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Salt Lake Community College

Term Service Learning Project

Rita Anderson & Alejandra Balbuena

BUS 1040 Honest Work
Professor Matthew Hatcher
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Introduction

For our service learning project our group decided to team up with the non-profit

organization, the Utah Foster Care and their CEO Kelly Peterson. The Utah Foster Care helps

children find homes all over the state. They also help parents or people looking to foster or adopt

and connects them with children (Utah Foster Care, 2018). With this organization dealing with a

lot of information, power, and underage children, the biggest ethical issue that they deal with and

we were most interested in is confidentiality. What procedures might they take if the trust and

honesty in the organization is broken? We will also discuss how they deal with power through

leadership. We believe that by following through with their own ethical morals they hold that the

organization will keep succeeding.

Findings

Through interviewing Kelly, the CEO, we were able to find a better understanding of the

Utah Foster Care and their ethical standings on our topics. We were also able to learn a great

lesson as to why she has kept this job working for the organization for almost 20 years. She has

high standards of trust and confidentiality in the organization. Leading a company is one of the

most interesting journeys when someone has all the necessary tools to grow with workers and

make the team successful and provide great service to the community in this special case

children who are the future of our country but for some reason end up in foster care programs.

The way she approaches each situation is always with the utmost ethical standards and moral

responsibility.

Honesty & Trust

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According to Kelly, honesty is the best policy because without it, one (or their

organization) can lose all credibility. When conducting an organization, she insists one must

have integrated ethics. It pays off in more creative and efficient layers to become successful in

this field. It is the center to the long term sustainability of a company in society today. She said

there was a lot dishonesty and lack of responsibility today. It is important to create cyber

security, and autonomous business making ethically significant decisions.There are a number of

substantial changes that require some actions. She emphasized people cannot be dishonest when

working with human behavior (Peterson, k. Interview 2018)

Fundamentally, there is a macro change that has to do with the increasingly pervasive

role of business in our society and the increasing powers of companies around our society as

well. This has resulted from a confluence of forces, including liberalization, privatization and

advances in knowledge and technology. These developments, in turn, have led to changes in

people’s expectation for corporate ethical behavior and moral responsibilities.These high

standards of trust take place when it's time for recruiters to establish contact with the future

families. She had a special program for trainers to establish trust with new future parents. This

relationship it is based on becoming trustworthy and honest. The future parents need to be able to

communicate well with employees and keep total transparency, creating teamwork.

Working with children means keeping them and their records safe, especially when it

involves the certain situations that the children go through before the foster care program. Trust

becomes a big part of what the company and the employees stand for. All confidential

information only goes through the state and recruiters, such as transferring of the children. If one

were to break the confidentially, certain measures would be taken into account such as

termination from their position. For instances, when the news come to this place for an interview
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during Christmas time, we protect the faces of the children and she takes very good care of the

children.

Leadership

When it comes to leadership in this type of organization, Kelly expresses the most

important things to keep in mind when making any decision is your staff and reputation. Lead by

example is one of her best policies, and she said she could not act in a different mode from what

she proclaimed with her staff. She added, “When you take good care of your staff they take care

of you. They value and support one another.” At the Utah Foster Care, they like to uphold a

corporate culture to support one another, to be honest, and to let each other grow. As a leader

she wants to be able to push her employees to do great things and let them grow as individuals

because individuality and diversity of thoughts can bring a great mix into the organization.

Individuals are expected to uphold company standards even outside of work. By hurting

organizational and personal reputation, organizations can lose a lot of assets. Utah Foster Care

receives all sorts of different funding, and if something hurts their reputation that can affect their

funding and press (CEO Interview, 2018).

As the Utah Foster Care is an organization for children, they must also be thought of

when making decisions that might affect them. In 1993, the National Foster Care Center sued

Utah’s foster care program due to unconstitutional conditions. Children were being malnourished

and denied education and health care, and even child abuse investigations were taking place in

foster homes. All of these fall back onto the president of the organization due to the fact that they

hire on trainers and recruiters to find and train parents for foster children. The Utah Foster Care

Foundation had to take responsibility and action, they decided to up the hours of training and

have more thorough and stricter background checks on incoming foster parents. Through
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officials of the organization taking leadership, they were able to redirect their focus and make

changes that became more beneficial not just for the organization as a whole, but what was most

important overall, the children who are the principal priority.

Integrity

Integrity plays a big role in any organization, and it is one that the Utah Foster Care takes

very seriously. In our book, integrity is defined as “undivided; and integral whole,” “sticking to

one’s principles,” “one cannot maintain one’s integrity if one has unconditional commitments

that conflict” (Honest Work, pg 110). To be a part of the organization one must give their all,

especially for the work in they are doing. If they have their heart somewhere else, it will only

bring the rest of the team down, like the saying, “a team is only as strong as their weakest link.”

In a certain instance at the organization, there was a woman who seemed unhappy in her

position and it affected others around her. Kelly made the decision to bring her into her office

and talk about what she could do to maybe make things better for her. They decided her being in

that position just wasn’t the right thing if she wasn’t happy. Her tactic and ethics of letting

someone go is brilliant. Instead of just leaving someone unemployed, Kelly took the time to sit

and talk about what other possibilities the woman had, what her strengths were, and how she

could use them.Kelly used the true art of termination to handle that situation. She then also

offered her a letter of recommendation whenever she found something that was suitable for her

where she could be happy and grow individually. For instance, there was an employee who was

an excellent worker suddenly staring down, and she asked her what wrong. The employee told

her of a tough situation in her home,and she couldn't concentrate on her job. Kelly told her if

she needed to work at home do it, but complete all your work. “ I don't care if you don't show

up to the office, but take your time and finish what you need to do (Peterson 2018).
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Work and Life

Increasingly, to maintain and improve balance, organizations introduce initiatives, such

as flexible work schedules, compressed work weeks, job sharing, child and dependent care

options (including subsidies and time leave options), stress management and so on. In this part of

the interview, she addressed the thorny issue of work balance. It’s clear evidence of the pursuit

of work balance in the present era. It’s up to individuals to take control and responsibility for the

type of life to lead. If people don’t design their lives, someone else will design it for them, and

they may just not like other’s idea of balance. However, in this corporation, Kelly Peterson takes

this responsibility very seriously. During her twenty years in this organization, she explained

what makes the difference in different ways, and this place is for healing of the human soul.

She created a corporate culture called leadership and self confidence, meaning be aware

the most important asset in this corporation are her staff, and she takes care very well when it

comes to finances, salary, benefits, or respect. She runs this organization with high ethical

standards.(Peterson,2018). Her ethical philosophy of work life balance takes place when it's time

to decide increasing economic benefits for her or her staff instead. She told of one time she

received a bonus and her option was not to get it herself but to give it to the institution to put

toward the staff and the children in the institution. She considered herself rich enough, because

she is healthy and has a family who she loves.

Our conclusion after this extraordinary interview with Kelly Peterson, CEO of the non-

profit organization, is that Utah Foster Care helps children find homes all over the state. The

importance of ethical behavior when conducting business increasingly impacts society in

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differents layers. We realize the importance of creating safe and healthy environments in

organizations for our community. We recognize business can thrive only in an atmosphere of

trust, created through adherence to accepted standards of ethical behavior and moral

responsibility. Such ethical behavior is important for business long term viability. It’s important

for our economic development as well.

Business ethical behavior law in 2018.

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Works Cited
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Utah Foster Care. “About Us.” Mission-driven, utahfostercare.org/about-us/. Accessed on 19

April 2018.

Peterson, Kelly. Utah Foster Care CEO. Interview. 24 March 2018, 10:30 AM.

Al-Karim, Samnani, et al. "Negative Affect and Counterproductive Workplace Behavior: The

Moderating Role of Moral Disengagement and Gender." Journal of Business Ethics, no. 2, 2014,

p. 235. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10551-013-1635-0.

“Utah Foster Care Lawsuit Ends; Child Welfare System Cited as National Model.” National

Center for Youth Law, 19 Feb. 2015, youthlaw.org/utah-foster-care-lawsuit-ends-child-

welfare-system-cited-as-national-model/.

Ciulla, Joanne B. Honest Work A Business Ethics Reader Third Edition, “The Good Life:

Integrity” pg. 110

http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.libprox1.slcc.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=919633ba-

1f22-4e4d-b1f2-d8f9d10f3738%40sessionmgr120

Navex Global . "Share of Companies Which Are Offering Ethical Employment Law

Training in 2017, by Topic." Statista - The Statistics Portal, Statista,

www.statista.com/statistics/741531/companies-which-are-offering-ethical-employment-

law-training-by-topic/, (Accessed 29 Apr 2018)

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