Community Development
You recently moved to a remote Indigenous community in New South Wales. Your work is mostly community development work that taps into cultural connections and strengths to promote individual wellbeing for youth at risk of entering the criminal justice system.Most days you have to drive into town, which is 6km from the community.You almost always make the journey alone in the departmental 4WD (a large vehicle that seats up to eight people).It is a useful vehicle on the rough dirt road and frequent 40-degree heat.You frequently pass community members in groups walking to and from the town.You usually stop and give people a lift, but when you mention this to your manager she says: “I don’t want to hear that, it’s against public sector regulations.”The rationale seems to be about occupational health and safety issues.
A large part of your work is based on developing trust and respect within the community.You feel that driving past people in an empty car is at odds with what they would consider common courtesy of each other, and feel that it is important to promote community standards by assisting wherever you can.Is it ethical to break the rules to build relationships with community members?
Apply the TWO theories to this case study (rule utilitarianism and intuition)
Lectures and Readings
Thiroux and Krasemann Text Chapter 12
Academic and external resources
Bennett, B, Zubrzycki, J, Bacon, V 2011, ‘What do we know? The experiences of social workers working alongside Aboriginal people’,Australian Social Work,vol. 64, no. 1, pp. 20-37
Calma, T, Priday, E 2011, ‘Putting Indigenous Human Rights into Social Work Practice’,Australian Social Work,vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 147-155
Morrison, E 2006, ‘Doing the Job Well: An Investigation of Pro-Social Rule Breaking’, Journal of Management, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp 5-28
Vardaman, J, Gondo, M, Allen, D 2014, ‘Ethical Climate and Pro-Social Rule Breaking in the Workplace’, Human Resource Management Review, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 108-118
USE 12 resources
Theintroductionshouldclearly identify the case studythat you have chosen and thetwo theoriesyou are going to apply, withjustificationfor their applicability in this case study
Thefirst sectionof the body of the paper shoulddetail thedilemmaspresented by the case study. This is where you shouldprovide some facts around the case(such as academic evidence from the readings, policy, legislation, medical/scientific evidence, government and NGO reports, statistics etc). This is also where anyrelevant codes of ethics/conductshould be identified. These should be relevant to the Australian professional association or organisation
Thenext sectionsof the paper should analyse how the two theories apply to the case. This will includeapplying all components of each theoryto the dilemmas, thestrengths and weaknessesof applying each theory (i.e., the critical analysis), and consideration of the result of using each theory for allstakeholdersimpacted by the case study
You have creative licence in expressing the analysis here. So, you may analyse each theory separately, or juxtapose both theories throughout the paper.
Most of your word count should be allocated to this section of the paper.
Thefinal sectionof the paper should attempt to provide afeasible, workable, and ethical solutionto the dilemma bysynthesising the main argumentsthat have been made throughout the paper, and should particularlydraw on the strengths discussed in the analysis. In other words, the solution should be based on what was discussed in the analysis, with clear connections between the analysis and the solution provided.