smith, Fryer-Edwards, Diekema, & Braddock, 2004 ). These techniques are aimed at adding to the case-based knowledge available for individuals to draw upon. Yet, the nature of cases and how they are examined specifically are rarely considered; instead it is commonly taken for granted that case material, or ethics instruction more generally, is beneficial for future ethical decision-making ( Antes, Murphy et al., 2009 ; Antes, Wang, Mumford, Brown, Connelly, & Devenport, 2010 ).

The present findings suggest that there may be more and less effective types of cases and means for thinking about case material. Understanding such effects would improve our ability to not only deliver case-based instruction, but would also allow us to better educate individuals about how to think about cases and experiences in future situations where they call upon that information. Indeed, techniques such as role-play are explicitly intended to develop experiential knowledge and skill for working with this knowledge ( DeNeve & Heppner, 1997 ; Gremler, Hoffman, Keaveney, & Wright, 2000 ).

The findings with regard to negative cases are particularly interesting because ethics scandals are commonly those that are most salient, tend to be especially engaging, and thus are likely to be discussed ( Sleeper, Schneider, Weber, & Weber, 2006 ). Of key interest then is whether these negative examples are likely to facilitate problem solving in future situations, especially relative to cases of positive, ethical behavior. It is likely that negative cases are more personally threatening and these examples of are not likely to be internalized as personally relevant, thus they may not be available, or examined, for future problem-solving ( Alicke, & Sedikides, 2009 ; Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2003 ; Denny & Hunt, 1992 ). This proposition is an important question for future research.

Of course, there may be a great deal that can be learned from negative cases, thus strategies for examining these cases that will benefit future application of that material are of key interest. The present findings suggest that it is important to go beyond outcomes and examine the processes involved in these situations. Overall, the benefit of process-oriented analysis reaffirms the importance of active thinking for ethical decision-making. Future work might examine specifically the nature of the elements, such as social interactions, motivations, and assumptions, examined in such analysis and their role is ethical decision-making. Overall, reflecting on processes rather than outcomes allows for the extraction of information that can be applied to make sense of a new situation ( Escalas, 2004 ; Escalas & Luce, 2003 ; Oettingen & Mayer 2002 ; Pham & Taylor 1999 ; Rivkin & Taylor 1999 ; Taylor et al. 1998 ).

Although it appears that it is possible to overcome, at least to some extent, the detrimental effect of negatively framed experiences by focusing on both outcomes and the processes, the effect of examining positive cases in classroom settings and strategies for doing so presents an important area for future examination. Positive cases may allow individuals to incorporate this information into one's case-based knowledge, as it is more easily viewed as self-relevant because people are not likely to attribute negative behavior to themselves or their social groups ( Hewstone, 1990 ). In fact, thinking about poor behavior of others allows people to credential their own personal ethical nature and in turn engage in unethical behavior ( Brown, Tamborski et al., 2011 ). Moreover, other research has suggested that examining negative behavior can be detrimental in other ways, promoting cynicism and pluralistic ignorance ( Antes, Brown et al., 2007 ; Halbesleben, Wheeler, & Buckley, 2005 ). Negative cases may also limit active analysis because they may be less ambiguous than other cases, leaving less room for examination ( Rubin & Berntsen, 2003 ). Ultimately, for cases—whether personally experienced or discussed in a classroom setting—to be valuable for problem solving, they must be stored, retrieved, and applied. Techniques for storing, retrieving, examining, and applying case material require future examination.

Along these lines, it is also important to understand how self-reflection and other processes in ethical decision-making, such as emotion, operate jointly to influence decisions (Kligyte, Connelly, Thiel, Devenport, Brown, & Mumford, 2008). Affective explanations might account, at least in part, for the effects of examining case material. For example, reflecting on a positive case or experience might serve an emotional regulation function by removing one's thinking from the current situation to allow more thorough analysis in another less threatening context ( Josephson, Singer, & Salovey, 1996 ; Sarason, Potter, Sarason, 1986 ). Indeed, Gross (1998) describes reflection on incongruent past affective events as a form of the distraction regulation strategy, which is used to change an emotional experience by shifting attention away from the current affect-eliciting event.

Clearly, more research is needed to understand the influence of reflecting on personal experiences and case examples to inform ethical decision-making. In the present effort, we have focused on the effects of general positive and negative affective frame, but cases that induce discrete emotional reactions, such as anger, fear, or excitement, may operate differently than general affect ( Maitlis & Ozcelik, 2004 ; Tiedens & Linton, 2001 ). Overall, this study suggests important issues for investigation, and indicates that there may be some particular value in positive case examples ( Pritchard, 1993 ).

It is perhaps somewhat early in this line of investigation to make strong instructional recommendations, but these findings do suggest that there may be a place for reflection on personal experiences and practice in applying case material in ethics instruction. Such instruction might focus on informing people of the value of drawing upon personal experiences and techniques for doing so effectively. In addition, this approach would emphasize active and ongoing learning by encouraging a reflective analysis of personal experiences, such that ethical events are examined, evaluated and incorporated into one's knowledge to facilitate future decision-making ( Bell & Kozlowski, 2008 ; McAdoo & Manwaring, 2009 ). It may even be possible to provide individuals with techniques reframing negative personal experiences more positively ( Wisco & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2009 ). Additional research will shed light on just how to instruct people to analyze personal cases and what elements to focus on.

Our conclusions and implications should be considered in light of several limitations. First, the present study was conducted in a sample of undergraduate students, which may limit generalizability of these results to individuals who are older, or have more work experience. However, this concern is mitigated somewhat, given that the sample was older than the typical undergraduate sample, and the majority of participants reported having work experience. Another limitation pertains to the methodology employed; we utilized simulated business scenarios where participants took on the role of a character, but nonetheless these are not real-world problems. However, this methodology provides a low-risk assessment of the critical variables of interest, and has been shown to provide reliable and valid results studying ethics-related phenomena ( Mumford et al. 2006 ). However, as the results indicated, the effect sizes obtained in this study were small.

In addition, in this study, participants were prompted to self-reflect upon a past experience, as opposed to spontaneously drawing upon this information. It may be that individuals do not naturally ask themselves the types of questions about past experiences that they were asked to think about here. Finally, given the range of potential solutions and explanations for decisions that participants might choose, participants responded to the study prompts in an open-ended fashion. Thus, measurement of the dependent variables was based upon expert ratings of these responses. Although the raters were extensively trained in the constructs of interest, provided benchmark examples, and the inter-rater agreement coefficients were sizable, this approach to measurement may be a weakness because it is somewhat subjective.

Despite this study's limitations, these findings provide evidence that past experience is an influential source of information to draw upon when facing ethical problems. Additional research examining self-reflection and other processes in ethical decision-making is needed to better understand this complex phenomenon. We are hopeful that this study will encourage that future work.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by grant 5R01NR010341-02 from the National Institutes of Health and the Office of Research Integrity, Michael D. Mumford, Principal Investigator. We would like to thank Xiaoqian Wang and Jay Caughron for their assistance and support on this project.

Background Information

Buy More is a retail store franchise that has 20 locations in the Southwest and specializes in selling high end products for use in peoples’ homes. Because it is a franchise, each store is individually operated so that they sell the same products, but the managers can make many decisions about their individual stores, such as hiring and firing employees and buying different products to meet the local needs of the customers. Buy More specializes in selling high quality products and caters to upper middle class customers. They pride themselves on their standards for quality products and satisfaction, boasting the slogan “Buy More, Buy Better.” Customers seem to enjoy being able to buy better quality products that break less and hold up over time, and this has made Buy More relatively successful in the retail market. Since being founded 30 years ago, Buy More has continued to grow and expand its number of franchises.

You are the store manager for the Buy More store in your hometown. You have worked at this store for 9 years and are generally happy with your job. You worked your way up from an hourly sales associate to being a supervisor to finally becoming the manager for the entire store. On average, you manage about 25 employees, but many more during the holiday season. On a daily basis, you oversee the employees who work on the sales floor, oversee incoming shipments, handle customer service complaints, and monitor the cashiers. When needed, you also train new employees. As the store manager, you are also responsible for keeping an eye on the store's profit margin, managing the store's bank accounts, and making the nightly deposits at the bank.

Data Management Scenario

One of the managers at another store resigned and your company urgently needs to hire another one. In the past, the company has promoted from within as well as hired people from outside of the company. You have always supported promoting current employees before outside employees, especially as your current employees have stuck with the company for a while and performed well. Your corporate supervisor started the interviewing process and selected two top candidates; one is from outside of the company and another, Alex, is a supervisor in your store that you think would be perfect for the position. Alex has worked for the company for 5 years and has been committed and dedicated to his work. Your supervisor does not care who you hire as long as you find a qualified person to fill the position as soon as possible. Your supervisor tells you to make the final decision and send the report to the corporate human resources department. If you want to hire someone from within, you have to review the performance appraisal (PA) scores for the recommended employee looking at the past 3 years of performance. Your supervisor gives you the resume and interview score for the external applicant and tells you to make a similar report for Alex so that they can be compared. Your supervisor tells you that Alex should have the same or better performance than the other applicant.

You look at the external applicant's resume and it is really good. He has a college degree and a lot of job experience, but has not worked in this specific area of retail. You are personally convinced that he is not committed to this job for a career, and will likely leave the company after a few years, but you don't have the facts to prove it. You were not present at the interview to make an accurate judgment about how long he might stay with the company. When you summarize the performance scores, Alex's task performance score is 4.4 and social performance is 4.5, whereas the external candidate has 4.6 and 4.8. Alex didn't do very well when he started because it took him some time to get used to this kind of work, but his performance has increased over the last two years. If you don't count his first year of performance appraisal scores, he has a 4.7 and a 4.9.

Contributor Information

Alison L. Antes, Northern Kentucky University.

Chase E. Thiel, The University of Oklahoma.

Laura E. Martin, Midwestern State University.

Cheryl K. Stenmark, Angelo State University.

Shane Connelly, The University of Oklahoma.

Lynn D. Devenport, The University of Oklahoma.

Michael D. Mumford, The University of Oklahoma.

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NTI Recorded Session NTI23279

Ethical Dilemmas in Contemporary Healthcare: Case Studies and Discussion

Author(s): Latonya Brumfield, Shelly Sanders, Katharine Sinclair-Faulkner

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Contact Hours 1.00

CERP B 1.00

Expires Dec 15, 2026

Topics: Ethics

Role: Staff

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Activity Summary

Required reading for all learners: Implicit Bias impacts patient outcomes

• Identify key considerations when examining ethical dilemmas.
• Assess the frameworks presented for use in ethical decision-making.
• Apply an ethical decision-making framework to an ethical dilemma.

Continuing Education Disclosure Statement

Learners must attend/view/read the entire activity, read Implicit Bias impacts patient outcomes , and complete the associated evaluation to be awarded the contact hours or CERP. No partial credit will be awarded.

Accreditation

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation.

Provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider number CEP 1036, for 1.00 contact hours.

Accreditation refers to recognition of continuing education only and does not imply AACN, ANCC, or CBRN approval or endorsement of any commercial products discussed or displayed in conjunction with this educational activity.

Any relevant relationship between an ineligible company and an individual with the ability to influence clinical content will be identified by the Nurse Planner within the activity. Any relevant relationship between an ineligible company and an individual with the ability to influence clinical content has been mitigated.

AACN programming meets the standards for most states that require mandatory continuing education contact hours for license and/or certification renewal. AACN recommends consulting with your state board of nursing or credentialing organization before submitting CE to fulfill continuing education requirements.

Continuing Education Activities are nonrefundable.

• 2.3 Using ethical concepts to analyze case studies

Ethical case analysis is a common exercise for identifying and reasoning about ethical challenges in complex situations. Analyzing ethical case studies with your mentors, colleagues, and peer students also provides opportunities for each participant to articulate her own ethical values and to seek ethical consensus within the group. The Rock Ethics Institute provides a 12-step approach for analyzing ethical case studies. This step-by-step framework includes:

1. State the nature of the ethical issue you’ve initially spotted 2. List the relevant facts 3. Identify stakeholders 4. Clarify the underlying values 5. Consider consequences 6. Identify relevant rights/duties 7. Reflect on which virtues apply 8. Consider relevant relationships 9. Develop a list of potential responses 10. Use moral imagination to consider each option based on the above considerations 11. Choose the best option 12. Consider what could be done in the future to prevent the problem

Application of the 12 steps to an ethics scenario is illustrated in a series of instructional videos .

For those of you who are familiar with engineering design, could you identify the parallel between this ethical reasoning framework and the engineering design process? When we rephrase the 12 steps using the language of design, we might see that both emphasize an iterative process for identifying and solving open-ended challenges (see Figure 4).

Figure 4 A Design-Based Framework for Ethics Case Analysis.

As big data technologies become widely adopted by business and governmental sectors, we find ourselves often confronted by the following question: To what extent can we trust computer algorithms to make ethical decisions for us? Another way to ask this question is: Do algorithms have ethical agency? Ethical agency is the ability to act responsibly according to one’s ethical judgment of right and wrong (MacIntyre, 1999; van der Velden, 2009). For example, adult human beings have ethical agency because they have a sense of what is ethically right. That is, we accept that adults make intentional choices to act ethically or not, and they can be held accountable for their actions. Admittedly, machines (and computers) can be programmed to do things we consider ethically right. For example, we can program an electrical system to turn off the lights when the sensors detect no people in a room. In this case, it is the programmer, not the electrical system, that decides avoiding energy waste is ethically right. The human programmer is able to fully grasp the meanings of and connections between “no people in a room,” “turning off the lights,” and “avoiding energy waste.” However, in the case of big data analysis, the human actors (e.g., authors of the algorithms) may have less grasping of the entire situation because 1) they do not interact directly with the data (the algorithms do so), and 2) they might be working on a tiny proportion of a vast network of interrelated algorithms (Ananny, 2016). Faced with enormously complex systems and incomplete information, the human actors (e.g., researchers and programmers) involved in big data analysis sometimes have to delegate the power of making ethical decisions to algorithms. Yet algorithms are not fully capable of making sense of the patterns they recognize or the impact of their recommendations. Or we can say that algorithms have at the best “partial ethical agency.” The following case study highlights the challenges of letting algorithms with partial ethical agency to make important decisions on behalf of humans.

Identifying potential terrorists with algorithms?

In early 2016, counter-terrorism officials from the federal government met with leaders of giant tech companies in the Silicon Valley to discuss strategies for identifying and preventing terrorism on social networks. Among the proposals was a suggestion for the tech companies to develop a security algorithm that will detect, measure, and flag “radicalization” from social network posts. The federal officials who proposed this algorithm also cited the example of the Facebook suicide prevention mechanisms, which allows Facebook users to report suicidal content to the company.

You could also listen to a discussion about this proposal at WNYC .

Questions for Case Analysis

• What are ethically sound responses to the federal officials’ proposal? Use the 12-step approach or the Design-Based Framework to analyze this case.
• Which of the four ethical concepts (integrity, rights, impact, and epistemic norms) introduced in the above section are applicable to this case?

The Ethics of Data Management

• Introduction

Unit 1: Planning for Data

• Unit 2: Generating Data

Unit 3: Processing Data

Unit 4: using, sharing, and preserving data.

• 1.1 Definitions of data
• 1.2 The ecosystem of data: multiple actors and stakeholders
• 2.1 The research process and relevant actors
• 2.2 Relevant ethical concepts
• 2.4 Overall strategies for ethical data management
• Summary and references

Unit 2: Generating data

• 1. Sources of Data
• 2.1 Poor data practices in the lab
• 2.2 Research culture, proper protocols, and training
• 2.3 Lab notebook
• 2.4 Collective review of data
• 3.1 Human subjects: The Common Rule and IRB
• 3.2 Additional ethical concerns for collecting data from human subjects
• 3.3 Use of animals in research: The Animal Welfare Act and IACUC
• 1. Statistics and Data Integrity
• 2.1 Data fishing and trimming
• 2.2 Image manipulation
• 3.1 Conflict of interest
• 3.2 Interests, (implicit) biases, and uncertainty
• 1.1 The communal, practical, and educational purposes of research
• 1.2 Principles of disseminating research
• 2.1 Intellectual property: copy rights, trade secrets, and patents
• 2.2 Transparency, accountability, and profitability
• 2.3 Data sharing policies from funding agencies and journals
• 2.4 Open access
• 3.1 Methods of data storage
• 3.2 Period of retention
• 3.3 Data security

Unit 5: Big Data

• 1.1 Cognitive questions
• 1.2 The question of risk
• 1.3 The question of justice
• 2. Metadata and Algorithms
• 3. Cloud Computing

20 Common Examples of Ethical Dilemmas in Nursing + How to Deal With Them

If you are a nurse, chances are you have faced situations where you had to make decisions based on your belief of whether something is right or wrong, safe or unsafe. This type of decision is based upon a system of ethical behavior. It is essential that all nurses develop and implement ethical values into nursing practice. If this sounds familiar, you may be asking, "What are the common examples of ethical dilemmas in nursing?" There are many things that could be considered an ethical dilemma in nursing, and it is important for nurses to know how to address them when they occur. In this article, I will share the 20 most common examples of ethical dilemmas in nursing and offer some insight into handling them.

What Is An Ethical Dilemma In Nursing?

5 main reasons why nurses face with ethical dilemmas in nursing.

1. Patients or their loved ones must make life or death decisions 2. The patient refuses treatment 3. Nursing assignments may contradict cultural or religious beliefs 4. Nursing peers demonstrate incompetence 5. Inadequate staffing

How To Identify Ethical Dilemmas In Nursing?

What are the common examples of ethical dilemmas in nursing, example #1: pro-life vs. pro-choice, ethical dilemma:, how to deal with this ethical dilemma:, example #2: protecting the adolescent’s right to privacy, example #3: empirical knowledge vs. religious beliefs, example #4: parent refuses to vaccinate child, example #5: personal and professional boundaries related to social media, example #6: nurse is instructed to have patient with low literacy level to sign consent for treatment, example #7: end-of-life decision-making, example #8: inadequate resources to provide care, example #9: former patients - to date or not to date, example #10: informed consent, example #11: inadequate staffing, example #12: spirituality vs. science, example #13: patient addicted to prescription pain medication, example #14: duty and compassion do not align with facility safety protocols, example #15: patient does not have an advanced directive, example #16: incompetence among nursing peers, example #17: disclosing the seriousness of medical conditions, example #18: questioning physician orders, example #19: asked to work in a department without training, example #20: beneficence vs. autonomy, 4 consequences of avoiding ethical dilemmas in nursing, 1. nurses can quickly experience burnout., 2. avoiding ethical dilemmas in nursing can lead to legal issues., 3. nurses who avoid ethical dilemmas could lose their jobs., 4. loss of licensure:, my final thoughts.

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Ethical Dilemma: 10 Heartbreaking Case Studies

Last updated on April 2, 2024 by Alex Andrews George

In a small village in Maharashtra, a teacher named Ravi and his wife Maya, a nurse, faced a tough choice after an earthquake.

The only hospital in the village was damaged, and they could only save one life with the limited medical supplies: Maya’s critically injured mother or a young and bright boy from Ravi’s school, who also needed urgent surgery.

Choosing between saving Maya’s mother, who meant everything to her, or the young boy, who represented the village’s future, was heartbreakingly difficult.

This story highlights the painful decisions we sometimes must make, where saving one life means losing another, testing our deepest values and principles.

Based on this story, we dive into the complex world of ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts, where choices are never black and white, and every decision carries the weight of unforeseen consequences.

Table of Contents

What is an ethical dilemma?

An ethical dilemma occurs when a person is faced with a situation that requires a choice between two or more conflicting ethical principles or values .

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In such dilemmas, no matter what choice is made, some ethical principle is compromised.

The essence of an ethical dilemma is that it involves a difficult decision-making process where, typically, a clear-cut right or wrong answer doesn’t exist, or if it does, it may carry significant negative consequences for someone involved.

Definition of ethical dilemma

An ethical dilemma is a complex situation that often involves an apparent mental conflict between moral imperatives, in which to obey one would result in transgressing another.

It’s characterized by:

• Conflicting Values: Individuals or organizations must choose between competing ethical principles or values.
• No Perfect Solution: Each choice involves a compromise or violation of an ethical principle.
• Significant Consequences: The choices have significant potential impacts on the well-being or rights of individuals or groups.

5 Cases of Ethical Dilemma

Ethical dilemmas can arise across various fields and situations, reflecting the complexity of moral decisions in real-world scenarios. Here are more examples:

1. Loyalty to the employer vs. the moral obligation to protect the public and the environment

• An employee discovers that their company is engaging in illegal activities, such as dumping toxic waste into a river, which is both environmentally damaging and a serious health hazard to nearby communities.
• The employee faces an ethical dilemma between reporting the misconduct, potentially leading to legal action against the company and safeguarding public and environmental health, and remaining silent to protect their job and the livelihoods of their colleagues.
• Ethical Dilemma: Loyalty to the employer vs. the moral obligation to protect the public and the environment.

2. Upholding academic integrity vs. loyalty to a friend.

• A student witnesses a close friend cheating during an important exam.
• If the friend is reported and found guilty, they could face severe consequences, including failing the course or expulsion, which might ruin their academic career and future prospects.
• The student is torn between reporting the cheating, which is an honest action, and protecting their friend’s future.
• Ethical Dilemma: Upholding academic integrity vs. loyalty to a friend.

3. The safety of passengers vs. the safety of pedestrians

• Programmers of autonomous vehicles face an ethical dilemma in creating algorithms for unavoidable accidents.
• For example, if an accident is inevitable and the choice is between altering the vehicle’s path to avoid hitting a pedestrian, thereby endangering the passengers, or protecting the passengers at the cost of the pedestrian’s life, how should the car be programmed to act?
• Ethical Dilemma: The safety of passengers vs. the safety of pedestrians.

4. The duty to report news truthfully vs. the potential harm to public safety and societal peace

• A journalist obtains exclusive footage of a terrorist group committing an atrocity.
• Publishing the footage could inform the public about the severity of the situation and the threat posed by the terrorist group, but it could also spread fear, possibly lead to public panic, and serve the terrorists’ goal of gaining attention for their cause.
• Dilemma: The duty to report news truthfully vs. the potential harm that such reporting might cause to public safety and societal peace.

5. Upholding the client-lawyer confidentiality vs. the moral responsibility to prevent future crimes.

• A defence attorney knows their client is guilty of a serious crime and intends to commit similar crimes in the future.
• The attorney faces an ethical dilemma between maintaining client confidentiality, a cornerstone of legal ethics, and the moral obligation to prevent future harm.
• Ethical Dilemma: Upholding the client-lawyer confidentiality vs. the moral responsibility to prevent future crimes.

These examples highlight the range and depth of ethical dilemmas that individuals can face, requiring them to weigh competing values and principles against the backdrop of potential consequences for their actions or inactions.

Moral Conflicts

Ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts are closely related concepts that often overlap in discussions of ethics and morality, but they can be distinguished by their context and the nature of the choices they involve.

Ethical Dilemma

An ethical dilemma arises when a person must choose between two or more actions that have ethical implications, making it difficult to decide what is the right or wrong course of action.

Ethical dilemmas often involve a decision-making process where each option violates some ethical principle or value, leading to a situation where no choice is entirely free from ethical fault.

These dilemmas typically occur within a specific professional, societal, or organizational context and involve considering external codes of ethics, laws, or social norms.

Moral Conflict

Moral conflict, on the other hand, refers to a situation where an individual’s values, principles, or beliefs conflict, leading to an internal struggle about the right course of action.

Moral conflicts are deeply personal and subjective, focusing on an individual’s conscience and moral reasoning rather than external rules or codes.

While ethical dilemmas might require an individual to choose between competing external obligations or duties, moral conflicts involve a more introspective struggle with one’s values and beliefs.

Key Differences Between Ethical Dilemmas and Moral Conflict

• Context: Ethical dilemmas often involve a choice between actions in a professional or social context, where external codes of conduct or laws must be considered. Moral conflicts are internal struggles over personal values and beliefs.
• Nature of Conflict: Ethical dilemmas typically involve competing ethical principles or obligations, where adhering to one may lead to the violation of another. Moral conflicts are about reconciling conflicting personal morals or values.
• Resolution: Resolving an ethical dilemma often involves choosing the “lesser evil” or the option that upholds the most critical ethical principle in a given context. Solving a moral conflict might require personal reflection, growth, and a deeper understanding of one’s own values.

While they are distinct, ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts can occur simultaneously, complicating the decision-making process further.

A person might face an ethical dilemma at work (e.g., whether to report a colleague’s wrongdoing) that also triggers a moral conflict (e.g., loyalty to a friend versus commitment to honesty).

This interplay underscores the complexity of ethical and moral reasoning in real-world situations.

5 Cases of Moral Conflicts

Moral conflicts arise when individuals face situations requiring them to choose between two or more conflicting moral principles or values. Here are five examples illustrating such conflicts:

1. Honesty vs. Compassion

• Situation: You find out that a close friend has lied on their resume to get a job they desperately need.
• Conflicting Morals: The value of honesty (telling the truth or reporting the lie) conflicts with compassion (understanding your friend’s desperate situation and wanting to support them).

2. Loyalty vs. Justice

• Situation: A family member is involved in a minor legal infraction and asks you to provide them with an alibi to avoid consequences.
• Conflicting Morals: Loyalty to your family member, wishing to protect them, conflicts with your sense of justice and the importance of facing legal consequences for one’s actions.

3. Self-sacrifice vs. Self-preservation

• Situation: During a disaster, you have the opportunity to save others by putting yourself in significant danger, or ensure your own safety, knowing others might not survive.
• Conflicting Morals: The principle of self-sacrifice, putting the needs of others before your own, conflicts with self-preservation, the instinct to protect oneself from harm.

4. Equality vs. Meritocracy

• Situation: In a workplace, you must decide between promoting an employee who has worked longer at the company (seniority) and another who has shown exceptional skill and productivity but has less tenure.
• Conflicting Morals: The value of treating everyone equally and fairly conflicts with meritocracy, where rewards are based on individual achievement and capabilities.

5. Freedom vs. Security

• Situation: In governing a community, you must decide whether to implement strict security measures that infringe on personal freedoms to ensure public safety.
• Conflicting Morals: The importance of individual freedom and autonomy conflicts with the collective need for security and protection from harm.

These examples highlight the complexity of moral conflicts, where deciding in favour of one value inevitably leads to the compromise or negation of another , reflecting the nuanced nature of ethical decision-making.

Also read: Ethical Concerns and Dilemmas In Government And Private Institutions

The moments of ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts challenge us to weigh our values against the harsh realities of our circumstances, pushing us to make decisions that can redefine who we are and what we stand for.

The story of Ravi and Maya, the couple torn between family and community, serves as a poignant reminder of the complex nature of ethical decision-making .

Such dilemmas compel us to question not just our morality but the very essence of what it means to be human.

They remind us that there are no easy answers in the pursuit of doing what is right.

Whether it’s choosing between fairness and loyalty, or the welfare of one versus the greater good, these decisions are laden with the weight of potential regret and the hope for understanding and forgiveness.

In conclusion, ethical dilemmas and moral conflicts are not mere philosophical quandaries to be pondered from afar; they are real, lived experiences that test our integrity , empathy , and courage.

As we tread this precarious path, let us strive for a balance between our duties to others and our commitment to our principles, recognizing that we can confront and navigate these dilemmas that ultimately define our humanity.

The journey through these challenges is arduous and fraught with uncertainty, but it is also a testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit, ever aspiring to a higher standard of morality and justice.

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• 7. Outlook on Current Developments Regarding Victims
• 8. Victims of Crime and International Law
• 1. The Many Forms of Violence against Children
• 2. The Impact of Violence on Children
• 3. States' Obligations to Prevent VAC and Protect Child Victims
• 4. Improving the Prevention of Violence against Children
• 5. Improving the Criminal Justice Response to VAC
• 6. Addressing Violence against Children within the Justice System
• 1. The Role of the Justice System
• 2. Convention on the Rights of the Child & International Legal Framework on Children's Rights
• 3. Justice for Children
• 4. Justice for Children in Conflict with the Law
• 5. Realizing Justice for Children
• 1a. Judicial Independence as Fundamental Value of Rule of Law & of Constitutionalism
• 1b. Main Factors Aimed at Securing Judicial Independence
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• 2b. Institutional and Functional Role of Prosecutors
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• Basics of Computing
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• Cybercrime in Brief
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• Crime of Trafficking in Persons
• The Issue of Consent
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• Global Podcast Series
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University Module Series: Integrity & Ethics

Module 12: integrity, ethics and law.

  This module is a resource for lecturers  

Case studies.

Choose one or more of the following case studies and lead a discussion which allows students to address and debate issues of integrity, ethics and law. If time allows, let the students vote on which case studies they want to discuss.

For lecturers teaching large classes, case studies with multiple parts and different methods of solution lend themselves well to the group size and energy in such an environment. Lecturers can begin by having students vote on which case study they prefer. Lecturers could break down analysis of the chosen case study into steps which appear to students in sequential order, thereby ensuring that larger groups stay on track. Lecturers may instruct students to discuss questions in a small group without moving from their seat, and nominate one person to speak for the group if called upon. There is no need to provide excessive amounts of time for group discussion, as ideas can be developed further with the class as a whole. Lecturers can vary the group they call upon to encourage responsive participation.

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• Leadership Ethics Cases
• Markkula Center for Applied Ethics
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Find ethical case studies on leadership ethics, including scenarios for top management on issues such as downsizing and management responsibilities. (For permission to reprint articles, submit requests to  [email protected] .)

The importance of academic institutions in shaping the societal narrative is increasingly showcased by constant media exposure and continuous requests for social commentary. This case study outlines effective methodologies of leadership, ethics, and change management within an organization, for the purpose of motivating and engaging stakeholders to empathize with and carry out a shared directive.

Extensive teaching note based on interviews with Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz. The teaching note can be used to explore issues around whistleblowing, leadership, the blocks to ethical behavior inside organizations, and board governance.

Case study on the history making GameStop short and stock price surge that occurred during January 2021.

What did Urban Meyer know and when did he know it?

Case study explores Kevin Johnson's response to an incident where two African Americans were asked to leave a Philadelphia Starbucks.

Three examples of CEOs whose leadership of their firm has been called into question over matters of their personal integrity and behavior.

What should business leaders take away from the disaster?

Business & government struggle over encryption’s proper place.

In many ways, WorldCom is just another case of failed corporate governance, accounting abuses, and outright greed.

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Ethical Dilemmas

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• First Online: 29 January 2021
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• Silvia Puiu 7  

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Ethical conflict ; Ethical problems ; Moral conflict ; Moral dilemmas ; Moral problems

Ethical dilemmas refer to those situations in which the individual has to choose between two alternatives that are both considered unacceptable from a moral point of view. The decision maker is in a conflictual state of mind and needs to analyze the problem more thoroughly in order to make the best decision in those circumstances. In most cases, the individual will have to make a compromise. One of the strongest dilemmas in the literature is known as Sophie’s choice after the novel with the same name written by William Styron in 1979 or the trolley dilemma. When facing with an ethical dilemma, the decider has the following choices: one of the opposing alternatives or not choosing anything at all. In order to make the best or the right decision in a specific situation, the individual should address the right questions and formulate as clear as possible the ethical dilemma and the...

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Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Craiova, Craiova, Romania

Silvia Puiu

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London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

Samuel Idowu

Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

René Schmidpeter

College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

Nicholas Capaldi

International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

Liangrong Zu

Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

Mara Del Baldo

Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

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Yasar University, Izmir, Turkey

Duygu Türker

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Puiu, S. (2021). Ethical Dilemmas. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_570-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_570-1

Received : 15 June 2020

Accepted : 24 August 2020

Published : 29 January 2021

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-02006-4

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-02006-4

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