Essay on "System of Inquiry"

Quoted Instructions for "System of Inquiry" Assignment:

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W4 IP6 system of inquiry guidelines



Assignments:

System of Inquiry 1050-1400-word paper in APA format

System of Inquiry Paper (due Week Four)

What is an SOI? It is a better way to ask questions about what went wrong ethically in a department or function of an organization (any organization, not just a business). It is what you need to use for a specific investigation of what went wrong if you have an ethical problem, such as a theft, a harassment, a contaminated product, a failure to comply with a customer contract, etc. The general assumption is that your company does not yet have a written SOI for your department or function. If you company has a SOI in place, quote and reference what you need to meet the standards of the grading rubric (see below).

How is an SOI different from a routine audit? Audit procedures are simpler in the sense that they usually are a check and review of following the rules. A person using doing an audit is like teacher who is checking a multiple choice test: the options are clear cut. The remedies for an audit are usually simple punishments. Usually, the rules are not themselves up for being questioned or changed when a simple audit is done; as an individual you have to follow the rules or be punished.

A person doing an SOI is like a detective or investigating attorney who is looking for clues and evidence by inquiring deeper into what went wrong. An inquiry is an asking of questions, the answers to which should add up to an understanding of what went wrong, who was responsible, what root causes could be changed to prevent it, how different departments or functions were involved or affected, etc. Therefore, if you fail to ask important questions, you impede or prevent the solutions. In a crisis, it is not so easy to figure out all the right questions, so you make an inquiry systemic when you review important factors before anything goes wrong. Note: you have to be an “insider,” knowledgeable about how the department works, in order to write good questions for an SOI. The remedies for violations of a SOI are therefore more complex because the inquire goes deep into the causes. The root causes might mean the principles that drove the wrong behavior by individual employees might themselves be the cause rather than the maliciousness of the employee. For example, Sears was heavily fined because an inquiry into overcharging by their automotive service mechanics revealed something much deeper as a root cause than merely dishonesty and personal greed by an individual mechanic. Sears was found to have systemically imposed a corporate culture of fear and intimidation demanding fulfillment of sales quotes without regard for whether the customers’ cars really needed all that repair work at the present time.

A simple audit would also have found the mechanics recommended and charged for unnecessary repairs, but the SOI revealed the real fault was not at the mechanics level: the root cause was at the Corporate level. By digging deeper into the issues and root causes, a good SOI may reveal new information that was not expected. Not all inquiries reveal executive guilt, but an SOI should ask questions that at least consider that possibility because the SOI inquires into root causes. Therefore, if a Store Manager audited the mechanics in his or her store and found overcharging, he or she could have imposed penalties; that audit-level activity at the individual level would not have stopped the national abuse going on among all Sears Service Departments. A good SOI would have led to the root causes that were pressuring all the Service Departments to overcharge for unnecessary repairs.

Why is not the Code of Conduct or Code of Ethics for the company sufficient? If you read your company Code, you will probably find that it applies to everyone in the company. But if you look at your problems in your department or function, you will probably find that they apply mainly to you and your associates in your department. When you take your departmental ethical problems or crises and try to solve them in terms of the corporate Code of Ethics, you will probable notice the Corporate Code does not say much about your departmental functions. Therefore, if you are responsible for an investigation into wrongdoing in your department, you would be wise to have already much more than the Corporate Code; you need a System of Inquiry to prompt you to ask the right questions that will uncover causes and root causes specific to your departmental responsibilities and functions.

If you are the owner and/or President of a company, the corporate Code of Ethics will probably be the perspective you use for corporate-wide problems; however, that still will not be sufficient if you have to investigate what went wrong in a specific department.

Sometimes you will find that an audit has been written to check of a company code of ethics was itself written in an adequate way. If you want to write an SOI about whether the Code of Ethics of your company is adequate, you are taking on more difficult task than using your company Code of Ethics to apply it through writing a new SOI for a specific department.

1. The Standards or Code Available to Apply

You begin with a few relevant examples of a code of ethics that is already written by a company; so this should be less than 20% of your paper; do not spend the whole paper merely saying what is in a particular code of ethics that someone else already wrote. The codes of ethics say what is right and wrong for a company, industry, professional association, institution, etc. The problem with a Code is that it is written for a higher level about the whole organization. It does not always contain information about how to apply it in a particular department, function, or crisis. That is why you need to write the SOI. What if your company lacks a Code of Ethics or Code of Conduct? You can use an Ethics Code from a related professional society, such as Nursing, Accounting, etc. You can check the Ethics Code of a larger company in your industry; the issue here is not whether your company has a Code but how a given Department or Function should go about inquiring into problems or wrongdoing, which is the purpose of the SOI. So if your company does not have a Code of Ethics, but you can get one from another source, you are simply saying “If our company agreed to this generally accepted Code of Ethics for our industry, then this SOI will help implement some of the provisions in our Department.”

2, What to Ask…when you need to inquire into an actual or potential violation of the Code.

At least 50% of your paper should develop the system of inquiry (SOI) as the questions asked in a crisis or conflict, so the standards of the code are assessed and made applicable to the particular kinds of situations you find occurring in your area or department. The SOI does not need to be a complicated analysis; a list of questions will be the main focus. You can have examples of violations that have already been judged and are not now in question. To inquire, however, means to investigate actively what is still in question, so a system of inquiry attempts to define in advance which questions will lead to the most definitive judgment as to whether the violation occurred. For whom is the SOI written? It is written by you for the investigator who will have to ask questions to discover what was done wrong and if possible who did it. The SOI is usually conducted by a manager or an outside auditor (if a private Code of Ethics for a company is violated) or even a criminal investigator (if public law is also broken).

Sometimes, as with simple theft, the application is so obvious that the system of inquiry is applied quickly and unconsciously as an assumption. The idea of writing about a system of inquiry is that you can use this series of questions to analyze a conflict or violation in a particular area of the organization and make explicit the sequence of questions that need to be asked and answered to inquire about how to apply the code, which is important because the application often is needed in the heat of conflict and deadlines when one might easily forget to ask key questions or look into key factors. You focus the general, company-wide Code into the perspective of just one department, on function, or one position title.

This very asking and looking in the inquiry process that needs some systemization to make it easier and faster, especially when one is under pressure to make decisions and act.

a) If your organization has an existing Code of Ethics, obtain a copy and be prepared to discuss it in this week (I have copied this off and will send it to you in an email / the company I want to use is Vital Images, Inc. I have their code of content dated 2007). If it doesn't, use one from another organization. This code of ethics will be used as the basis for the System of Inquiry assignment.

b) Develop a system of inquiry (SOI) to be used in evaluating decision-making, problem solving, and behavior in a business setting.

Your development of the SOI depends on your position and department. The President or CEO is interested it the Code of Ethics for the entire company. The application of the code for various departments will need to be specially adapted. Your SOI can raise the specific questions needed in a given department to deal with its own issues in technology, logistics, communications, internal customer or external customer relations, etc.

c) This model should include a basic framework: this means how the System of Inquiry applies a Code in a particular area, department or division. For example, the code might say the company should ship the highest possible quality product to the customer. How can that be done? If you are in Production, the framework of the SOI would be how it applies to production (which is not the same as how it applies to Shipping and logistics).

(1) The Code--Why the Code is used, e.g. it is used in the manufacturing process so that quality errors are identified where they are being made and as soon as possible

(2) The SOI--How the SOI is used, e.g., if the customer finds out that quality is substandard, ask what statistical sampling was set; so is one sample per 100 units at random on each line sufficient?

(3) The Code--When it is used, e.g. at random on each line selected for the day, with 20% of the operating lines selected each day from the lines not yet inspected. By the end of the week, all lines will have had In-line inspection. So the SOI asks: Did you meet the 20% sampling rate? Was that sampling rate adequate? That kind of a question is too detailed for an overall company code, and it would not make sense to the other departments.

(4) The SOI--Who does the SOI in a crisis. E.g., The QA Manager, the Director of Quality, etc. What cross checks are used to assure the SOI is pursued vigorously

(5) The Code--Consider how you would implement the code, e.g., train Operators in inspection techniques, and train In-line inspectors how to communicate with Operators so they do not act like police. Inspectors have the authority to stop production to fix the problem immediately. An SOI question could be: Have you gotten feedback from Operators about their attitudes towards the process and the QA personnel? Are there complaints? Is there conflict? What steps have been taken to resolve the issues so the two departments can work harmoniously? (There is a logic behind each question asked in the SOI. Here you are inquiring into the possible basis for passive aggression, indifference, or even outright unwillingness to do anything extra beyond rote compliance).

Troubleshooting team to fix problems shall have an Operator, a QA Inspector, a Machine Maintenance person, an Electronics technician, and a Supervisor. Reports will be written and submitted at the end of the day, showing location of errors. Patterns will be analyzed to determine if the problem might also exist in other lines. Warehousing will maintain an adequate min-max level of machine parts to fix or swap-out machines the same day a problem is found.

(6) The SOI—most importantly, analyze root-causes and possible reactions to the code from employees that would cause them not to follow the Code, so you can prevent future violations rather than merely react to past violations, e.g., Operators could resent In-line inspection because they feel attacked. This means both Production and QA need to become aware of how to cooperate. The problem might not be with the code but with the way it is implemented. You need questions that get to root causes so you can prevent future occurrences.

(7) The SOI--State the effect the code would have on the organization, e.g, quality errors shipped in similar companies went from 2% to 0.002% or employees will probably rebel and Strike, so training needed to discuss the benefits of the SOI

(8) Example of questions

(a) These are operational questions that affect error and quality, as well as trust and good relations with customers. In an effective SOI there are always questions that would not apply to any other department or industry, such as the transportation division of a company….

a. What is the waiting to load and loading default time?

b. Is the security seal set in place before shipping?

c. Is the security seal untampered before opening to unload?

d. What is the waiting to unload and unloading default time?

e. Is there a per stop charge?

f. Is there a pump charge?

g. Have the dimensions of the shipping container changed?

i. What are the dimensions of the trailer being used in shipment?

ii. What the actual inside dimensions of the trailer before and after loading? (Note, if inside dimensions change from specified, it could indicate a false floor or false wall behind which could be smuggled illegal substances.)

(b) The managers and supervisors of the transportation division would all have to agree on the questions in this system of inquiry. They would also have to all agree to the relevance it has in meeting the departmental goal, such as 98 percent billing accuracy, elimination of smuggling opportunities, as well as the corporate mission. To develop a good SOI, you need what is important within a given department and across the overlapping departments.

(c) The questions presented in this SOI document would allow for a smooth transition for any new customer to computer aided billing and inventory tracking. It would also offer a guideline for each department to follow to insure they have done everything possible to achieve the high standards the vice president of transportation has set for them. The SOI needs to shape the activity of set up and implementation.

d) Write a 1050-1400 word paper, which will include a brief discussion of your system of inquiry and one or more examples of its application

This means your paper lists the key questions in a SOI and then you discuss them to demonstrate why those issues are important, how they can be justified ethically, etc.

This assignment simply means that it is one thing to have a Code but it is another to use the code. I have had students present their results from this paper to their superiors and have the SOI adopted by the department. I have also had students be asked by their department/company to be the trainer to help the company adopt the SOI.



Possible Pt Grade Earned

System of Inquiry 1050-1400-word paper in APA format

10 0 Content - is the paper focused and does it meet the objective of the assignment? does it incorporate theoretical concepts and models? does it demonstrate that those concepts and models are understood and can be appropriately applied?

5 0 Is the general code of ethics (at the level of the whole corporation or a professional society such as accounting) well summarized in no more than 20% of the paper?

10 0 Is the SOI summarized with a list of 10 to 20 specific and insightful questions that make the corporate Code of Ethics applicable to auditing or investigating ethical problems in a specific function or department?

5 0 Does the paper describe who will use the SOI, when they will use it, and why?

10 0 Does the paper describe how to inquire into root causes of the types of ethical problems that the SOI says need to be investigated?

10 0 Development of ideas - what depth of insight is demonstrated? how completely is the argument presented? how focused are the points contained within each paragraph? Does the paper discuss the most important SOI questions to demonstrate why those issues are important, how they can be justified ethically?

10 0 What difficulties will the use of the SOI in one department/function have on one or another specific department or function? And does the SOI analyze the kind of effect its use in one department or function would have on the organization as a whole?

15 0 Organization - does the paper have an introduction? does the paper emphasize a central purpose (and have a thesis statement)? does the paper transition from one idea to the next smoothly? is it organized so that the argument or presentation of information proceeds logically and clearly? does it arrive at a sound conclusion based on that information?

5 0 Format - does it cite sources correctly? contain required elements, such as a title page? is the format readable, in general?

10 0 Grammar/Punctuation/Spelling - are errors due to misspelled words, a lack of proofreading or a lack of understanding about how to properly express their thoughts, e.g. except rather than accept, incomplete sentences, subject-verb disagreement?

10 0 Style/Expression - are sentences and paragraphs properly constructed, clear and concise? is the tone appropriate? do the words used convey the intended message in an interesting and meaningful way, e.g. is the vocabulary appropriate? does it capture the reader's interest? is it precise or prone to being vague and/or abstract? For example, you can capture a reader’s interest with more vivid description in examples. Also, you can select interesting metaphors to convey connotations about your values and your approach.

100 0% 0

System of Inquiry for X Tooling Inc

SAMPLE PAPER

By STUDENT, owner of the company in the SOI

University of Phoenix

Lorin Loverde

PHL 323











System of Inquiry for X Tooling Inc

The tooling industry offers many opportunities for improvement of aircraft parts manufacturing. In an industry where people’s lives are at stake, quality means more than looking good. Aircraft parts are designed and built within thousandths of an inch for a reason. Any flaw in the part and catastrophe will happen.

Airplane and helicopter builders use external companies to provide some of the parts in its manufacturing process. These companies will mill, cut, chemically mill, and build parts of the planes or helicopters. The companies that get the bids for the parts need tools to build the parts. Tools consisting of chem-mill tools, router fixtures, inspection templates, and other miscellaneous gauges are used to monitor the process of the way a part is built.

When a part is ordered, a PO is issued. The PO is the item that is needed to receive payment. Payment cannot be received until a quality control inspection is performed by the QC inspector at the facility that ordered the part. An invoice is issued after the part is ready for delivery. When the part is delivered a packing slip is signed by the inspector at the facility the part is delivered. From this point, the responsibility of quality assurance is passed from the tooling maker to the part manufacturer.

The company that makes the tools code of ethics is to produce a product that is of the highest quality in fiberglass or metal tools. Tools will be constructed using the best material available on the market. A quality inspection of every process will be performed to maintain a high level of quality throughout the process. The quality manager of the tool company is responsible for inspecting the steps of the tool build. The tool cannot go to the next process until the previous step is approved.

If a tool is not approved from the part manufacturer, the following questions will be asked in finding out what happened along the process.

1. Were there Mylar’s involved?

The Mylar is the blueprint in full-scale two dimensions of what the part will look like. Any flaw here can jeopardize the entire part and tool.

2. Were the Mylar plans approved from the manufacturer?

Plans from the manufacturer are most important. Even if the part was made before, slight changes could have been made thus generating the new part.

3. Are there any other plans or blueprints involved, and are all partied privy to them?

Sometimes a drawing with numbers and other markings is used to aide in the tool build. Slight changes here could affect the tool layout.

4. Did the QC inspector at the tool company sign off on the steps of the process?

The quality inspector at the tool company is also the manager of the project. He will be there throughout the entire build and nothing is done without his approval.

5. If fiberglass is the material to use, was the right resins and hardeners used?

Chemical compounds can vary dramatically in this industry. One small detail left out could cause a disastrous mess.

6. At completion, were Mylar’s and tools mated to insure preciseness?

Final mating of the tool with the Mylar is important to insure that any fine-tuning can be done before the tool leaves the shop. Not checking the two components leads to picking to the tool up from the part company and embarrassing the tool companies’ name.

7. Was the tool damaged in transport?

We deliver the tools most of the time. Sometimes the buyer will pick up the tool, but a waiver is signed at the tool company before they leave with the tool.

8. Who delivered and received the tool?

If we delivered the tool and damage occurs, we are liable and vice versa. This can be costly considering some of the blank parts can cost upwards of $100,000.oo.

9. Was the tool inspected before and after unloading?

We make sure the tool is clean and secure before it arrives at the part builders’ property. Once there, the responsibility is passed on to the person or persons’ unloading the tool to handle the tool with care.

10. After delivery, how long did the part sit at the sight before it was used?

When a tool is built with specific curvatures and shapes, storage becomes an issue. Fiberglass tools need to be stored on the part they reflect; otherwise, the pockets and lines will be skewed and the tool will not make the correct design on the part.

11. Finally, does the tool not match the part from the manufacturer, or does it not fit other parts in the sequence?

If all the steps have been followed and the problem persists, the problem may be a new product, or research and development is happening. Different companies will make different sections of the planes or helicopters. The problem could be another tool company’s mistake and not ours.

The United States military and other private airplane and helicopter manufacturers rely on the expertise of the company they hire to build parts. My company is dedicated to making tools that have a high degree of preciseness and longevity. In searching for an answer to why a tool was not made correctly or damaged, discovering the individual mistake that was made will prevent further duplication. The code of ethics is clear in the tooling industry. The system of inquiry into what went wrong along the way helps prevent repeating the same mistake. If the same mistake is made intentionally, termination of the responsible party is expected and carried out. Having the system of inquiry will help my company keep a more detailed paper trail for the steps we take to insure that the tool is correct.







Reference

The type of questioning to inquire into and uncover what went wrong is excellent. It reflects how systematic inquiry narrows down the range of possible causes. Note, as you use a SOI, you usually find out that there are sub-groups of questions in between the major steps.

For example, the question in step 5 might be more generally about what were the materials and manufacturing conditions for that part (presupposes tracking numbers, lot numbers, or batch numbers). 5a. could be as you noted about the problems associated with fiberglass. 5b might be about problems associated with other material. 5c might be about problems associated with variation such a Second Shift and Third Shift operations where there might be differences in staging the materials that could allow for mix-ups by operators.

Another example, in step 9 there are two inspections, before and after unloading. If each inspection is accurate, any damage in transit will be discovered after the fact of damage. But with high cost and a need for reliable schedule of delivery, other questions could be added for steps 7 and/or 9, such as

9a. What is the shipping environment? Is it controlled? Can there be interfering factors like weather, humidity, bad roads, etc. (for electronics there are also considerations like electrostatic shock, etc.)

9b. What packing materials should be used considering the expected shipping environment and the possible exceptional circumstances? (e.g., molded Styrofoam precisely shaped to hold the product firmly in place).

This group of subquestions for step 9 would be designed in the SOI to identify and therefore prevent damage, whether you ship or they pick up.

Therefore, a company should institute an SOI for each of the main functions and require that it be continually updated and refined, either to reflect changes in design or changes in the explicit knowledge that can be gained about existing processes that are well known with a lot of expertise embedded in the tacit knowledge of experienced workers.



University of Phoenix Material:

Week Four Overview

The Difficulty of Changing Personal and/or Cultural Ethics

If it is accurate to state that the sources of our personal ethics are generally derived from the culture in which we live, and especially from the religious tenets of that culture, it also seems accurate to state that the principles of personal ethics are most difficult to change. This is because the principles are part of an entrenched mental system that is part and parcel of a cultural ethos.

An example of this is the following series of statements:

“She is out of her mind!” Or “He is out of his mind.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

The statement and the question are directed toward exactly the same type of assessment of behavior. The meaning is not that someone is now deemed crazy, but rather is that the person in question is acting in a way which is contradictory to the mental system of the particular culture.

The consequence is that an acculturated mental system is extremely difficult to set aside. The more striking consequence is that this very mental system is virtually impossible for the culture to set aside. Simply, it is the way that culture thinks and is crucial to the self-identity of that culture.

Organizational Ground Rules

Just as a culture has an ethos so also does an organization.

When we looked at the ground rules of a business, we recognized that the goal of a business will have everything to do with what those ground rules are, how they are developed, and if, when, and why these may be changed. For instance, a for-profit organization has as its primary goal of having a quite satisfactory rate of return on the investment made by the owners. Thus, no matter how the Code of Ethics for such a business may read, the underlying theme is “to make as much profit as can possibly be made.”

Consider the stockholder theory. A Code of Ethics written from this perspective would simply state that the business will be conducted in such a way as to avoid fraud and deception, and to make as much profit as the business can possibly make. In this theory, that is the extent of the social responsibility of a business.

Consider the stakeholder theory. A Code of Ethics written from this perspective would be more complex in that these ground rules would have to address each identifiable stakeholder and express the proper way for the business to deal with those various interest groups. Because each of these stakeholders may have a differing perspective, the complexity increases because a Code of Ethics for a stakeholder viewpoint must seek to reconcile how to address those differing attitudes in an equitable fashion. At the same time, it must continue to be recognized that the primary purpose of a for-profit organization is to maximize the profits of the business.

Organizational Ground Rules as “Group Values”

Let’s look for a moment at the internal constituencies of a business. Owners, Boards of Directors, Managers, and other Employees comprise these constituencies. Thus, the simplest way to determine the group values of the organization is to look at the purpose of the organization. Since the purpose of a for-profit business is to make money, we must recognize that the group values will be those which enhance that profit-making ability.

How does an organization ensure that its primary value (the making of the maximum profit) is a group value for all of its internal constituencies? This is often pursued by making certain that all members of the business read and acknowledge the Code of Ethics (which expresses the group values of the organization). While such reading and acknowledgement of the Code of Ethics works so that a record of this is maintained, this will not ensure that the group values are shared by the entire internal constituency.

Leadership

Just as the three key words in real estate are “location, location, location,” so in group values, or organizational ethos, the three key words are “example, example, and example.”

The owners, directors, and managers are the leadership of the organization. If, and only if, these people embody the group values in a way that can be readily seen by the followers within an organization as consistent with the written Code of Ethics, then it will be possible for the entire organization to share its group values.

This means that not only must the leadership be explicit in stating its group values, but the leaders of the organization must make those statements a way of life by the implicit example of adhering to those very group values.

The Role of Experience and Evidence

When all the words have been stated, when all the Codes of Ethics have been read and acknowledged, there remains that one crucial aspect of verification. Verification of any claim is dependent upon the experience of observing the evidence for that claim. Additionally, that evidence must be available to all so that every employee can actually assess the validity of the claim.

Simply, objective verification by observers is both the best experience and the best evidence that group values are the real core values of the organization.

The following quotation is an example of the crucial nature of free and open communication. Good communication begins with careful listening just as much as good communication requires distinct clarity of presentation:

***** Bohm defined dialogue as a free flow of meaning among people in communication. A key difference between dialogue and ordinary conversation is that in the latter, people usually hold relatively fixed positions and argue in favor of their views as they try to convince others to change. In dialogue, however, a person may prefer a certain position, but he or she is ready to listen to others with sufficient sympathy and interest to understand the meaning of others’ positions properly, and is also ready to change his or her point of view if there is good reason to do so. Dialogue implies a very deep change in how the mind works. It is essential that each participant suspend [sic] his or her point of view, while also holding other points of view in a suspended form and giving full attention to what they mean. In doing so, each participant has to suspend his or her own tacit infrastructure of ideas. Freedom from the tacit infrastructure of ideas, worldview, and so forth, brings about the true ***** of dialogue. (2000, p. 164)

Reference

Little Bear, L. (2000). “The Language of Spirituality. Corales, NM: SEED.

I am attaching some of the detail I have already researched and gathered for the project due next week. I posted this request with ***** earlier today. I am also sending a PDF which did not come in my original order as detail to use to contribute to my response (Vital Images, PDF).

*****