See what your business choices say about your values, on a map where there is no single right answer.
Every business eventually hits a moment where making more money and doing the right thing point in different directions, and someone has to choose. This activity is about how you choose, and what those choices say about the kind of business you would run.
You will weigh up seven real business calls. Each one moves a pin on a map built from two simple questions:
Up and down When making money and doing the right thing pull apart, which gives way?
Left and right Who matters most in the choice: the owners (the shareholders), or everyone the business affects (the stakeholders)?
There are no good or bad scores here, and no trick answers. Make your decisions and see where you end up.
Your role: you have joined The Hard Calls Unit, a small advisory team brought in when businesses face decisions where profit, reputation and responsibility collide. Seven cases are waiting. For each one, Maya sets the scene, then you decide what the business should do, and see where your reasoning places you on the ethics map.
Every business, person and client in this activity is invented for the exercise. The dilemmas are built from the ethics topics in the AQA A-level Business specification: profit versus ethics (3.1.1), responsibilities to stakeholders (3.1.2), ethics in marketing (3.1.3), finance (3.1.4), human resources (3.2.1) and operations (3.2.2), and corporate social responsibility (3.3.1). No real company is being praised or criticised.
Each of the four areas is a real, defensible way to run a business. None of them is the "right" one, and most leaders drift between them depending on the day and the pressure they are under.
Show a neighbour where your pin landed. Did you reach the same place from completely different reasoning? Did you land miles apart on one case but agree on the rest? That gap is the interesting bit.
Maya does the same three things on every case, and so can you:
1. Make it real. Forget the theory. In this business, with these people, who actually gains and who actually pays if you choose this way?
2. Follow the knock-on effects. A choice that lifts profit today can cost trust, staff or customers tomorrow, and a choice that costs money now can buy loyalty later. Trace it forward.
3. Decide which way the balance falls. Weigh the gain against the cost, and commit, knowing a thoughtful person could honestly land in any corner of this map.
One screen, one room, seven dilemmas. Built to run cold from this file, no logins, no internet needed.
This is a quick show of hands, not a quiz. For each case:
1. Read the dilemma on screen and let the class debate it for a moment.
2. Take a show of hands. Tap the option that won the room.
3. Tap roughly what share of the class backed it (a quick eyeball is fine).
4. The screen does two things: it nudges the class pin on the map, and it shows how united the room was.
The gold is in the split votes. A case where the room is nearly unanimous and a case where it is split down the middle are both worth talking about, and the screen will help you spot both at the end.