Instructor information
The book is organized in six parts that move from context to cases to decisions:
- Part I — The New Reality (Chapters 1–3)
- Part II — The Stakes: Risk and Reward (Chapters 4–10)
- Part III — The Information Battlefield (Chapters 11–13)
- Part IV — Neutrality, Global and Local (Chapters 14–16)
- Part V — Should You Take a Side? (Chapters 17–21)
- Part VI — Perspectives and What Comes Next (Chapters 22–23)
The appendix, The Practical Toolkit, contains the Take a Side or Stay Neutral Decision Checklist and the Crisis First-Hour Checklist.
Three common ways to assign it:
- One week. Chapter 1 for the premise, Chapter 17 for the framework, and the audience chapter that matches the course (18, 19, 20, or 21).
- A three-week unit. Part I for context, selected case chapters from Part II (such as 5 and 8), then Part V for the framework and its applications.
- A full-term supplemental text. One part every two weeks alongside the core textbook, with the classroom exercise below as a midterm or final assignment.
Chapter summaries
The chapter guide has a summary of all 23 chapters, written for an instructor deciding what to assign, along with the principal cases each chapter examines.
Discussion questions
Each chapter in the chapter guide includes three open-ended discussion questions suitable for upper-level undergraduate and graduate seminars. None of them presuppose that any political side is correct; each asks students to weigh stakeholders, risk, authenticity, and consistency. Two examples:
- The framework treats a reversal as almost always worse than either speaking or staying silent. Using Target and Cracker Barrel as reference points, under what conditions, if any, might reversing a public position be the more responsible choice? (Chapter 17)
- The chapter advises measuring a controversy by signals such as customer contact, sales movement, and credible named voices rather than by online volume. What are the risks of discounting online outrage as manufactured, and how might an organization avoid dismissing genuine concerns? (Chapter 12)
Classroom exercise: should the company say something?
This exercise turns the book into a classroom tool rather than a reading assignment. It runs in a single 75-minute session or across two shorter ones.
- The scenario (5 minutes). Give students a hypothetical company facing a controversial political or social issue. Define the company’s products, customers, workforce, and anything it has said publicly before. Leave the issue itself contested.
- Argue it cold (20 minutes). Divide the class. One side argues the company should make a public statement; the other argues it should not. Record the arguments.
- Introduce the framework (15 minutes). Walk through the six steps from Chapter 17 and hand out the Corporate Positioning Decision Worksheet.
- Run the worksheet (20 minutes). In small groups, students complete the worksheet for the same company and reach a decision: speak, stay neutral on purpose, or not ready.
- Debrief (15 minutes). Which arguments survived the framework? What information did the groups discover they were missing? Did anyone change their answer?
A natural written follow-up is a one-page decision memo to the company’s CEO, or a case analysis of a real controversy using the questions the book applies throughout: what happened, why the organization was pressured to respond, who the stakeholders were, what the risks of speaking and of silence were, and what could have been decided before the controversy arrived.
Free download · PDF · 3 pages
The worksheet for the exercise
The Corporate Positioning Decision Worksheet condenses the book’s decision process into ten questions to answer, in writing, before any statement is drafted. It prints cleanly and can be filled in on screen. Instructors use it as the in-class tool for the classroom exercise.
Sample syllabus language
Adapt any of the following for your syllabus or course listing.
Hartzer, Bill. The Unofficial Ballot: Trust, Risk, and Taking Sides in a Divided Era. Hartzer Press, 2026.
When should an organization take a public position on a controversial political or social issue, and when should it remain neutral? Using The Unofficial Ballot as a supplemental text, this unit examines how audiences interpret both speech and silence, why reversals are often costlier than either, and how communicators can make defensible decisions before a controversy arrives. Students apply a six-step decision framework to documented corporate cases and to current events, without being asked to adopt any political position.
By the end of this unit, students will be able to:
- Identify the stakeholders affected by an organization’s public statements.
- Evaluate the risks of speaking and of remaining silent.
- Separate personal beliefs from organizational communication.
- Develop advance communication policies for controversial issues.
- Analyze real-world corporate controversies using a consistent framework.
- Make and defend communication decisions on non-partisan grounds.
Review and examination copies
Faculty considering the book for a course can request a complimentary digital examination copy, sent with the instructor materials on this page. Please include your name, institution, department, the course title and number, the term, and the expected enrollment. Author biography and photography are available on request.
Bulk and course-adoption orders
Quantity pricing is available for course adoptions, departments, and university programs at 10, 25, 50, and 100 or more copies. The book is available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle editions. The print editions are distributed through Amazon and through IngramSpark, so campus bookstores and textbook buyers can order them through Ingram’s standard wholesale catalog using the paperback ISBN, 979-8-9979685-4-0. Use the contact page with the number of copies, the format, and the date the books are needed.
Speaking availability
Bill Hartzer offers a complimentary 30- to 45-minute virtual guest lecture for classes that adopt or assign the book, with time for student questions. Topics include:
- Should Businesses Ever Take Political Positions?
- When Silence Becomes a Corporate Statement
- The Business Risk of Taking Sides
- Who Decides What a Company Believes?
In-person lectures, department events, and conference sessions can be arranged separately. See speaking and media for additional topics.