| A large portion of our grade for a course I am taking at a
major business school is based upon group projects. One person on
my team has taken an egregious free ride on the hard work of the
rest of us. Most of us have already turned in our final papers,
so telling the professor about this would have no practical
purpose, but it might teach this guy a lesson. Rat him out? --
K.F., Oakland, Calif.
Rat away right away, not to teach the guy a lesson -- that's
not your job -- but to give your professor an honest account of
how the project was accomplished. It is misleading to list this
student among those who did the work if he did not. What's more,
your professor can forestall, or at least respond to, such
problems only if he or she knows about them.
You should have spoken to your teacher when the problem first
emerged. There may have been contingency plans for dealing with a
feckless teammate. (Perhaps the plan was to let you go over to
the free-rider's apartment and swipe his stereo as compensation
for your hard work.) I consulted a professor in an MBA program
who said, "The ground rules for dealing with free riders are also
sometimes explicitly laid out -- e.g., the free rider may be
fired by an appropriate majority/supermajority of group members."
(He did not mention stereo-swiping.)
There is another possibility. Managers must sometimes cope
with teams comprising workers and drones, the productive and the
parasitic, the quick and the dead. (Deadish.) This assignment may
have been conceived in part to teach you as much. That professor
I spoke to concurred, saying, "One of the explicit benefits of
working in groups is that it forces students to confront these
and other management issues." (Another consideration, according
to my B-school expert: "The other major advantage of group
projects is that it means less grading for professors.")
UPDATE: K.F. did not go to the professor, deciding that his
shiftless teammate had not harmed anyone enough to warrant it.
K.F. received an A-plus in the course.
In leading a job search for my school, I read many resumes and
conducted extensive phone interviews. We could afford airfare for
in-person interviews with only two candidates, for whom I
coordinated dates and purchased plane tickets. Days later one of
them decided that our school was not for her after all. While I
am glad that she had her epiphany before we incurred yet more
costs, we're out the price of the ticket. Mustn't she reimburse
us? -- Paul Keller, Beaver Dam, Wis.
She must not. The candidate's change of heart is frustrating
but not unethical. Her duty was to inform you promptly of any
significant change in her thinking about the job, and that's what
she did. A job search is fraught with uncertainty on both sides.
As the two parties move through the process, their feelings often
fluctuate. And as Dr. Johnson did not say, "Depend upon it, sir,
when a man knows he is to schlep to the airport in a fortnight,
it concentrates his mind wonderfully."
You would have a legitimate beef if she had unalterably
decided against the job but took the trip anyway -- to revel in
the Beaver Dam high life, perhaps -- but you do not suggest that
that was the case. Under the circumstances, you cannot know what
she felt, more an epistemological problem than an ethical one,
and so you should make the more charitable assumption that she
acted, if not promptly, then at least in good faith.
(Readers can direct their questions and comments by e-mail to
ethicist@nytimes.com. This column originates in
The New York Times Magazine.)
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