CSR 610 Module 10 Final Project Example

Ethics and Culture Strategy, 2026-2027

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

CSR 610: Business Ethics and Culture

Final Project

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Ethics and Culture Strategy, 2026-2027

The Case for Change

In March a federal inspection found batch records filled in days late and failed potency results simply run again with no inquiry. Two weeks later the retailer that buys the most from the plant froze $14 million in orders. The culture assessment then showed why: supervisors paid only on units shipped, quality reporting to production, 38 percent of employees afraid to raise concerns and leaders who praise speed. These problems threaten the company's customers, its owner's investment and its employees' jobs. This strategy, for adoption by the board, sets out how the company will become one whose labels and records can be trusted.

Guiding Principles

The company's principles are three short commitments. Every label tells the truth: what the bottle says is in it is in it, through the last day of its shelf life. Every record is made when the work is done: no record is completed later from memory, and no date is changed. Anyone can stop the line: any employee may halt work for a quality or safety concern and will be thanked for it. Treviño and Nelson argue that values guide behavior only when they are specific enough to apply to real decisions (Treviño & Nelson, 2021), and each of these settles a dilemma the company actually faced this year.

The Compliance Program

The redesigned program places a chief quality and compliance officer outside the production chain with authority to stop any shipment, ranks data integrity as the top compliance risk, replaces a single orientation video with role-based training, protects reporters through investigations run outside the plant's management and ties 30 percent of supervisors' bonuses to record accuracy and safety. Programs woven into how a company manages and rewards people carry far more weight than ones that stand apart (Weaver et al., 1999), so integration is the central design choice.

The Culture Levers

Leaders will change what they attend to first, with the plant's morning meeting opening on the retest rate and open investigations. They will publicly thank the first person to stop a line under the new principles. The budget adds two lab analysts so the lab can keep pace. Nobody moves up to supervisor without passing a record audit, and town halls will begin with a story of someone who did right at a cost. These changes, phased over eighteen months, aim at the environment that produced the shortcuts.

Stakeholder Commitments

The company commits to four measurable outcomes: no batch below label in audits or stability checks, every new supplier qualified with three lots tested by its own lab, injuries on the gummy line halved within two years and plastic per bottle cut by 15 percent. Carroll (1991) places ethical duties beyond legal compliance, and the first two commitments go further than the law requires because consumers cannot check what they swallow.

A Decision Guide

Supervisors, analysts and buyers will carry a one-page guide with five questions for any decision that feels uncertain: Does it keep the label true? Is the record honest and made now? Would I be comfortable if the retailer, the regulator or my family saw it? Who is affected, and have they been told? Whom can I ask? The guide includes the compliance officer's phone number and the hotline. It is drawn from the framework used in Module Five, reduced to what someone can use in two minutes on the floor.

Leadership

Executives will set the tone through visible choices. The chief executive and the plant manager will walk the floor weekly and ask how numbers were reached, not only whether they were. When a shipment is delayed by a quality hold, the chief executive will tell the retailer directly rather than pressing the plant to release it. The vice president of operations, whose bonus also moves to include quality and record measures, will review every line stop personally in the first year and thank the person who made it. Brown et al. (2005) found that employees see leaders as ethical when those leaders both behave fairly and actively manage ethics through rewards and discipline, and the plan asks executives to do both in plain view.

Oversight

The board will form a quality and ethics committee, chaired by an independent director, that meets quarterly with the chief quality and compliance officer without management present. The committee will receive the same dashboard as management and will approve the compliance budget and any decision to remove the compliance officer.

Quarterly dashboard

Roadmap

In the first half of 2026, the new structure, reporting rules, bonus formula and lab staffing take effect, and the board committee is formed. In the second half, role-based training, the decision guide and new promotion criteria roll out. In 2027, the culture survey is repeated, the first outside program review takes place and the stakeholder commitments are reported publicly.

Risks and Cost

The greatest risk is that output pressure returns when the retailer's orders resume and the owner's sale approaches; the board committee's oversight is the main safeguard. A second risk is that supervisors see the bonus change as a pay cut; phasing and involvement address it. A third is that early reports overwhelm a small compliance team; outside investigators provide capacity. The first-year cost is about $910,000: the compliance program, about $640,000; two lab analysts, about $170,000; and training, floor walks and the decision guide, about $100,000, about half of one percent of revenue.

Conclusion

The company's problems came from a culture that rewarded output without asking how it was achieved. This strategy changes the principles, the program, the levers leaders use, the commitments made to stakeholders and the oversight above them, at a cost far below what the old culture has already cost. The board should adopt it and review the dashboard each quarter.

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

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

Treviño, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2021). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right (8th ed.). Wiley.

Weaver, G. R., Treviño, L. K., & Cochran, P. L. (1999). Corporate ethics programs as control systems: Influences of executive commitment and environmental factors. Academy of Management Journal, 42(1), 41-57. https://doi.org/10.2307/256873