Leadership and Ethics: Analyzing the Janice and John Case Study

This case study delves into the ethical dilemma presented by the Janice and John scenario, where a manager attempts to take credit for an employee's work. The assignment explores various ethical issues, including intellectual property rights, the use of company resources, and the potential for coercion. It examines the ethical perspectives a manager can adopt, such as utilitarianism, rights and duties, and justice/fairness, to determine the most appropriate course of action. The analysis highlights how different ethical frameworks lead to varied recommendations, emphasizing the importance of considering stakeholder happiness, individual rights, and equitable distribution of benefits. The study concludes by underscoring that the ethical course of action is contingent on the manager's chosen ethical perspective and provides several courses of action. The case study references key literature on ethical leadership and management ethics to support its analysis.

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Ethical Consideration-Case Study
Managers are constantly faced with ethical dilemmas that require moral standing to decide on
what is right and wrong. A manager has an obligation to act in a way that is acceptable and
appropriate to the company and subordinates respectively (Trevino and Nelson, 2016). To
achieve ethical sound decisions and actions, managers can adapt utilitarian, rights and duties, or
justice or fairness perspectives. The following write up discusses the decision and
recommendation of a course of action for a manager and employees where a manager takes
credit of an employee’s work that was does during company time a Janice and John case
scenario.
Ethical issues in the Case Scenario
There are several ethical issues in the case study. First, Janice, the boss wants to take credit of
John’s program. Janice wants to take full credit of a program that she did not create herself and
deny john the rights to his own work. The second ethical issue is that John used company’s time
to create the program. This means that john used the time resource of the company to create a
program that will give him personal benefits. The third ethical issue is that Janice wants to use
her position to threaten John if he objects her decision. The other ethical issue is that Janice
wants to bride John and gives him promotion and pay raise in order to agree to her decision.
Ethical Consideration
John is not being treated justly and his rights are not being protected. John has the intellectual
rights to the program and deserves credit. He needs to be acknowledged whenever the project is
being presented. Janice will be stealing John’s program if she does not give John any credit. It is
ethical for a manager to take credit for work of subordinate when the manager delegated the
work to the subordinate (Lawton and Páez, 2015). The manager can also take shared credit with
the subordinate because the employees used the company’s time.
Course of Action
Janice ethical course of action is dependent to ethical perspective that she uses. By adapting
utilitarian perspectives, Janice will give john full credit and present the package to her boss in a

way that it makes them both look good. According to Letwin et al. (2016), the utilitarian
perspective holds that the stakeholders must be happiest with the course of action. John will be
happiest by getting credit for his program while Janice will be happy for meeting her supervisor
expectation and not undertaking a course of action that is morally wrong. Secondly, if Janice
chooses to use rights and duties perspective, she will proceed and take John’s work. John is an
employee of the company and the company has rights over him and work done within
company’s time. Lastly, if Janice uses justice or fairness perspective, she will create a team
environment in which they both present the program together. According to Ruiz et al (2015)
justice perspective to ethical decisions requires decisions to focus on fair and equitable
distribution of benefits and costs among individuals. This course of action will therefore
distribute benefits and burdens equally to both John and Janice. John will get pay raise and
promotion while Janice will be acknowledged for undertaking her duties. Benefits will not be
distributed fairly if John get the promotion and pay raise but lacks the credit for the work he did
if Janice claims authorship of the program. Therefore, the course of action in ethical dilemmas
depends on the manager’s ethical perspective.

References
Lawton, A. and Páez, I., 2015. Developing a framework for ethical leadership. Journal of
Business Ethics, 130(3), pp.639-649.
Letwin, C., Wo, D., Folger, R., Rice, D., Taylor, R., Richard, B. and Taylor, S., 2016. The
“right” and the “good” in ethical leadership: Implications for supervisors’ performance and
promotability evaluations. Journal of Business Ethics, 137(4), pp.743-755.
Ruiz, P., Martinez, R., Rodrigo, J. and Diaz, C., 2015. Level of coherence among ethics program
components and its impact on ethical intent. Journal of Business Ethics, 128(4), pp.725-742.
Trevino, L.K. and Nelson, K.A., 2016. Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do
it right. John Wiley & Sons.