Teaching Case: Transgender Sailors, Leadership Challenges, and Ethical Dilemmas - Case Study of U.S. Navy Sailor Landon Wilson, Steps Toward Gender Transition, Afghanistan, Diversity Management

This mid-2018 report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. In June 2016, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the repeal of the ban on transgender people serving in the military. In August 2017, President Donald Trump announced a reversal of Secretary Carter's decision, which would place a ban on transgender people serving in the military. This teaching case puts the reader into the position of the leadership of a U.S. Navy Sailor deployed in Afghanistan. The Sailor's documentation states the Sailor is female; in person the Sailor appears to be male. The Sailor had been living in male barracks and meeting male physical and grooming standards for months. Command leadership must determine what to do with the Sailor. The case study focuses on ethics, leadership, diversity management, and communication.

The present teaching case is designed for classroom discussion and educational purposes. It aims to generate discourse and thoughtful evaluation of how to manage difficult issues such as those experienced by the individuals in the case. It is not a critique of specific practices and does not offer recommendations for action. Recommendations are limited to methods for using the case.
This MBA report includes a background review of important events and policy changes, a teaching case, and a teaching plan. The teaching plan contains a case synopsis, learning objectives, discussion questions with possible answers, a research method, conceptual analysis, and notes and references. The case is based primarily on publically available data, including news reports and a blog, supplemented with input from the protagonist. Case development involved the collection and analysis of relevant data to identify key events, individuals, decision points, and policies. The analysis resulted in a narrative and timeline of events depicted in the teaching case. The case also presents a systematic review of media coverage of the focal event and related policies, as well as suggested data sources.

Guidance for the teaching plan and conceptual analysis came from the Western Case Writers Association. Both chapters provide important background information regarding the case. The teaching plan enables class discussion, and the conceptual analysis provides the theory supporting the methods used in the teaching plan. Relevant literature on leadership, ethics, diversity management, and communication provided theories and concepts applicable to the case situation, which informed the analysis of the case situation and the teaching plan.