The Problem: The Case of the Shrinking Work Hours

As a company which employs scientists and lab techs, you know that your most valued asset is the creativity of your employees. You also know that creativity doesn’t always show up between the designated hours of 8 and 5. Thus, you have a very open flex time schedule for your employees. However, you have been noticing that some of your staff are abusing the privilege. The 45 people involved in the manufacturing group are not a problem as they work designated shifts and are responsible. However, some of the 30 Ph.D. qualified scientists and 60 college educated lab techs are coming in late, leaving early, and not being fully present for their designated 40 hours a week.

As you explore the situation, you discover that five of the scientists are part of the problem. Two of them are your most productive scientists and responsible for some of your major product breakthroughs. Three of the scientists are performing adequately but are not exceptionally productive. About 10% of the tech staff are also playing fast and loose with their hours. Again, three are very productive, exceeding expectations as far as their work while the other six are adequate to below-adequate performers.

Please complete each section of this worksheet. Some people find that writing the answers out on another page and then "cutting and pasting" them into the worksheet lets you think through the problem better.

If you only have time to do part of this worksheet, click the "save work" button at the bottom of this page. At any later time, you can then return to this worksheet and continue.

Be Attentive: Set the ContextEthical Actor

The first step is to identify the ethical actor. In a sentence identify the ethical actor for this problem.

Stakeholders

The next step is to identify the stakeholders. List the other stakeholders for this problem.

Assumptions

In two or three bullet points, identify any assumptions you are making about the problem.