Part 1 – Project Outline Paper

“What makes this case so compelling is that all three paths were available to Target Corporation. The ethical choice was never out of reach.“

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Background

This project was Part 1 of a two-part final project where Part 1 (this outline paper) and Part 2 (the presentation) were separate deliverables with separate due dates.

The assignment required students to apply ethical frameworks to a real-world violation of communication ethics by analyzing the choices available to an actor, the choice made, and the ethical implications of each. I chose to examine Target Corporation’s January 2025 decision to terminate its $2 billion DEI investment, including the REACH initiative and its Supplier Diversity program, in the wake of political pressure and shifting legal protections for DEI efforts.

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Scope

The paper is a 22-page formal analysis structured around three ethical frameworks: Deontology, Organizational Communication and Ethics Code, and Intercultural and Multicultural Communication Ethics. For each theory, I summarized the framework, applied it to three possible choices available to Target, determined whether each choice reflected or violated the theory, examined the positive and negative ramifications of each, and addressed the real-world fallout. The paper closes with a personal position statement and three original discussion prompts.

The project had a strict page limit, and the multi-layered outline structure generated significantly more content than the final allowance allowed which required substantial editing throughout.

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Process

I selected Target Corporations DEI reversal because it was both timely and ethically strong in that the actor’s stated values, formal commitments, and actual decision were in direct conflict of each other. The three-choice framework (uphold without compromise, modify while preserving core values, or fully retract) gave the analysis a clear structure that followed across all three theories, allowing each framework to highlight a different dimension of the same decision.

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Lessons Learned

What went well:

The multi-theoretical structure worked really well at showing the different layers of ethics violations that stemmed from Target Corporation’s decision. I also feel that the convergence of all three theories made the final argument more persuasive than any single framework could have done on its own. Not to mention, since this case had just happened a few months before, the research was more dynamic since most sources were published within months of writing the paper.

The main challenge:

Fitting a thorough three-theory analysis into the page limit was the main editorial challenge. Every section went through multiple rounds of compression, cutting supporting details while still trying to preserve the integrity of each argument. Because the required format was inherently expansive, I ended up with far more content than the final version reflects.

Outcomes:

The completed paper is a rigorous, multi-theoretical application of professional communication ethics to one of the most consequential corporate decisions of 2025. This paper demonstrates my ability to analyze a real-world ethical dilemma across multiple frameworks simultaneously, while taking a clear and defensible position, as well as showing my ability to write under significant structural constraints.