Merger Madness

In this Assignment, you will be assessed by the following outcome:

Critique ethical decision making within the context of corporate social responsibility.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: Merger Madness weaves together ethical dilemmas from six typical business disciplines: Contracts (NDA agreements), governance (business model), management (workplace conditions), marketing (paid placement), IT (privacy), and corporate citizenship (culture and copyright).

You are the CEO of a start-up whose board has determined that you must accept one of two offers for merger. After the acquisition dance, with whom will you be dancing the last dance?

To resolve each dilemma, you will answer a series of questions that will help you analyze the problem and practice identifying and using different ethical perspectives. Then you can use all of the viewpoints when making a final decision. The exercise has several elements:

1. Introductory pages: Each exercise has between 1 and 4 introductory pages. These pages outline the learning objectives, provide additional background on ethical decision making, and set the stage for the task ahead.

2. Multiple-choice questions: The overarching story line is presented through short convers ations among the different characters in the exercise. Each character has a particular ethical perspective as well as a level of ethical maturity and perspective. These questions are designed to have one right answer: Were you able to accurately determine which analytical or ethical perspective the speaker was using in the conversation? The Overview of the Four Ethical Lenses, in the menu of the exercise, provides a quick reference guide demonstrating the differences among the ethical lenses.

3. Mastery bar: At the top of each page is a status bar that indicates correct and incorrect answers. You cannot complete the exercise until all questions are answered correctly. At the bottom of the mastery page is a feature that allows you to print out the questions and correct answers. For the final exercise, the status bar serves to track which of the two companies you favor as you move toward a final decision.

4. Iterations: Merger Madness presents five exercises. Each exercise includes multiple questions. You must complete every question, making notes of what you answered correctly or incorrectly. When all the questions have been answered, you will have the opportunity to go through the questions again, making corrections where appropriate. Your grade is based on how many times you had to go through the questions to assure all the answers were right.

5. Grading rubric: Upon completion, a grade will be assigned based on the number of iterations required. This applies to Merger Madness one through four.

6. Discussion: You will use the memo template provided in Course Resources, and transfer the memo written in the Ethics Game to it. That memo in template form will be submitted to the Discussion Board as your initial post in Unit 6.