| Course | MT313 Corporate Sustainability and Social Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 3 |
| Paper type | Corporate conduct case |
| Length | About 1,140 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | BS in Business Administration |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MT313 Unit 3
The Franchisee Broke the Law; the Software Logged It: An MT313 Unit 3 Corporate Conduct Case on Child Labor Hours
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
MT313: Corporate Sustainability and Social Responsibility
Unit 3 Corporate Conduct Case
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The chain, franchisee, findings and figures are composite; the laws, framework and sources cited are real.
The Record
2017. The franchisee opens its first Sunrise Skillet restaurant, eventually operating fourteen in two states.
2019. Sunrise Skillet requires all restaurants to use its scheduling software, which records every shift.
2024. Federal wage investigators open a case after a complaint from a parent.
2025. Investigators find that the franchisee employed 14- and 15-year-olds past 7 p.m. on school nights and for more than three hours on school days, in violation of federal child labor rules, at eleven of its fourteen restaurants. The division assesses $212,000 in civil money penalties, and the franchisee enters a consent judgment requiring compliance and training.
2025. Sunrise Skillet issues a statement that franchisees are independent businesses that hire, schedule and supervise their own crews.
Facts and Assertions, Kept Apart
Documented. The violations, the hours worked, the penalties and the consent judgment come from the division's findings and the franchisee's own records. The software required by the franchisor recorded each late shift, including the worker's date of birth entered at hiring.
Asserted by the franchisor. That it has no role in scheduling and could not have known about the violations.
Asserted by advocates. That the franchisor's required software made the violations visible and that the franchisor could have blocked them.
The case is graded on keeping these apart. Nothing in the findings is in dispute; the franchisee's own hours records settle them. The dispute concerns the franchisor's responsibility.
The Legal Layer
Federal rules limit when young teenagers, aged 14 and 15, can be scheduled outside agriculture: no more than three hours on a school day, eighteen hours in a school week and not after 7 p.m. during most of the year (U.S. Department of Labor, 2016). The franchisee broke those rules and has accepted the consequences.
Whether the franchisor shares legal liability depends on whether it is a joint employer. That question is contested. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, courts and the Department of Labor have looked at factors such as whether a company controls hiring, schedules or working conditions. The department withdrew a 2020 rule on joint employment in 2021, and as of 2024 no replacement rule had been issued, leaving the question to case-by-case analysis. This paper does not predict how a court would rule.
The Ethical Layer
Carroll (1991) set ethical duties on the layer above legal ones, covering conduct stakeholders expect of a business beyond what any statute demands. Carroll (2016) later stressed that the ethical layer runs through the whole pyramid, shaping how a firm meets its legal duties as well. Even if the franchisor is not a joint employer, it has ethical responsibilities that arise from its relationship with the franchisee.
It profits from every shift. The franchisor collects a royalty of 5.5 percent of every sale, including sales made during illegal hours.
It required the software. The scheduling software records each worker's birth date and every shift. The franchisor designed the requirement and receives data from it. The violations were visible in data the franchisor chose to collect.
It controls the brand. The franchisor sets detailed operating standards for food safety, uniforms and restaurant appearance. A company that specifies the color of a server's apron can specify that its software refuse to schedule a 14-year-old at 9 p.m.
A franchisor that sets the apron color and requires the scheduling software cannot plausibly claim the schedule is none of its business.
The Franchisor's Argument, Given Its Due
The independence argument is not empty. Franchisees are separate employers under federal wage law in most circumstances, and the franchise model depends on local owners making local decisions. The chain has about 180 franchise owners; it cannot supervise each one's daily rosters. If it took over scheduling, it might well become a joint employer, with liability for wage and hour compliance across 707 restaurants it does not run. Some franchisors avoid detailed control over employment precisely for this reason.
The Reply
The reply rests on what the franchisor already controls. It does not need to schedule anyone. It needs only to configure software it already requires so that the software refuses shifts that break federal child labor rules, as it already refuses shifts that would exceed a restaurant's labor budget. That is a product feature, not supervision. Whether it would increase joint-employer exposure is a question for counsel, but the ethical case does not depend on the answer. The franchisor's silence, followed by a statement that the schedule was not its concern, fell short of what its own role required.
What the Data Showed Before the Investigation
The software's own reports, available to the franchisor's operations team, would have shown the pattern well before 2024. In the year before the complaint, the franchisee's restaurants recorded more than 1,900 shifts worked by employees under 16 that ended after 7 p.m. on a school night. The franchisor's field consultants visited each restaurant quarterly and reviewed sales, food safety and labor cost reports drawn from the same system. No one was asked to review hours worked by minors, so no one did.
Who Was Harmed
The workers were young teenagers, some working until 10 p.m. on school nights. Federal child labor rules exist because long hours late at night affect school performance, sleep and safety. The parent whose complaint started the investigation told investigators her son had fallen asleep in class repeatedly. The harm was to children, which raises the ethical stakes above an ordinary wage dispute.
Recommendations
1. Hard limits in the software. Configure the required scheduling software to refuse shifts that violate federal and state child labor hour rules, using the birth date already recorded. Gap addressed: the software logged violations it could have prevented.
2. Monthly exception reports. Send each franchisee and the franchisor's compliance team a report of any override attempts. Gap addressed: no one reviewed the data.
3. Annual audits. Include child labor hours in the franchise operations audit. Gap addressed: audits covered food safety but not employment.
4. A public statement that accepts the ethical point without conceding legal liability. Gap addressed: the first statement read as indifference.
Conclusion
The franchisee broke federal child labor law, and the documented record leaves no doubt about that. The franchisor's legal responsibility is contested and depends on the unsettled joint-employer question. Its ethical responsibility is clearer: it profits from every shift, requires the software that recorded the violations and controls far smaller details of restaurant operations. Building hard limits into the software it already requires would meet that responsibility without taking over franchisees' schedules.
References
Carroll, A. B. (1991). The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: Toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders. Business Horizons, 34(4), 39-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/0007-6813(91)90005-G
Carroll, A. B. (2016). Carroll's pyramid of CSR: Taking another look. International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility, 1, 3. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40991-016-0004-6
U.S. Department of Labor. (2016). Child labor provisions for nonagricultural occupations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (Child Labor Bulletin 101). https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/child-labor
The Purdue Global MT313 Unit 3 instructions
In Unit 3 students examine a company whose conduct is documented but whose responsibility is disputed. The case should open with a dated record drawn from official findings or reliable reports. Instructors expect documented facts to be separated clearly from each side's interpretation. A framework, often Carroll's layers, should be applied to the company's legal and ethical responsibilities. Where the law is unsettled, the case should report its status without predicting outcomes. The company's own defense should be presented fairly before it is answered. The case should identify who was harmed. Recommendations should address specific gaps the analysis found, so each one can be traced to a problem rather than offered as general good practice.
Inside the MT313 Unit 3 example
The sample's record lists five dated events from opening to the franchisor's statement. A facts section separates what investigators documented from what each side asserts. The legal layer sets out federal hours limits and the unsettled joint-employer question. The ethical layer points to the royalty, the required software and the franchisor's detailed brand standards, under the highlighted line that a franchisor that sets the apron color cannot claim the schedule is none of its business. The independence argument is given its due, then answered. A section shows the violations were visible in reports the franchisor already received. The harm to young workers is described, and four recommendations each name the gap they close.
MT313 Unit 3 rubric: what earns full points
Conduct cases are usually assessed on accuracy of the record, separation of fact from interpretation, application of the framework and the fit between recommendations and gaps. Graders reward cases that state what is documented without hedging and what is disputed without taking sides prematurely. The company's defense should be presented at its strongest. Unsettled law should be reported accurately. Ethical analysis should rest on what the company actually does and controls. Recommendations should each address a specific gap. Official sources and the framework appear in APA 7. Cases that treat allegations as findings, or that blame the company without considering its argument, tend to score lower.
MT313 Unit 3 help: mistakes that cost points
Conduct cases often mix findings with accusations, so readers cannot tell what is established. Another frequent weakness is ignoring the company's defense. Some students predict how courts will rule on unsettled questions. Recommendations may be generic, such as "improve oversight." Before drafting, build a dated timeline from official documents and mark each entry as documented or asserted. Then list what the company controls in its relationship with the party that broke the rules. That list usually shows where its ethical responsibility lies. A second useful step is to read the company's own public statement closely, since the defense it offers usually shows which responsibility it is trying to avoid. Answering that defense directly makes the case stronger.
Get an MT313 Unit 3 example written to your instructions
Name the company your Unit 3 prompt assigns, or ask for a documented case, and attach the rubric. Delivered in 24-48h: a dated record, a table separating findings from claims, both sides of the dispute and fixes linked to specific failures, all sourced. Your first custom sample is free, and it is written as coursework, never as counsel on any company's liability. 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.
More MT313 papers and BS in Business Administration samples
- MT313 Unit 1: Kids' Meal Default Discussion Post
- MT313 Unit 2: Cage-Free Commitment Position Paper
- MT313 Unit 4: Sustainability Report Review
- MT313 Unit 5: Materiality Assessment
- MT313 Unit 6: Seminar Reflection
- MT313 Unit 7: Stakeholder Analysis
- MT313 Unit 8: Supplier Responsibility Memo
- MT313 Unit 9: Program Proposal
- MT313 Unit 10: Corporate Responsibility Plan
- MT304 Unit 3: Pay Transparency Condition Analysis
- MT302 Unit 3: Personality Instrument Interpretation
- MT300 Unit 3: Information Systems Business Case
- MT299 Unit 3: Organization Profile
MT313 Unit 3 questions, answered
Does the case have to be about a real company?
Most MT313 prompts expect one, and a documented public record gives the analysis something to check. This example is composite so the franchise mechanics show cleanly, but its shape carries over to any real firm: dated record, findings kept apart from claims, both positions stated, then recommendations. Send the name and the sample works from court records and regulators' releases.
Why not simply conclude that the franchisor is responsible?
Because the law assigned the violations to the franchisee, and a case that ignores that loses credibility. The example argues a narrower point: holding software that could have blocked illegal shifts creates an ethical expectation even where legal liability rests elsewhere. That argument is stronger precisely because it concedes what the findings actually say, which graders notice.
What does 'still disputed' mean in this unit?
Usually that the facts are established but their meaning is not. Nobody contests the hours logged here; what remains contested is whether the brand behind the system shares responsibility for them. Your chosen case works best with the same shape: a public record everyone accepts and a question of responsibility on which reasonable people still disagree.
Where can I find a free MT313 Unit 3 sample paper?
The complete MT313 Unit 3 corporate conduct case is on this page, examining a franchisor's responsibility for a franchisee's child labor violations.
What does the MT313 Unit 3 sample recommend?
Hard limits in the required scheduling software, monthly exception reports, child labor checks in audits and a statement accepting the ethical point.