Ethical Leadership in Action

Overview

Across three 45-minute class periods, students examine how ethical leadership, personal values, and responsibility affect stakeholder trust and business sustainability. Students analyze misleading marketing, labor practices, online retail, and product recalls before creating an ethical code and mission statement for a school store.

Learning intentions

Students will be able to:

• Define ethical leadership, corporate social responsibility, accountability, locus of responsibility, and stakeholder trust.
• Apply a decision-making framework to realistic business dilemmas.
• Compare how leadership styles influence responses to conflict, risk, and employee needs.
• Create a personal and school-store code of ethics and mission statement.
• Support recommendations with evidence and participate in civil, democratic discussion.

Success criteria

• I can explain how a business decision affects multiple stakeholders.
• I can distinguish between legal, ethical, and responsible behavior.
• I can use evidence to recommend a reasonable response to a dilemma.
• I can identify a leadership style that fits my values and explain why.
• I can write clear ethical commitments for a school store.

Curriculum links

• Leadership, Ethics, and Responsibility: ethical leadership, accountability, corporate social responsibility, and responsible behavior.
• Using Probability to Make Decisions: define and graph a random variable when evaluating possible business outcomes, such as cost, delay, or customer impact.
• Conditional Probability and the Rules of Probability: interpret how one condition, such as a recall or labor violation, changes the likelihood of another outcome, such as lost trust or reduced sales.
• Speaking and Listening: work with peers to establish roles, meet discussion goals, and make decisions respectfully.
• Reading Literature: practice comprehension and interpretation of complex scenario-based texts.

Lesson structure (3 days, 135 minutes)

Day 1: Values, Trust, and Marketing

1. 0–5 min · Hook. Open with the provocative marketing comparison showing two similar products advertised at very different prices and ask, “Is the cheapest choice always the best choice?” Students write an initial response and identify what information they would need before buying.
2. 5–15 min · Guided notes. Use the key-concepts slides and distribute the three-day guided notes and ethics workbook. Teacher defines ethical leadership, CSR, accountability, stakeholders, and locus of responsibility; students complete definitions and examples.
3. 15–25 min · Compare claims. Teacher presents examples of misleading marketing, including delivery promises, product quality claims, sponsored reviews, and “free” offers associated with online marketplaces such as Temu and Amazon. Students annotate which claims are clear, incomplete, or potentially misleading.
4. 25–38 min · Stakeholder discussion. In groups of four, students assign roles—facilitator, evidence finder, recorder, and reporter—and compare Temu with Amazon and both with a small business. Students identify benefits, risks, and affected stakeholders using the workbook.
5. 38–45 min · Check for understanding. Students complete the Day 1 reflection: “A responsible business should tell customers…” and “One stakeholder that may be overlooked is…”

Day 2: Dilemmas and Decision-Making

1. 0–5 min · Retrieval and review. Return to the review and decision-framework slides. Students define one vocabulary term from memory and explain how a business can be legal but still unethical.
2. 5–12 min · Model a framework. Teacher models the steps: identify the facts, name the stakeholders, identify competing values, generate options, predict consequences, choose and justify a response, and explain accountability. Students record the process in the guided notes.
3. 12–30 min · Ethical dilemma roleplay. Give each group one scenario from the dilemma roleplay pages: a formula, car, food, or lettuce recall; unsafe labor practices; misleading marketing; or a very cheap product with long delivery delays. Students prepare a resolution plan that addresses customer safety, employee welfare, business survival, transparency, and responsibility.
4. 30–40 min · Presentations. Groups present their plan in two minutes. The audience records one strength and one question. Students must explain what the reasonable solution is, who is accountable, and how the decision protects or rebuilds stakeholder trust.
5. 40–45 min · Probability connection and exit response. Students assign possible outcomes—such as refund cost, injury risk, delivery delay, or trust recovery—a numerical value or probability when appropriate, then explain how a condition changes the decision. They complete: “The most ethical option is not always the cheapest because…”

Day 3: Entrepreneurial Leadership Profile

1. 0–6 min · Reconnect. Open with the leadership-style scenarios. Students decide whether each leader is mainly servant, transformational, or visionary and defend one choice.
2. 6–15 min · Leadership mini-lesson. Teacher explains that servant leaders prioritize people, transformational leaders motivate change, and visionary leaders communicate a compelling future. Students complete a comparison chart and connect each style to morale, adversity, confrontation, and employee support.
3. 15–28 min · Personal profile. Students use the entrepreneurial leadership profile to identify personal values, likely leadership style, responses to conflict, and ways they would support an employee while maintaining standards. They may use results from prior career inventories or life experiences as evidence.
4. 28–39 min · School-store code and mission. Pairs create a short mission statement and five-part code of ethics for a school store. Required areas are honest marketing, fair treatment, product safety, responsible use of money, and accountability when mistakes occur.
5. 39–45 min · Plenary and commitment. Students share one commitment through a brief gallery discussion. Finish with the Extended Response Planning Frame to organize a paragraph answering the essential question: “How do personal values and leadership styles impact business sustainability and stakeholder trust?”

Resources

• the three-day ethical leadership slide deck
• the three-day guided notes and ethics workbook
• Scenario cards or teacher-projected dilemma descriptions
• Board or chart paper
• Student devices or calculators for optional probability estimates
• Sticky notes or index cards
• Student career-inventory results, if available

Assessment

• Check guided notes, vocabulary definitions, stakeholder lists, and discussion roles during Days 1–2.
• Use the dilemma presentation rubric: identifies stakeholders, applies the framework, addresses accountability, uses evidence, and proposes a reasonable solution.
• Collect the leadership profile, school-store code, mission statement, and final written response for evidence of understanding.

Differentiation

• Provide a completed model, vocabulary word bank, sentence starters, and a stakeholder checklist for students who need support: “The affected stakeholder is…,” “The ethical conflict is…,” and “Our evidence suggests…”
• Allow students to present orally, record a response, or submit a written plan; provide text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and extended processing time as needed.
• Pair multilingual learners with supportive peers and preview terms using examples and visuals rather than abstract definitions alone.
• Challenge advanced students to compare two possible outcomes using conditional probability, estimate the financial trade-off of their recommendation, or defend a solution that balances competing stakeholder interests.