Doing Business with the Community: Business Ethics/Case Studies

Inside a team project

One of the required elements of the Business Ethics course was to form a project team or quasi "consulting group" to help a business in the local community. Project teams were free to choose their "client" and to work with that business to help them in whatever way they needed. Professor Mary-Ellen Boyle purposely did not give the project teams specific instriuction about "how" to help their clients or "how" to organize themselves to get the project completed. Instead, the assignment was left open-ended in order to create a more realistic simulation of a consulting situation.

One of those project teams included juniors Candace Reddy, Jason Green, Maria Melas and seniors Dave McNamara and Matt Phaneuf, who decided to help a new local business called Tammy's Salon and Spa. The following are the steps their team initiated to help Tammy's increase its exposure in the local community:

• Finding the client
  The students' first step was to find a potential client. Since one of the project team members had noticed a new salon in the neighborhood, she decided to approach the business owner, Tammy, to see if she needed assistance with any aspect of the just-opened business. Two team members met with Tammy, who was receptive to the students' offer to help increase awareness of her salon in the local community.
• The Proposal
  After an initial meeting with Tammy, the project team researched Tammy's competition and wrote a proposal for improving Tammy's marketing efforts. While Tammy initially wanted to only market via a web site, the team's proposal recommended that she look beyond just the internet and try to develop additional marketing materials such as flyers, a brochure and a raffle. The proposal outlined specific information about costs for each marketing item (e.g. web hosting costs, printing costs, etc.) The team also offered information about the local college student population, a desirable group of potential clients.

• Develop Materials
  Once the team reviewed the proposal with Tammy, they set to work to create some of the materials she wanted. They developed some web pages and designed a brochure and flyer and organized a raffle on the Clark campus to increase exposure for the Salon.
• Implementation
  Tammy adopted several of the student team's materials, including the brochure and flyer and the student raffle.