The TERA Model: Ethics of Critique, Justice, and Care
This paper examines the TERA model, an ethical framework built on three foundational ethics: critique, justice, and care. The paper defines each ethical perspective, explores its applications in organizational contexts, and identifies its respective limitations. Ethics of critique focuses on uncovering power imbalances and systemic injustice. Ethics of justice balances individual rights with the common good through transparent governance. Ethics of care emphasizes interpersonal respect and human dignity in the workplace. The paper applies all three ethics to a case study involving a human resource advisor named William, who discovers discriminatory hiring practices at his firm, illustrating how the TERA model supports ethical decision-making and corporate social responsibility.
- Introduction to the TERA Model: Overview of ethics and the TERA model's foundations
- Ethics of Critique: Uncovering power imbalances and systemic injustice
- Ethics of Justice: Balancing individual rights with the common good
- Ethics of Care: Interpersonal respect and human dignity at work
- William's Ethical Dilemma: A Case Study: Applying all three ethics to a hiring discrimination scenario
- Conclusion: TERA model's value for organizational ethics
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper clearly defines each ethical framework before applying it, giving readers a solid conceptual foundation before moving to analysis.
- The William case study effectively integrates all three TERA ethics simultaneously, demonstrating how the model works holistically rather than in isolation.
- Each ethical framework is accompanied by an honest acknowledgment of its weaknesses, showing balanced critical thinking rather than uncritical advocacy.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs a framework-application structure: it introduces a theoretical model, unpacks its components individually, and then tests the model against a concrete scenario. This technique is particularly effective in applied ethics writing because it grounds abstract principles in recognizable situations, making the argument more persuasive and accessible. The case study section demonstrates how multiple ethical lenses can converge on a single dilemma without contradiction.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a general introduction to ethics and the TERA model, then dedicates a section to each of the three constituent ethics (critique, justice, care), including definitions, organizational examples, and limitations. The final analytical section presents William's hiring discrimination dilemma and maps all three ethics onto it, before a brief conclusion reaffirms the model's value for organizational responsibility. This clear, modular structure makes the argument easy to follow and the model easy to remember.
Introduction to the TERA Model
Ethics is a process that allows us to analyze the principles underlying a decision and how those principles culminate in a specific action. Ethical analysis involves norms such as possibilities and prohibitions that guide human behavior, as well as the practical rules and values that lead us to choose one course of action over another, and the moral principles we strive to respect in our relationships with ourselves and with others.
The TERA model is part of an existing ethical vision that aims to discover and highlight elements enabling moral reflection. This model was inspired by theoretical construction, and its utility has been confirmed by several research studies as well as training sessions involving different organizations and a variety of employee categories. The TERA model is based on three fundamental ethics: critique, justice, and care.
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