Ethical leadership cases: Stacy's farm and Cardinal IG

The first case wants a diagnosis before an opinion. Naming Doug's conflict management style means placing him on a recognised framework rather than calling him difficult: the Thomas-Kilmann model gives you competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating, each defined by how much assertiveness and how much cooperativeness it carries. Say which one his behaviour in the case demonstrates, quote the behaviour that shows it, and only then answer whether there are more constructive alternatives — which is really asking you to move him toward collaboration or problem-solving and to say what that would look like in his specific exchanges with employees. Part C asks for alternatives Stacy has in answering the candidate's question, with advantages and disadvantages of each, so build two or three genuine options and weigh both sides of each rather than presenting a single recommendation with a few objections attached to it.

The Cardinal IG questions form a chain, and answering them in order is what makes the argument hold. David Pinder's background is the cause; his leadership style is the effect; the principles and values are how that style became institutional; the empowerment mechanisms are how it reached employees who never met him; and the lessons question asks you to generalise from all four. Ethical culture literature gives you the vocabulary — tone at the top, values that are stated and then enforced through hiring, promotion and consequence, and psychological safety that makes speaking up survivable — so use it. Keep the format rules in view throughout, because they are graded: one to two paragraphs per question, three to five complex sentences per paragraph. That is a real constraint across eight questions, and the commonest failure is a one-sentence answer to the last two once the writer has run out of energy.