The Orion Shield Project Case Analysis

The Orion Shield Project

A Case Study Analysis

BY

Firstname Lastname

4/17/2011

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

AMBA 640

Executive Summary

With emphasis on ethics, ethics has been defined as “a set of principles that guide our decision making based on personal values of what is right and wrong.” Within the same context, the importance of ethics in project management is discussed here. In addition, an analysis from the case study “The Orion Shield Project”, which shines a light on several issues ranging from ethical, to technical, to contractual, to legal issues is examined. The analysis focuses primarily on the designated project manager Gary Allison whose leadership, actions and decision making is criticized having been faced with an ethical dilemma.

Introduction

Globally, the applications of ethics in organizational and professional practices have proven to be a vital concept. This is because the concept of ethics deals with exercising right actions in order to yield good results, and this is mostly influenced by making the right decision. To help us better understand this concept, let us first define it. Ethics is loosely defined as “a set of principles that guide our decision making based on personal values of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ” (Schwalbe, 2010). What this simply indicates is, making ethical decisions is an important part of our personal and professional lives because it enables us build trust and gain respect from the people we deal with. Viewing this from a much larger perspective, the US economy runs on a basic level of trust and this can be seen in various cases such as; customers trusting companies to provide the goods and services contracted and paid for, companies on the other hand trust customers to pay on time. Likewise, vendors’ trust companies to pay them on time and companies trust the vendor to deliver on time. Just imagine what would be of an economic society where such trust is...