What To Do About Mrs. Carmichael Case Summary

“What to Do About Mrs. Carmichael”
Kiranjeet Singh Kaur
Student ID 1725920
Fairleigh Dickinson University, Vancouver Campus

Case Write Up 2
01/April/2016

Summary
Municipal Redevelopment Agency (MRA) has appointed an assistant project director with two specialists, with the responsibility of determining which houses in an older community qualify for either a renovation grant or demolition. One home that qualifies based upon building codes for demolition belongs to 82-year woman named Mrs. Carmichael. She has lived in the home for last 30 years and the mortgage has been paid off, but due to her neglect in repairing because of the decrease in the value of money from year to year, condition of the house became worse and according to the standards it has to be demolished. However, Harmon, one of the specialist, doesn’t feel so good about it and want to make some exception, whereas the other specialist, Franklin, insists that you cannot go around making exceptions.

Analysis Responsibility is the key concept in developing an ethic for the administrative role. According to Frederick Mosher (1968),

Accountability and obligation, responsibility to someone else for something—these are the dual dimensions of objective administrative responsibility” (Terry, 2012, p. 84). Principal-agent theory is used in this case “to determine the objective responsibility in terms of relationships between those with the primary right to exercise authority (principals) and those charged with carrying out their wishes (agents)” (Terry, 2012, p. 84). Sappington (1991) identifies the central concern of this perspective as “how the principal can best motivate the agent to perform as the principal would prefer, taking into account the difficulties in monitoring the agent's activities” (Terry, 2012, p.