| Course | LI410 Leadership in Practice |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 8 |
| Paper type | Ethical leadership scenario |
| Length | About 1,610 words, 8 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for LI410 Unit 8
Twelve Bales Held Back on Tonnage Night: A Unit 8 Ethical Leadership Scenario
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
LI410: Leadership in Practice
Unit 8 Ethical Leadership Scenario
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Kettle Run Recovery, its buyer, its crew and every figure are composite and illustrative; the frameworks and sources cited are real.
The Scenario
Kettle Run Recovery sells its mixed paper to a paperboard mill under a contract that sets a limit on prohibitive material, meaning plastic film, food-soiled cartons and anything else the mill cannot pulp. A load that fails the mill's inspection is downgraded or sent back, and the county pays the trucking both ways. The county also pays each shift crew a monthly tonnage bonus when outbound tons pass a target, a program the board adopted two years ago to reward throughput.
On the last night of March my shift was about eleven tons short of the target with one outbound truck left, scheduled for six in the morning. Around nine o'clock a run of wet loads from a single collection route came through presort faster than the sorters could clear them. By the time the surge passed, the baler had produced twelve bales of mixed paper with film and soggy cartons visible on every face.
At ten the plant manager texted all four supervisors: "Every bale on the 6 a.m. truck tonight. Let's get the bonus." I walked the twelve bales with the presort lead, and we both judged that they would probably fail the mill's inspection. In February the mill had rejected two of our loads, and the charge-back had come out of the operating budget.
I tagged the twelve bales for re-sort on the next night's shift and loaded the truck without them. The shift missed the target by [eleven] tons, and each crew member lost a bonus of [dollar amount]. The other three shifts had already met their own targets that month, so mine was the only crew that went without.
I did not explain the decision to the crew that night. I told the presort lead, wrote "12 MP bales held for QC" in the handover log and went home. At seven the next morning the plant manager posted in the crew group chat that second shift had held twelve bales and missed the target. That message was how most of my crew learned what I had done, and by the start of the next shift two sorters had asked the union steward whether the bonus could be restored.
Naming the Dilemma
Kidder (1995) argues that the hardest ethical choices are not right against wrong but right against right, and he groups them into four paradigms: truth against loyalty, individual against community, short term against long term, and justice against mercy. This scenario sits in two of them.
The first is short term against long term. The bonus was real money for people who earn close to the county's lowest wage band, and it was owed for a month of genuine work. Against it stood the next year of the contract. A mill that keeps rejecting loads from one supplier tightens inspection, lowers its price or stops buying, and any of those outcomes costs the same crew far more than one month's bonus.
The second is truth against loyalty. Shipping bales I believed would fail was not a lie in the plain sense, since nobody would sign a statement about them. But the contract exists because the mill relies on us to send what we say we are sending. Loading those bales would have used that reliance to collect a bonus, and my loyalty to the crew pulled hard the other way. Both sides of each paradigm are goods, which is why the decision deserved more explanation than I gave it.
Testing the Decision
Kidder (1995) offers three principles for resolving such dilemmas: an ends-based test that asks which choice produces the greatest good, a rule-based test that asks what rule one would want everyone in the same position to follow, and a care-based test that asks how one would want to be treated by the other party.
Ends-based. The bonus loss was certain and limited. The cost of a third rejected load in two months was likely and larger: a round-trip freight charge, a downgrade on the load and a mill buyer's renewed doubt about everything we ship. The following month's quality report showed no rejected loads, which suggests the held bales would have been a real risk, though one month proves little. On consequences alone, holding them was the better bet.
Rule-based. The rule I would want every supervisor to follow is plain: do not ship material you believe fails the buyer's specification in order to meet an internal target. A supervisor who applied the opposite rule, ship and let the mill sort it out, would make the contract meaningless. The decision holds under this test without strain.
Care-based. If I were the mill's receiving inspector, I would want suppliers to hold doubtful bales rather than pass them along. If I were a sorter on my own crew, I would want the bonus, but I would also want to know why it was gone before reading about it on my phone. The care-based test supports the decision and condemns the silence, and that split runs through the rest of this analysis.
The decision passed every test I could put to it; the way I left the crew to find out about it passed none.
Specific, demanding goals can narrow attention and encourage people to cut corners to reach the number (Ordóñez et al., 2009). The tonnage bonus is that kind of goal. It pays for outbound weight and says nothing about whether the weight will be accepted. My decision was partly a refusal to let the target define the job, but a supervisor who refuses a goal on behalf of his whole crew owes them the reasoning.
Moral Person, Moral Manager
In the model this unit assigns, being seen as an ethical leader depends on two separate things (Treviño et al., 2000). The moral person is the leader's own character and decisions: honesty, fairness, consistent principles. The moral manager is the leader's effort to make ethics visible to followers, by explaining decisions in ethical terms, rewarding the right conduct and treating values as part of the work rather than a private matter. A leader may score well on character and still neglect visibility, which leaves followers unable to tell an ethical leader from a merely unpredictable one.
On the first pillar, the night holds up reasonably well. I made a costly call on principle and recorded it honestly. On the second it fails. My crew never heard the reasons from me. They heard a fact from the plant manager framed around the missed bonus, and they filled in the rest themselves. Some assumed I had a grudge against the target program; one sorter told the steward I was "trying to look good for the mill." None of that was true, but nothing I did made the truth available.
Brown et al. (2005) found that followers judge ethical leadership partly through what they see the leader communicate and reward, consistent with a social learning view in which people learn what conduct is expected by watching how leaders explain their choices. By staying quiet, I taught the crew that holding bales is something supervisors do for reasons the crew does not hear about. That is close to the opposite of what I wanted them to learn: that sorting clean is the reason the bonus program exists at all.
The Cost, Counted
The bracketed figures below would come from the county's payroll and freight records. The crew's lost bonus totaled [crew size times bonus amount]. Re-sorting the twelve bales the next night took about [three] labor hours. Against that sits the likely cost of a rejected load: round-trip freight of [freight amount], a downgrade of [price difference per ton] on roughly twenty tons, and the less countable cost of a mill inspector's attention fixed on Kettle Run. Even with conservative estimates, the expected cost of shipping exceeded the bonus.
The figures support the decision, but they do not repay the crew, and I should say plainly that people who did nothing wrong lost money because of a surge they did not cause. The plant manager later agreed to raise with the board whether a quality hold should count toward a shift's tonnage, which would remove the conflict at its source, and that change would matter more than anything I say here.
Telling It on the Night
If the same twelve bales came off the baler tomorrow, the decision would be the same, and the next hour would be different. I would stop the line for five minutes before the truck was loaded, gather the crew at the presort platform and tell them three things: what the bales looked like and why the presort lead and I believed they would fail, what a rejected load cost the county in February, and that the decision meant the bonus was probably gone and that it was my decision, not theirs. I would then text the plant manager the same reasoning before he wrote anything to the crew, so that his morning message would carry the reason as well as the result.
Executives build a reputation for ethical leadership partly by talking about values often enough that followers notice (Treviño et al., 2000). On a sort line that does not need speeches. It needs one supervisor who says why, at the time, to the people who pay for the decision.
References
Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002
Kidder, R. M. (1995). How good people make tough choices: Resolving the dilemmas of ethical living. William Morrow.
Ordóñez, L. D., Schweitzer, M. E., Galinsky, A. D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Goals gone wild: The systematic side effects of overprescribing goal setting. Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(1), 6-16. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2009.37007999
Treviño, L. K., Hartman, L. P., & Brown, M. (2000). Moral person and moral manager: How executives develop a reputation for ethical leadership. California Management Review, 42(4), 128-142. https://doi.org/10.2307/41166057
The Purdue Global LI410 Unit 8 instructions
Unit 8 asks you to describe an ethical dilemma you faced in a leadership role and to analyze your decision with ethical frameworks from the reading. Tell the scenario first and in enough detail that a reader could disagree with you, since an ethics paper whose answer is obvious from the facts tests very little. Name the dilemma precisely: which goods were in conflict and why both mattered. Run the decision through at least two ways of judging it, for example by its results, by the rule it follows and by how it treats the people involved. Most sections also ask how you led the decision, not only whether it was right, so consider how the people affected learned of it and what they took from it. Count the costs honestly, including costs to people who did nothing wrong. Close with what you would do the same and what you would change. Four pages in APA 7 is typical, with each framework cited from its source.
Inside the LI410 Unit 8 example
The scenario section tells the night in order: a mill contract with a limit on prohibitive material, a county tonnage bonus, a surge of wet loads, twelve bales with film on every face and a plant manager's text asking for every bale on the morning truck. The writer holds them, the crew misses the bonus, and most of the crew learns why from a group chat message the next morning. Kidder names the dilemma as short term against long term and truth against loyalty. His ends-based, rule-based and care-based principles each support holding the bales, and the care-based test also condemns the silence. Ordóñez and colleagues explain how the tonnage goal invites cutting corners. The moral person and moral manager section is where the paper finds its real failure. A cost section with bracketed figures and a close describing how the writer would tell the crew on the night complete it.
Where the points sit in the LI410 Unit 8 rubric
Points in this scenario go first to the quality of the dilemma: a paper that frames a clash between two goods, with the best case for the other choice stated fairly, scores higher than one that sets right against obvious wrong. Applying more than one ethical lens accurately shows command of the reading, and a paper where the lenses disagree on some part of the decision shows judgment. The leadership half of the analysis, how the decision was communicated and what followers learned from it, is where many papers gain the most. An honest cost section, including losses to people who did not cause the problem, adds credibility. Four sources back the analysis, Kidder for the dilemma, Treviño and Brown with colleagues for ethical leadership, and Ordóñez and colleagues on goals, all in APA 7. A clear sequence from scenario to dilemma to tests to leadership, under headings, makes the argument easy to follow.
Common LI410 Unit 8 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Ethics scenarios often read as a story of the writer doing the right thing, with frameworks confirming it. Others pick a dilemma with no real tension, such as refusing to falsify a record, which leaves the frameworks nothing to weigh. A frequent gap is the leadership half: whether the decision was right gets three pages and how it was led gets none. Some papers apply one framework and stop. Writers also skip the costs, especially when people who trusted them paid for the decision. If you are unsure your decision was right, that uncertainty can make a stronger paper. Describe the organization by industry and the people by role, since ethical scenarios often involve conduct an employer would dispute. Tell us about the decision you have in mind and who it affected, and we can help you state the dilemma fairly and run it through the frameworks your section uses.
Get an LI410 Unit 8 example written to your instructions
A decision where the right choice cost you or your team something is the raw material: say what the pressure was and how people learned of it, and include the Unit 8 prompt, the ethical frameworks assigned and the rubric. Names and employers are generalized in the returned sample, due within 24-48h and free on a first order. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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LI410 Unit 8 questions, answered
What if I am not sure my decision was right?
Uncertainty often makes the better scenario. An ethics paper concluding that the writer might have been wrong, or right for incomplete reasons, shows more judgment than one confirming a verdict. The strongest versions lay out the best case for the other choice, apply the frameworks to both options, and state where the writer now lands and why. Graders tend to reward the reasoning over the conclusion.
Can the scenario be something I witnessed rather than decided?
Some sections allow it, but LI410 prompts usually ask what you did, and a witnessed decision can only be analyzed from outside. If you raised a concern, stayed silent or reported something, that action is yours and can carry the paper. The prompt's wording settles it: a question about your own conduct is hard to answer with someone else's decision.
Should the paper name the company or the people involved?
No. Describe the organization by industry and size and the people by role. Ethical scenarios often involve conduct an employer would dispute, and a course paper is read by people outside the situation. Generalizing the details costs nothing analytically, since the frameworks apply to the decision and the pressures around it, not to anyone's identity.
Where can I find a free LI410 Unit 8 sample paper?
This page has the full LI410 Unit 8 ethical leadership scenario about twelve held bales and a lost tonnage bonus, with Kidder's paradigms and the two pillars of ethical leadership applied, four references and margin notes.
If the decision was right, what went wrong?
The writer never told the crew why. They learned of the missed bonus from the plant manager's morning message, which failed the moral manager pillar: an ethical call made privately teaches followers nothing about the values behind it.