Eac toolkit - uprm ethics bowl - iit summer institute follow-up  (Page 2/4)

Supplementary information

Summary of scoring criteria

• Intelligibility includes three skills or abilities: (1) the ability to construct and compare multiple arguments representing multiple viewpoints; (2) the ability to construct arguments and provide reasons that are clear, coherent, and factually correct; (3) evidence of realizing the virtue of reasonableness by formulating and presenting value integrative solutions.
• Integrating Ethical Concerns includes three skills: (1) presenting positions that are clearly reversible between stakeholders; (2) identifying and weighing key consequences of positions considered; (3) developing positions that integrate values like integrity, responsibility, reasonableness, honesty, humility, and justice.
• Feasibility implies that the positions taken and the arguments formulated demonstrate full recognition and integration of interest, resource, and technical constraints. While solutions are designed with constraints in mind, these do not serve to trump ethical considerations.
• Moral Imagination and Moral Creativity demonstrate four skill sets: (1) ability to clearly formulate and frame ethical issues and problems; (2) ability to provide multiple framings of a given situation; (3) ability to identify and integrate conflicting stakeholders and stakes; (4) ability to generate solutions and positions that are non-obvious, i.e., go beyond what is given in the situation.

Learning objectives

The learning objectives for this module conveniently divide into content areas and skills. The content objectives can be found in the AACSB ethics criteria of ethical leadership, ethical decision-making, social responsibility, and corporate governance . The skills objectives include the skills emphasized at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez: ethical awareness, ethical evaluation, ethical integration, ethical prevention, and value realization . In addition, there are the criteria of moral creativity and moral imagination.

Content objectives

• Ethical Leadership : You have examined ethical leadership by looking at the moral exemplars portrayed in the module of that name. What skills and virtues do moral exemplars exhibit? How do these skills and virtues "cluster"? What can you do to exhibit moral leadership? In making and defending your decisions in the Ethics Bowl, spend time showing the peer review teams how your decisions exhibit moral leadership.
• Ethical Decision-Making : We are using a decision making framework this semester that emphasizes four stages: (1) problem specification, (2) solution generation, (3) solution testing, (4) solution implementation. Spend time during the debate to show that you know what the problem is you are trying to solve. In preparing for the debate, you have carried out a brainstorming process to generate a solution list; you will be able to show evidence of this when you do your in-depth case analysis. Solution testing you carry out when you evaluate and rank alternatives in terms of their ethics. Try not to neglect the final stage where you show the feasibility of the solution you are advocating. Show that you have thought through implementation carefully, even to the extent of uncovering the most likely obstacles to your solution.
• Social Responsibility : The Socio-Technical System grids we have worked on in class will help to uncover issues of social responsibility in the cases for the Ethics Bowl. Social responsibility requires that you step back from your decision point to look at the broader social and political implications of what you are doing.
• Corporate Governance : Many of you will quickly determine that the participant perspectives from which you are asked to make your decisions are tightly constrained by organizational problems. Companies that discourage communication, seek to pass blame down to those low on the hierarchy, and pressure employees to take legal and ethical short cuts bear much of the blame for creating the ethical problems you are required to solve. But stay focused on your agent's perspective. Formulate concrete strategies for leading organizational change from that perspective. You can talk about changing the organizational culture. Solving the problem may require reforming the "system." But do not fall into the trap of blaming the system.