LEAD 4053 Module 5 Code of Conduct and Leader Ethics Plan Example

Six Promises for the Night Shift: A Code of Conduct and a Supervisor's Personal Ethics Plan

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD4053: Ethical and Legal Management Issues in Leadership

Module 5 Assignment

Instructor Name

December 14, 2026

Introduction

This course began with the Peanut Corporation of America and ended up, module by module, inside the plant where I supervise the second shift: a nut-free run made without its peanut check, a sanitation lead moved to weekends for speaking up, and a plant program designed to stop both from happening again. A program set by the company, however, does not decide what happens at 2 a.m. on line 2. That depends on the crew and on me. This final paper offers two things: a short code of conduct for the second shift, written with the crew, and a personal ethics plan describing how I will lead, how I will be held to it and where I fell short this autumn.

What Makes a Code Work

Many codes of conduct sit in binders and change nothing. Schwartz (2004), interviewing employees, managers and ethics officers at large Canadian companies, found that codes influenced behavior when they were readable and relevant to the work people actually did, when employees had a part in creating them and when managers both followed and enforced them. Codes that were long, legalistic or ignored by senior people had little effect. Those findings shaped three choices. The shift code is limited to six commitments that fit on a laminated card. Each commitment came out of two start-up meetings in which the crew described situations from their own work. And every commitment applies to me first.

The Second-Shift Code

First, nothing leaves our line before its checks are done, and a missing test kit means the line waits. Second, we write records when the work is done, in our own names, and we never sign for someone else or for a step not yet finished. Third, anyone may stop the line for a food safety concern, and the person who stops it will be thanked, not questioned about lost output. Fourth, we tell customers and the plant the truth about delays and mistakes. Fifth, we treat each other with respect regardless of language, shift history or position, and we do not joke about people who raise problems. Sixth, if something is wrong and the supervisor is part of the problem, we go to the quality office, and that is not disloyal.

Where the Code Fits

The shift code does not replace the plant program designed in Module 4 or the food safety plan. It translates the parts that matter most at night into language the crew uses. Each commitment points to a plant procedure or policy: the release rule, the records rule, the stop-the-line policy, the customer notification procedure, the respect policy in the handbook and the speak-up channel. The card will be printed in English and Spanish and reviewed at a start-up meeting every month, with one commitment discussed through a recent example from our own line.

My Values as a Supervisor

My personal ethics plan starts with three values. Honesty means I tell my manager, customers and crew what is true even when it costs output. Care means I remember that the people eating our bars, and the people making them, carry the risk of my decisions. Fairness means the same rules apply on every shift, to every crew member and to me. Brown et al. (2005) treated ethical leadership as two jobs at once: behaving well in plain view of the team, and then spreading that behavior by talking it through with people, rewarding it and building it into the calls a leader makes. That definition makes clear that holding values privately is not enough; the crew has to see them and be rewarded for sharing them.

Countering the Unspoken Rules

Interviews and surveys reported by Detert and Edmondson (2011) showed workers carrying quiet rules of thumb they rarely examine: never skip over your own boss, bring a fix along with any bad news, never make a manager look foolish in public. Those habits muted people even where the boss seemed open to hearing them. I suspect my sanitation lead held some of them, which is why the missing strips reached me only after the run began. To counter them, I will end each start-up meeting by asking what worries the crew tonight, accept concerns without requiring a fix, thank people by name when they raise one and make clear that going to the quality office is expected, not disloyal.

A Test for Pressure

Most of my ethical choices will be made quickly, near the end of a shift, with a truck waiting. I will use three questions before any release or shortcut. Has every required check actually been done, or am I assuming it has? Would I describe this decision, in writing, to the customer and to the corporate quality office? Who carries the risk if I am wrong, and did they have any say? If any answer is uncomfortable, the product waits and I make a phone call. The phone call goes first to the quality technician on duty and then, if needed, to the plant manager, and I will log it whether or not the product ships. A log of these calls, kept over months, will also show whether pressure is coming from one customer, one product or one manager. Module 2 showed that this approach can cost a penalty. It also showed that the cost of guessing wrong falls on children who never chose the risk.

My Own Part

An honest plan must include my own failures. I did not check the allergen strip stock at the start of the shift, which is part of my pre-run review, so the run began without me knowing a check was impossible. After the hold, I wrote to the plant manager but did not speak up when the sanitation lead's schedule changed until the lead came to me two days later. I was hoping the move was unrelated. Both delays came from the same habit of assuming that things are in order unless someone tells me otherwise. My plan therefore adds a written pre-run checklist that I sign, and a rule that I raise any change affecting someone who reported a concern on the day I learn of it.

Accountability and Growth

A plan nobody checks fades quickly. I will ask the quality manager to review my shift's holds, records and concerns each quarter, and I will ask the crew, through the plant's anonymous survey, whether they would stop the line and feel protected doing so. If fewer than eighty percent agree, I will discuss the results openly with the crew. For development, I will complete the plant's investigator training next spring, read one ethics case each month with the other supervisors and find a mentor among the senior quality staff. I will revisit this plan in a year and record what changed. The written record matters, because memory tends to flatter, and next year's version should be judged against what this one promised rather than what I later recall promising.

Conclusion

The course traced ethical failure from a national scandal to a single night shift. The shift code gives the crew six commitments they helped write, and the personal plan sets out my values, my behaviors, a test for pressure, my own mistakes and how I will be held to account. Together they aim at a shift where the next missing test strip is reported before the run, not after.

References

Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K., & Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2005.03.002

Detert, J. R., & Edmondson, A. C. (2011). Implicit voice theories: Taken-for-granted rules of self-censorship at work. Academy of Management Journal, 54(3), 461-488. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2011.61967925

Schwartz, M. S. (2004). Effective corporate codes of ethics: Perceptions of code users. Journal of Business Ethics, 55(4), 321-341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-004-2169-2