Attached are my assignments for this week. Please follow instructions all the way through and give the best work you can. If there are any questions or you cannot open links or .pdf please let me know

MPA506

Read:

• Required

  • Cooper, T. L. (2012). The responsible administrator: An approach to ethics for the administrative role (6th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

    • Chapter 2: Understanding Ethical Decision Making (Review the sections on Descriptive & Prescriptive Models)

    • Chapter 5: Conflicts of Responsibility: The Ethical Dilemma

  • Module notes

Module 3: Module Notes: Analyzing Amber’s Responsibility Conflicts

This module gives you an opportunity to examine how Amber, the Executive Director of The Pedestrian Advocates of Excelsiorville (PAE), can resolve conflicts that arise among her responsibilities. Cooper (2012) states that conflicting responsibilities can arise when administrators experience competing expectations, especially when the situation makes the administrator feel that both sets of expectations have significant costs associated with them. Cooper (2012) also indicates that confronting these conflicting responsibilities is the most typical way ethical dilemmas arise for administrators.

You will recall from Module 1 the situation where Jane, the Director of Operations for PAE, discovered some potential conflicts of interest involving Amber. She found out that Amber had been doing consulting work for two of the PAE Board members’ companies and one of these companies (Timothy’s) had just been awarded the contract with PAE to do PAE’s accounting work. In the Module 1 module notes, you examined this scenario from Jane’s point of view. Here, you will analyze the conflict from Amber’s point of view as it relates to her responsibilities. Assume for purposes of this analysis that Amber is a single parent and that she dreams of starting her own consulting business one day. Let’s go through Amber’s responsibilities and conflicts.

First, let us review Amber’s responsibilities as identified in Module 2. Amber has both objective and subjective responsibilities.

Amber has objective responsibility to:

• The PAE Board of Directors

• Her subordinates

• The law

• Elected officials

• The citizens of Excelsiorville

Amber has subjective responsibility to:

• Her general attitude toward her constituents and employees

• Her beliefs about the role of non-profit organizations

• Her beliefs about following the law

• Her loyalty to the organization

• Her role in maintaining good morale and a team spirit for her staff

• Her own sense of morality

Cooper (2012) identifies three of the most common types of conflicts: (1) among interests; (2) among various sources of authority; and (3) among roles. Note that conflicts of interest occur when legal obligations intersect for public administrators under state law.

In this scenario, Amber’s responsibility to the Board and her subordinates (and potentially to the law) is in conflict with her personal sense of morality (i.e., what she deems to be acceptable moral conduct). Amber earns a decent salary from PAE. However, she has found it is not enough to pay her bills as she faces some challenges as a single parent.

Amber’s sense of loyalty to the organization and its constituents can conflict with her own personal financial needs and professional goals for starting a consulting business after she decides to move on from the non-profit world. She must decide what action to take now that her subordinate, Jane, has challenged whether her side consulting work and the accounting services contract award to Timothy’s company are ethical.

In analyzing the conflicting responsibilities and resulting ethical dilemma due to Amber’s consulting work, you can explore various questions, including the following:

• Does Amber need to disclose her consulting relationships to the other Board members?

• Does state law require that Amber disclose these relationships? If so, to whom?

• Would Timothy’s company have been the best choice for the accounting services contract if Amber had not been doing consulting work for the company?

• Were there any “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” conversations between Timothy and Amber?

• What if Amber had been doing part-time work related to a personal hobby that was completely different from her work for PAE (e.g., cooking)? Does that change the analysis?

• What is the impact of Amber’s actions on staff morale and her responsibility to her subordinates?

Many would conclude that Amber should have applied an ethical decision-making model at least informally before accepting the consulting work and before awarding the accounting services contract to Timothy’s company. She could have disclosed the potential consulting gig to the Board (before she accepted it), and she could have withdrawn from the decision-making process for awarding the accounting services contract. Taking these actions would have helped Amber avoid Jane's and the Board's loss of trust, as well as any appearance of impropriety.

At this point, Amber has to be reactive rather than proactive. She could decide to resign from her consulting work for the Board member’s companies and disclose these relationships to the Board. She could have an independent committee review the accounting services contract award and ensure that Timothy’s company is still the best choice at the time of contract renewal. She can obtain outside training for herself and her team on avoiding conflicts of interest and the legal and ethical requirements for non-profit organizations regarding conflicts of interest.

ASSIGNMENTS:

In your textbook, Cooper provides a design approach to ethical decision-making. This is not the only model for ethical decision-making. For this discussion, you will research ethical decision-making models and locate an article or example illustrating how an organization or public administrator applied an ethical decision-making model.

Respond to the following:

• Locate an article or example illustrating an ethical decision-making model used by a public organization or individual public administrator and provide a summary of the steps outlined in this model.

• Provide your own analysis as to the general utility of this model in resolving ethical dilemmas in public organizations.

• Identify and explain one way in which the model you found is different from Cooper’s model.

Post your primary response (approximately 500 words)

For this discussion, you will use the conflict faced by Karah in Self-Test 2 (reproduced below) and apply the decision-making model you found for M3D1.

Karah is hiring a human resources expert to conduct recruiting, hiring, payroll, and benefits administration for her 50-employee, non-profit organization. She has reviewed the IRS rules on classification of consultants as independent contractors versus employees, and believes the way she has structured the HR expert’s work for the organization makes her an employee, not an independent contractor. Even after explaining this to her boss, Karah’s boss orders her to pay the HR expert as an independent contractor so the organization does not have to pay payroll taxes for her.

Respond to the following:

• Applying the decision-making model you found for M3D1, describe the steps Karah should take to attempt to resolve her ethical dilemma.

• If Karah had applied Cooper’s model instead of the model you found, would she have reached a different conclusion?  Why or why not?

Post your primary response (approximately 500 words)

One of the key tasks of public administrators is implementing policy. This could be implementing a new federal statute such as the Affordable Care Act or a state or local program. Conflicts could arise between the public administrator’s personal beliefs or values and the legal mandate the administrator is charged with implementing.

In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which struck down state bans on same-sex marriage. In the U.S., county clerks or other local officials are responsible for issuing marriage licenses to applicants meeting the requirements.

For this Application Assignment, you will analyze the scenario of Kim Davis, an elected county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because of the conflict between her religious beliefs and the law she implements. You will discuss what you believe an administrator in her position should do to resolve this ethical dilemma. Keep in mind that jail time is possible for declining to implement government policy. 

Note that this scenario obviously brings up legal issues as well, but for this assignment, you should focus only on the ethical issues involved.

This expository essay should be 2–3 pages, in Times Roman, font size 12, 1” margins, using APA format for any references you use.