You'll take an existing case study from recent years occurring within Texas or the local business scene, and analyze it in terms of utilitarian and communitarian ethics. You will not be spending a lot of time gathering primary sources, but rather, after summarizing the case and pinpointing its "tipping point," you'll provide analysis that sheds light on the ethical dimension of your case.
Basically, it should be organized like this:
- Introduction (a beginning anecdote or tipping point);
- Background and review of scholarship (here's where you'll tell the case story and you'll review existing research that is pertinent to your ethical discussion); here you will reconstruct the four parts of the PR process ("what happened" part of paper);
- Discussion of the ethical dimensions of the case (your analysis and evaluation of "what happened"), first, through the two models of utilitarianism and communitarianism, using the values. Here, you might also want to include scholarship or editorial comments from newspapers and blogs about how others have viewed the ethics of this case. Is the organization on record about its own actions?
- Conclusion, which will include your critical analysis and also a reference to the broader goals of cosmopolitanism--did everybody matter? What were best practices that were followed or ignored?
- 8-10 pages, double-spaced (12-15 if working with one other person). If using bullets, that part should be single-spaced, i.e. timelines.
- References page using APA style (not footnotes); appendix with vital documents.
- Use of PR ethics textbook vocabulary and concepts ("humaneness," etc.).
- Few if any errors in spelling, grammar, etc.
- Headings for sections of paper.
- Place similar information in proximity to other similar information, so that the paper isn't repetitive or hard to follow.
- Carefully cite outside sources, using attribution for ideas and words that are not your own.
