This chapter begins the part of the book that focuses on ethical decision making as something that individuals do. Many if not most ethical decisions in business organizations are made by individuals like you either alone or in groups. In later chapters, we address how the organizational context and the broader business environment affect individual ethical decision making. There are two ways to think about individual ethical decision making\u2014the prescriptive approach and the descriptive approach. This chapter covers the prescriptive approach, helping you to answer the question \u201cwhat should I do?\u201d. It is derived from ethical theories in philosophy and offers decision-making tools (ways of thinking about ethical choices) that help you decide what decision you should make as a \u201cconscientious moral agent\u201d who thinks carefully about ethical choices1 and who wants to make the ethically \u201cright\u201d decision. Our assumption is that your intentions are good and that your goal is to do the right thing. So, in this chapter we introduce tools that can help you do just that, and we explain how you can integrate them and use them in a practical way. We know, however, that people don\u2019t always make the best decisions. Prescriptions aren\u2019t always followed. So it\u2019s helpful to understand how people\u2019s minds work\u2014how people really make decisions. The descriptive approach, discussed in Chapter 3, relies on psychological research to describe how people actually make ethical decisions (rather than how they should make them). It focuses in particular on individual characteristics that influence how individuals think and on cognitive limitations that often keep people from making the best possible ethical decisions. Hopefully, if we understand both approaches, we can improve our ethical decision making and our leadership of others. Now let\u2019s learn about the prescriptive approach. Ethical Dilemmas Many ethical choices are clear-cut enough that we can decide what to do rather easily because they pit \u201cright\u201d against \u201cwrong.\u201d Is deciding whether to embezzle corporate funds a tough ethical dilemma? Not really, because embezzling is stealing and it\u2019s illegal and wrong, period. There\u2019s not much of a \u201cdilemma\u201d there. But things can get pretty murky in situations where two or more important values, rights, or responsibilities conflict and we have to choose between equally unpleasant alternatives. We define an ethical dilemma as a situation in which two or more \u201cright\u201d values are in conflict (For a list of values, see the list at the end of the chapter and an exercise. Consider the following ethical dilemma:<\/p>\n
Pat is the plant manager in one of ABC Company\u2019s five plants. She\u2019s worked for the company for 15 years, working her way up from the factory floor after the company sent her to college. Her boss just told her in complete confidence that the company will have to lay off 200 workers soon. Luckily, her job won\u2019t be affected. But a rumor is now circulating in the plant, and one of her workers (an old friend who now works for her) asks the question, \u201cWell, Pat, what\u2019s the word? Is the plant closing? Am I going to lose my job? The closing on our new house is scheduled for next week. I need to know!\u201d What would you say? What should she say?<\/p>\n
This is a true ethical dilemma because two values are in conflict. Two \u201cright\u201d values that can create significant conflict are truthfulness and loyalty. As illustrated in the case, telling the truth to your friend would mean betraying a confidence and being disloyal to the company that has treated you so well. The value of loyalty can even be in conflict with itself as you weigh loyalty to your friend against loyalty to your boss and company. In this chapter, we introduce conceptual tools drawn from philosophical approaches to ethical decision making that are designed to help you think through these tough ethical dilemmas from multiple perspectives. None of the approaches are perfect. In fact, they may lead to different conclusions. The point of using multiple approaches is to get you to think carefully and comprehensively about ethical dilemmas and to avoid falling into a solution by accident. At the very least, you can feel good because you\u2019ve thought about the issue thoroughly, you\u2019ve analyzed it from every available angle, and you can explain your decision-making process to others if asked to do so. Prescriptive Approaches to Ethical Decision Making in Business Philosophers have been wrestling with ethical decision making for centuries. We don\u2019t intend to provide a philosophy course here, but we can distill some important and practical principles that can guide you toward making the best ethical decisions. In this section, we outline some of the major contemporary approaches that we think are quite practical.2 And, we try to make them accessible and easy to use. We then incorporate them into a series of steps that you can use to evaluate ethical dilemmas and, along the way, we apply these steps to the short layoff case as well as other examples. Focus on consequences (consequentialist theories) One set of philosophical theories is categorized as consequentialist (sometimes referred to as teleological, from the Greek telos for \u201cend\u201d and logos for \u201creason\u201d). When you\u2019re attempting to decide what\u2019s right or wrong, consequentialist theories focus attention on the results or consequences of the decision or action. Utilitarianism is probably the best-known consequentialist theory. According to the principle of utility, an ethical decision should maximize benefits to society and minimize harms. What matters is the net balance of good consequences over bad for society overall. A utilitarian would approach an ethical dilemma by systematically identifying the stakeholders in a particular situation as well as the alternative actions and their consequences (harms and\/or benefits) for each. A stakeholder is any person or group with a stake in the issue at hand. So who are the stakeholders in the layoff situation? Key stakeholders would include Pat\u2019s friend, her friend\u2019s family, Pat\u2019s boss, Pat, her family, other workers, and the company\u2014quite a list! And, what would be the consequences (societal harms and benefits) for each stakeholder of a decision to tell or not tell? The consequentialist approach requires you to do an analysis and mental calculation of all the harms and benefits of these consequences, stakeholder by stakeholder, for each option identified. What would be the consequences if Pat tells her friend what she knows about the layoff? What would be the consequences (societal harms and benefits) if Pat doesn\u2019t share what she knows? A potential harm of telling her friend would be that he or she might tell other workers and send the plant into chaos. Perhaps more people would lose their jobs as a result. Another potential harm might be that Pat could lose the trust of her boss (another stakeholder), who provided information to her in confidence. Pat might even lose her job, which has harmful consequences for her family. A potential benefit of telling might be that Pat would retain the trust of a valued friend. Another potential benefit of telling might be that her friend could use the information to make a decision about going through with buying the new house. After Pat conducts a thorough analysis that estimates these harms and benefits for each stakeholder and for each option, the \u201cbest\u201d ethical decision is the one that yields the greatest net benefits for society, and the \u201cworst\u201d decision is the one that yields the greatest net harms for society. So, if more people would be ultimately hurt than helped if Pat were to inform her friend of the impending layoff, a utilitarian would conclude that Pat shouldn\u2019t tell. Keep in mind that this perspective requires you to think broadly about the consequences for \u201csociety,\u201d not just for yourself and those close to you, as we are often inclined to do. When conducting such an analysis, you should create a table, using Table 2.1 as a guide, that can help you sort out the complexities by identifying the stakeholders, the options, and the anticipated harms and benefits. Without this systematic approach, you\u2019re likely to miss important considerations. But, even after doing this, arriving at a bottom-line conclusion about the action that will serve the greater good of society is easier said than done. You can\u2019t just add up the number of harms and benefits and expect to get an answer. A more effective approach requires some way to \u201cweight\u201d the harms and benefits and that means thinking hard about what you value more and less. We encourage you to attempt to account for this \u201cweighting\u201d in some way as you complete the table. Some people like to use numbers. Others might use multiple check marks or asterisks. Whatever method you choose can help you decide where the consequentialist analysis leads in terms of a decision about what you should do. Believe it or not, Table 2.1 actually simplifies the decision a lot because there may be other options besides the simple either\/or of telling the whole story or keeping everything to yourself. Try to think of creative solutions. For example, might you tell your friend that you are hearing the rumors too (true) and that she may want to wait until the company unveils its plans to close on the house. Yet another option might be to encourage your boss to share information about the upcoming layoff with all employees sooner rather than later, explaining that you are aware that some employees are making important life decisions. If these are options, they should be included in your calculus. In 2005, Mark Felt, also known as \u201cDeep Throat,\u201d revealed his identity as the source who secretly fed information about Watergate to Washington Post investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The information ultimately led to the 1974 resignation of U.S. President Richard Nixon over his involvement in the cover-up of the 1972 burglary at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate building. Woodward and Bernstein turned the story into a book and later a film, All the President\u2019s Men. We can\u2019t get inside Felt\u2019s head to understand his ethical decision-making process at the time. We will never know his true motivation because Felt became cognitively impaired in his later years. But we can imagine that, as the number two person at the FBI, he may have weighed the harms and benefits of leaking information about the Watergate break-in and the involvement of Nixon and his aides in criminal wrongdoing. Felt certainly took a huge personal risk and may have considered the costs to others. Several individuals went to prison as a result of the investigation, and their families suffered as a result. A president also resigned in disgrace. If Felt had been discovered, his career would probably have been ruined, and his family would have experienced the rippling effects. But those who believe that he did the right thing would say that Felt\u2019s decision served the long-term greater good for society, ultimately helping to preserve democracy in the United States. The consequentialist approach can be extremely practical and helpful in thinking through an ethical dilemma. Don\u2019t we generally look at the consequences of our own and others\u2019 actions in trying to decide what\u2019s right? And don\u2019t we consider who will benefit and who will be harmed? When the state decides to build a new highway through your property, aren\u2019t they using a utilitarian rationale when they argue that the benefits to the greater community (increased development and jobs, fewer accidents, etc.) outweigh the harm to the few property holders who will be inconvenienced by an eyesore in their backyard? The COVID-19 pandemic crisis in 2020 highlighted countless examples of excruciating ethical decisions that were being addressed mostly with consequentialist solutions that stressed the greater good. For example, wearing masks and physical distancing were required to reduce infection and save lives for the greater good. It was necessary to keep the number of cases and the growth in cases low enough not to overwhelm the health-care system and harm those who would become seriously ill if the virus were left unchecked. Healthy young people (who tend to have milder cases) had to think about their elders and those with compromised immune systems and underlying conditions who were more vulnerable. In another example, hospitals were preparing for ventilator shortages and how to decide who would get one and who wouldn\u2019t. Should the ventilator be given to an ill younger person who has a longer life ahead and is more likely to survive rather than to an older patient who is more at risk of death even with a ventilator? And, finally isn\u2019t society better off if we ban family members from hospitals to reduce risk to themselves, hospital workers, and patients even if that means that they won\u2019t be able to be with sick and dying loved ones? A challenge involved in using a strictly consequentialist approach is that it is often difficult to obtain the information required to evaluate all of the consequences for all stakeholders who may be directly or indirectly affected by an action or decision. In business (or in life for that matter), when do you have all of the facts? Could Deep Throat have known what the outcomes of his decision would be? And even if you have all of the information, it can be extremely cumbersome to calculate all of the harms and benefits every time you encounter a new ethical dilemma. Try it. Can you list all of the potential harms and benefits for everyone who may be directly or indirectly involved in the layoff situation described above? It\u2019s relatively easy for Pat to list the potential harms and benefits to herself and those close to her. But can you envision all of the potential harms and benefits to all of the other people who may be involved? If you don\u2019t have a crystal ball that allows you to foretell the future (and most of us don\u2019t), you\u2019re unlikely to arrive at a completely accurate assessment of all future consequences. Nevertheless, with this approach, it\u2019s important to do your best to accurately assess the potential consequences. You have a responsibility to gather and use the best, most up-to-date information available. Remember, according to this approach, the most ethical decision maximizes benefits and minimizes harm to society. The challenge of making the best ethical decision is to step outside of yourself and think as broadly as possible about all of the consequences for all of those affected. Taking this step is guaranteed to widen your decision-making lens and allow you to take into account consequences that you otherwise might not consider. Another difficulty with this type of approach is that the rights of a minority group can easily be sacrificed for the benefit of the majority. For example, slaveholders in the Old South argued that the greatest good for the greatest number would be served by maintaining the system of slavery. But hopefully we all agree that such a system did not respect the civil or human rights of the people who were enslaved (a deontological perspective we discuss next). The consequentialist approach remains particularly important to ethical decision making in business for a variety of reasons. First, utilitarian thinking\u2014through its descendant, utility theory\u2014underlies much of the business and economics literature. Second, on the face of it, most of us would admit that considering the consequences of one\u2019s decisions or actions for society is extremely important to good ethical decision making. In fact, studies of ethical decision making in business have found that business managers generally rely on such an approach.3 As we\u2019ll see, though, other kinds of considerations are also important. Focus on duties, obligations, and principles (deontological theories) The word deontological comes from the Greek deon, meaning \u201cduty.\u201d Rather than focusing on consequences, a deontological approach would ask, \u201cWhat is Pat\u2019s ethical duty now that she knows about the layoff?\u201d Deontologists base their decisions about what\u2019s right on broad, abstract, universal ethical principles or values such as honesty, promise keeping, fairness, loyalty, rights (to safety, privacy, etc.), justice, responsibility, compassion, and respect for human beings and property. According to some deontological approaches, certain moral principles are binding, regardless of the consequences. Therefore some actions would be considered wrong even if the consequences of the actions were good. In other words, a deontologist focuses on doing what is \u201cright\u201d (based on moral principles or values such as fairness), whereas a consequentialist focuses on doing what will maximize societal welfare. An auditor taking a deontological approach would likely insist on telling the truth about a company\u2019s financial difficulties (in keeping with the value of honesty and fairness to shareholders) even if doing so might risk putting the company out of business and many people out of work. A consequentialist auditor would weigh the societal harms and benefits before deciding what to do. If convinced that by lying now he or she could save a good company in the long term, the consequentialist auditor would likely be more willing to compromise the truth. Knowing what values are important to you and how you prioritize them is an important first step toward understanding and applying this approach in your own life (now is a good time to complete the end-of-chapter exercise, \u201cClarifying Your Values\u201d). Which values are most important to you? Which ones are you willing to adhere to consistently, and how do you prioritize them if they conflict? Try to keep your list of values to just a few (three to five) that you believe are truly the most important. Fewer is better because you\u2019ll actually be able to remember them! In attempting to decide which values are most important to you, it\u2019s helpful to think back to recent ethical dilemmas you have faced. Which ones guided your behavior? Which ones trumped other conflicting values? Think carefully when selecting your ethical values. For example, students often select promise keeping as a value. But what if keeping a promise requires you to breach another, more important value such as honesty or justice? If promise keeping is important to you, be very careful what you promise. Should you promise to lie to authorities for a friend who has broken the law and harmed others? If you select loyalty, you\u2019ll need to think about \u201cloyalty to whom\u201d because multiple loyalties can conflict as they do in the layoff situation we\u2019ve been discussing. Also, research has found that loyalty to a particular group can lead to more ethical behavior, but it can also be problematic (e.g., increasing cheating behavior) under a very specific circumstance: if that group is competing with other groups. You may want to help your group \u201cwin\u201d a competition, but competition may increase willingness to do so at the expense of the competing group.4 So, think carefully about your value for loyalty. Finally, if you select honesty, do an \u201chonesty\u201d inventory of the last few days. Can you \u201chonestly\u201d say that you have been perfectly honest with absolutely everyone during that time? If not, should you be listing honesty as one of your highly prioritized values? Your initial list of values need not be set in stone. Once you have identified them, pay attention to subsequent ethical decisions. Are you adhering to the values you stated, in the priority order in which you stated them? If not, you may need to adjust your list. <\/p>\n
Some deontological theories focus on rights rather than duties, values, or principles. The concept of rights goes back to classical Greek notions of \u201cnatural rights\u201d that emerge from \u201cnatural law.\u201d Rights can be thought of as \u201cnegative rights,\u201d such as the limits on government interference with citizens\u2019 right to privacy or the pursuit of happiness. Or rights can be thought of in more positive terms, such as the individual\u2019s rights to health and safety. The rights of one party can conflict with the rights of another party, as when the rights of a company to seek profits for its shareholders conflict with the rights of a community to clean air or water or the rights of a consumer to buy a safe product. Furthermore, the rights of one party are generally related to the duties of another. So, if we agreed that communities have the right to clean water, businesses would have the duty to protect that right. How does a deontologist determine what rule, principle, or right to follow? One way is to rely on moral rules that have their roots in Western biblical tradition. For example, the Golden Rule, a basic moral rule found in every major religion, is familiar to most of us and provides an important deontological guide: The most familiar version tells us to \u201cDo unto others as you would have them do unto you.\u201d In our layoff situation, the Golden Rule would suggest that Pat should tell her friend what she knows because she would want her friend to do the same for her if the situation were reversed. But note that the Golden Rule leads you to the best decision only if both parties are highly ethical. For example, do you think that the Golden Rule would expect you to lie for a friend who has broken the law because you would want the friend to do that for you? No, because a highly ethical person wouldn\u2019t ask a friend to lie. The ethical person would be responsible and would accept the consequences of his or her illegal actions. And, perhaps a highly ethical friend who knows that Pat has promised not to share what she knows about the layoff would not ask her to compromise her promise to her boss. German philosopher Emmanuel Kant provided another useful moral rule with his categorical imperative: \u201cAct as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature.\u201d This rule asks you to consider whether the rationale for your action is suitable to become a universal law or principle for everyone to follow. For example, if you break a promise, the categorical imperative asks, \u201cIs promise breaking a principle everyone should follow?\u201d The answer is no; if everyone did this, promises would become meaningless. In fact, they would cease to exist. A practical Kantian question to ask is, \u201cWhat kind of world would this be if everyone behaved this way or made this kind of decision in this type of situation?\u201d What kind of world would this be if everyone broke promises promises at will? Would I want to live in such a world? <\/p>\n
Consider the following example: <\/p>\n
A number of physicians are recruited to participate in a large-scale, multicenter study to investigate the survival rates of breast cancer victims who are being treated with a new drug. Strict rules are developed regarding inclusion of patients in the study. Only those who have had surgery within the last three months can be included. Dr. Smith has a patient who hears about the study and wants very much to participate. Because Dr. Smith thinks the drug could really help this patient, he agrees to include her even though her surgery took place six months ago. He changes the dates on her charts to conform with the study requirements <\/p>\n
According to the categorical imperative, we must ask whether the rationale for Dr. Smith\u2019s action (helping his patient by breaking the study rules) is suitable to become a principle for all to follow. The answer is clearly no. What if other doctors did the same thing as Dr. Smith? What if those involved in medical research followed their own preferences or motives rather than the rules guiding the study? Society would be unable to rely on the results of medical research. What kind of a world would it be if researchers were routinely dishonest? It would be one where we simply couldn\u2019t depend on the integrity of scientific research, and most of us would deem that kind of world unacceptable. Interestingly, given the potential for societal harm of a decision to be dishonest and enroll the patient in the study, consequentialist thinking would lead to the same decision. Only the patient would potentially benefit, and society as a whole would be harmed. Additional moral rules come from the work of highly regarded American political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls proposed that decision makers use a veil of ignorance exercise to arrive at fundamental principles of justice that should guide ethical decision making. In his approach, imaginary people come together behind a hypothetical veil of ignorance. These imaginary people do not know anything about themselves, their identities, or their status. They don\u2019t know if they (or others involved in the situation) are male or female, young or old, rich or poor, black or white, a CEO or a janitor, intelligent or mentally disabled, sick or healthy, patient or doctor. According to Rawls, rational people who use this veil of ignorance principle will be more likely to develop ethical rules that do not unfairly advantage or disadvantage any particular group.5 Under the veil, Pat would not know that the person asking was a friend and would probably think that it would be most fair to provide employees equal access to the information early and at the same time, an argument against giving her friend special treatment. Neutral people behind the veil of ignorance would arrive at fair principles that grant all individuals equal rights to basic liberties and equality of opportunity and that benefit the least advantaged in society. This approach was designed to be used as a guide in any ethical decision, but it may be most useful when fairness concerns are central to the decision at hand. It offers yet another way to broaden your view and urges you to consider the needs of those who are less advantaged than yourself. So, following Rawls, if a business needs to downsize, we should ask what kind of process the group of imaginary people behind the veil of ignorance would devise for deciding whom to lay off, whom to tell, and when. How would doctors decide who will be included in drug studies? How would lifesaving prescription drugs be priced? Would sweatshop working conditions ever be acceptable? A major challenge of deontological approaches is deciding which duty, obligation, right, or principle takes precedence because, as we said earlier, ethical dilemmas often pit these against each other. What does the deontologist do if one binding moral rule clashes with another? Can it be determined which is the more important right or principle? Because the U.S. Constitution is based on a rights approach, many U.S. public policy debates revolve around questions such as these. For example, the abortion debate rests on the question of whether the rights of the mother or the fetus should take precedence. In ethical dilemmas at work, loyalty to your boss or organization can easily clash with other strongly held values such as compassion or fairness. What if your boss tells you that you must lay off a subordinate\u2014an excellent performer\u2014because he was hired last, and the principle guiding the layoff is \u201clast hired\/first fired\u201d? But imagine that this subordinate will lose his health insurance with the layoff, and you know that his child is seriously ill. Another subordinate who has been with the company somewhat longer is also a good performer but is single and has no family obligations. What is the most ethical decision here? Another difficulty of deontological approaches arises when they conflict with consequentialist reasoning. First, what happens when following a rule will have devastating consequences? For example, in World War II Germany, telling the truth to the Nazis about the Jews hiding in your attic would have had devastating consequences\u2014the Jews would be taken and killed. In response to such concerns, some philosophers argue that deontological principles (i.e., truth telling, promise keeping) need not be regarded as absolute. For example, one could violate a rule or principle for a good reason (according to Kant, a reason that you would be willing to accept for anyone in the same position).6 In the Nazi scenario, Kant\u2019s categorical imperative would be helpful because most of us would not want to live in a world where people are expected to tell the truth when doing so means the death of an innocent human being. Respect for human life trumps honesty. Consider yet another example of conflict between a consequences approach and a principles approach. In 2009, the owner of a shipping company had to decide whether to pay ransom to pirates who were holding his ship and its crew hostage and who threatened to kill everyone if the ransom were not paid. This business owner acknowledged that paying the ransom would reinforce the pirates\u2019 behavior and would likely lead to more kidnappings and hostage takings, an outcome that is clearly to the detriment of society overall. However, having considered this, he nevertheless concluded that he would pay the ransom because he felt strongly that his primary responsibility as an employer was to his people. His values of respect for human life and compassion for the employees\u2019 families were more important to him in this situation than the potential longer-term broader harm. Yet another example arose for many nurses who dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Nurses value empathy and compassion. That\u2019s one of the reasons they chose nursing as a career. And, normally when dealing with dying patients, they offer comfort to the dying but also take solace in being able to help families deal with the grief of losing a loved one. But, with families banned from the hospital (a consequentialist decision), nurses were left to try to help families connect with dying relatives over the phone, which felt like a poor substitute and contrary to their values. Stuart Youngblood, emeritus professor of management at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, suggested the following example that he used in his business ethics class: <\/p>\n
Assume you approach a burning building and hear voices coming from both ends, each seeking help. Assume the fire is burning so rapidly you only have time to go to one or the other end of the building. Initially, you hear multiple voices at one end and a sole voice at the other end. Which way do you go? Why? Now include some additional information. The sole voice is that of your daughter (father, mother, etc.). Or, the sole voice is that of a Nobel laureate who is close to finding a cure for cancer? Do you still choose to go to the end with multiple voices? What would the different approaches advise? What will you do? <\/p>\n
Sometimes, a decision with good consequences contradicts an important ethical principle. For example, the state of Virginia in the United States developed a method for sentencing criminals that incorporates the risk of recidivism.7 Using factors such as gender, age, employment status, and prior criminal record, the state learned that it could predict an individual\u2019s likelihood of committing another crime. This calculation is designed to protect the public and save taxpayer money, and many felons are being released from jail and returned to the community successfully. The system works, and one could argue, based on consequentialist thinking, that it benefits most people. But some argue, based on principle, that those who commit a crime deserve to be punished and that it is unfair to treat offenders who committed the same crime differently. Under the system, a young, unemployed male is more likely to go to jail than an older woman who has a job.8 The consequences are good for society, but is the system fair? Focus on integrity (virtue ethics) The virtue ethics approach focuses more on the integrity of the moral actor (the person) than on the moral act itself (the decision or behavior). The goal here is to be a good person because that is the type of person you wish to be. Although virtue ethics as a philosophical tradition began with Aristotle, a number of contemporary ethicists (including business ethicists) have returned it to the forefront of ethical thinking.9 A virtue ethics perspective considers the actor\u2019s character, motivations, and intentions (something we didn\u2019t discuss at all under the other two perspectives). According to virtue ethics, it is important that the individual intends to be a good person and exerts effort to develop him- or herself as a moral agent, to associate with others who do the same, and to contribute to creating an organizational context that supports ethical behavior.10 This doesn\u2019t mean that principles, rules, or consequences aren\u2019t considered, just that they\u2019re considered in the context of assessing the actor\u2019s character and integrity. One\u2019s character may be assessed in terms of principles such as honesty, in terms of rule following (did this actor follow his profession\u2019s ethics code?), or in terms of consequences (as in the physician\u2019s agreement to, above all, do no harm). Motivations and intentions are important to ethical decision making, as the law acknowledges. If a person harms another, society judges that person less harshly if he or she did not intend to commit harm (i.e., it was an accident). In thinking about Mark Felt\u2019s decision to provide information to Woodward and Bernstein in the Watergate affair, virtue ethics would ask us to think about his intentions and motivation. Was he motivated by revenge because he was passed over for the top job at the FBI (as some have suggested), or was he guided by broader concerns about doing the right thing as a conscientious moral agent who was concerned about sustaining the American system of government? In virtue ethics, one\u2019s character may be defined by a relevant ethical community\u2014 a community that holds you to the highest ethical standards. Therefore, it\u2019s important to think about the community or communities in which the decision maker operates. Mark Felt was an FBI man who was sworn to keep confidences. That makes it hard for some in the FBI community to accept his talking to journalists, even if the long-term consequences contributed to the greater good of the country. But the broader community, the U.S. public at large, likely judges Felt more kindly if they think of him as someone who took a great personal risk to do what he thought was right. Think about yourself. What community or communities do you look to for guidance in deciding whether you have acted as a person of integrity at work? Are you guided by the standards of your professional association, the regulatory community, your religious community, your family, your company\u2019s ethics office, the broader public? Note that unless you work in a highly ethical organizational context, the relevant ethical community should not be your own work group or your organization. A virtue ethics perspective requires that you look to the community that will hold you to the highest ethical standard and support your intention to be a virtuous person. A virtue ethics approach is particularly useful for individuals who work within a professional community that has developed high standards of ethical conduct for community members. For example, the accounting profession has developed a code of conduct for professional accountants. Being a virtuous accountant would mean abiding by that code of professional responsibility. The same goes for certified financial consultants, engineers, lawyers, physicians, and psychologists who all agree to abide by their profession\u2019s rules and standards. Such professional codes are generally living documents that evolve with changing times. For example, building on 20 years of thinking about ethics and torture, a committee of the American Psychological Association (APA) developed new standards in 2009, consistent with its \u201cdo no harm\u201d principle: without exception, the new APA standards prohibit professional psychologists from participating in torture. Psychologists are required to disobey orders to torture, intervene to stop torture, and report torture if they become aware of it.11 A decision maker can often rely on such relevant community standards to guide decisions and actions. The assumption is that the professional community has already done this type of thinking and has done it carefully. Consider this fascinating example from the U.S. legal profession. The rule of attorney\u2013 client privilege requires criminal defense lawyers to keep information shared by their clients completely confidential. This rule is based on the idea that, in order for defendants to get the best possible defense, they must feel free to be completely truthful with their lawyers. The underlying principle of the U.S. system of justice says that everyone deserves a vigorous defense and that defense lawyers must act in the interests of their clients. Then it is up to judges and juries to decide guilt and innocence. That all makes a lot of sense in the abstract. But a case in Illinois (profiled on the CBS TV show 60 Minutes)12 was particularly challenging for nonlawyers to understand. Here\u2019s what happened. Two criminal defense lawyers went public to share information that their client had committed a murder for which another man was convicted. When the lawyers went public, Logan had already served 26 years in prison for a crime he did not commit! Most observers\u2019 immediate reaction was to feel anger and disgust (moral outrage) that the lawyers didn\u2019t speak up right away because it just isn\u2019t fair for someone to go to jail for 26 years for a crime he didn\u2019t commit, and they could and should have stopped it. But because of attorney\u2013client privilege, a central ethical principle in the legal profession, the lawyers were not allowed to share this private information. As lawyers, they understand that the larger system of justice depends on that principle, even if some individuals are harmed in the process of upholding it (do you see the connection to consequentialist and deontological thinking here?). Interestingly, they also noted that if they had shared the information, it would not have been admissible in court and could not have helped Alton Logan at the time he was convicted and sentenced. The lawyers were able to finally come forward only because, years before, they had convinced their client to sign an affidavit saying that they could share the information about his admission of guilt after he died. That\u2019s what they did when their client died in prison (where he was serving a life sentence for committing a different crime), and Alton Logan was ultimately released, exonerated, and compensated by the city of Chicago as a result of a lawsuit Logan filed. The money didn\u2019t make up for the 26 years lost or the life experiences missed, but it helped him to start his new life. Interviews with the lawyers suggested that they understood and were guided by the ethics of the legal profession. However, importantly, they also went beyond professional community expectations when they asked their client to sign the affidavit that ultimately allowed them to share the information. So from a virtue ethics perspective, they followed their community\u2019s guidance. But as thoughtful moral agents who were motivated to do the right thing, they didn\u2019t completely surrender to legal community standards. Their intentions were good and they used their own thinking to devise a plan that ultimately resulted in Logan\u2019s release (although a deontologist might say that it was 26 years too late). What do you think about these lawyers\u2019 decision to withhold the information, and then to ultimately share it? (We encourage you to view the 60 Minutes segment that conveys the emotional power of the story in a way that our description just can\u2019t.) With this virtue ethics approach, it\u2019s important to be prepared to do your own thinking because many of us are not in professional communities that have done this kind of thinking for us, and some professional communities provide limited guidance or none at all. For example, management is not a \u201cprofession\u201d with explicit ethical standards and acknowledged responsibilities to society (although some influential thinkers believe and argue that it could and should be).13 In fact, the authors of a 2008 Harvard Business Review article14 offer \u201cA Hippocratic Oath for Managers\u201d that calls on managers to commit to the following (adapted from the original): <\/p>\n
1. Service to the Public and Society. Recognize the manager\u2019s responsibility to serve the public interest by creating sustainable value for society in the long term. <\/p>\n
2. Balance Multiple Stakeholders\u2019 Interests. Recognize that managers must balance the often-conflicting needs of many stakeholders to enhance enterprise value in a way that is consistent with societal well-being. The authors note that \u201cthis may not always mean growing or preserving the enterprise and may include such painful actions as its restructuring, discontinuation, or sale if these actions preserve or increase value.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. Acting with Integrity in the Enterprise\u2019s Interest. Put the interests of the enterprise ahead of personal interests while behaving as a person of integrity, consistent with personal values, and leading others to do the same. This means avoiding behavior that advances personal ambitions that harm either the business or society. It also means reporting the ethical or legal violations of others.<\/p>\n
4. Adherence to the Law. Make a commitment to adhere to the spirit and the letter of the law and contracts in personal and enterprise action.<\/p>\n
5. Accurate and Transparent Reporting. Report enterprise performance accurately to all relevant stakeholders so they can make informed decisions. <\/p>\n
6. Respectful and Unbiased Decision Making. Make decisions in an unbiased and respectful manner without considering race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, politics, or social status. The goal is to protect the interests of the less powerful who are affected by these decisions. <\/p>\n
7. Professional Development. Commit to continuous professional development for the self and others with the goal of always using the best and most current available knowledge to make informed decisions. <\/p>\n
8. Responsibility to Protect the Profession. Recognize that being considered a professional has privileges that come with responsibilities to uphold and protect the standards, and continue to develop them in a way that contributes to the trust, respect, and honor associated with them and with the profession. Interestingly, if you study these principles carefully, you can find evidence of all three ethical decision-making approaches. Can you identify consequentialist thinking, deontological thinking, and virtue ethics thinking? Do you think management is ready to become a profession that requires its members to adhere to such a code? Should it? Whether or not you belong to a professional community that provides guidance, it remains essential that you think for yourself because a professional community can also be wrong. For example, auditors are professional accountants with a fiduciary responsibility to the public. Their audits provide investors with assurance that public companies\u2019 financial statements can be trusted. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) is the national professional organization for all certified public accountants (www.aicpa.org). It has a code of conduct for members and a mission that includes establishing and enforcing conduct standards. But the institute also acts as a lobbying organization. During the 1990s, auditing firms got into the business of providing consulting to their audit clients; this was an ethically dangerous practice because of its potential for conflict of interest. Auditors might feel pressure to go easy on their audit clients in order to gain these clients\u2019 consulting business. This is exactly what happened. Because consulting was more lucrative than auditing, firms lobbied hard to protect their relationships with these clients and their rights to both consult and provide audit services to the same firms. As a result, the AICPA was blamed for contributing to an environment that led to financial scandals at Enron, WorldCom, and other companies.15 So if you\u2019re looking for solid ethical guidance, it\u2019s important to scrutinize the source and make sure that it is free of conflicts of interest (discussed further later in the book). When a professional community isn\u2019t available, doesn\u2019t provide good guidance, or seems wrong, you can turn to the broader community and societal standards for guidance. A useful decision-making shortcut based on the broader community as a guide is known as the disclosure rule. This practical shortcut is widely used by managers and executives. The disclosure rule asks, \u201cHow would you feel if your behavior appeared publicly on \u2013\u2013\u2013? You fill in the blank. It could be a particular media or social media outlet. Is it the front page of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, your hometown newspaper, your school newspaper, Twitter, Facebook? The assumption behind the disclosure rule is that community standards do exist for most situations, and at a gut level, most of us know what those are. If our gut tells us it wouldn\u2019t look good to have our behavior appear in one of these outlets, we simply shouldn\u2019t be doing it because it means that if we did, we wouldn\u2019t be considered persons of integrity in society\u2019s view. If your goal is to be considered a person of integrity, another useful question to ask yourself is how your harshest moral critic or ethical role model would advise you. Who serves in that role for you? Is it someone in your family or a respected teacher, coach, teacher, or spiritual adviser? Identify your strongest ethical role model or harshest moral critic and consider what this individual would think of the behavior you\u2019re contemplating. Most of us have people in our lives whose integrity we respect and whose moral judgment of us we value. Many of our students choose family members. If you don\u2019t have someone who comes right to mind, see if you can identify an ethical role model. It can be anyone whose integrity you admire. If you know the person, we\u2019re sure they would love to know about your choice. Finally, a virtue ethics perspective assumes that your identity as a moral actor is important to you and that you are developing that aspect of yourself. <\/p>\n
Being an ethical person is just an important part of who you are. Those of us who have made such a commitment know that life and careers present ongoing ethical challenges and opportunities to work on the ethical aspect of ourselves. Think of this as an ethical fitness program in which you make a commitment to practicing good behavior. Over time, you\u2019ll find yourself developing good habits. Just as an exercise program challenges your muscles, balance, and coordination, an ethical fitness program challenges your ethical thinking and leads to improvement with practice. Such an ethical fitness program can help you develop your comfort with speaking up on behalf of your values. It can also reinforce your view of yourself as a person of integrity and contribute to improving your ethical fitness over time. Identifying ethical role models in your life, choosing to interact with people of integrity, and choosing to work in an ethical environment can all be ways to support this aspect of your personal development.16 We\u2019ve now considered consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics approaches. These are just a few of the philosophical approaches that may be applied in ethical dilemma situations. We\u2019ve introduced the approaches we believe have the most practical benefit to business managers, and, admittedly, we\u2019ve introduced them in a rather general way, without many of the nuances developed by philosophers over the years. We\u2019ve suggested that all of the approaches have limitations. No one of them, by itself, provides perfect guidance in every situation. Obviously, if all of the approaches lead to the same solution, the decision is a relatively easy one. The toughest decisions arise when the approaches conflict. When that happens, it will be up to you to consider the situation as comprehensively as possible and make the best decision you can based on societal good, your most important values and principles, and considerations of what a person of integrity would do. We certainly won\u2019t resolve the academic controversies over the \u201cbest\u201d philosophical approach here. Even so, we believe that the approaches we\u2019ve presented incorporate important factors that should guide ethical business decisions. All of them would have provided excellent ethical guidance to those whose actions contributed to the U.S. financial crisis, during which mortgage brokers sold NINJA (no income, no job or assets) loans to people who clearly couldn\u2019t afford the homes they were buying, investment bankers packaged these risky mortgages into securities they touted as safe, and rating agency employees rated the securities AAA (without fully addressing the underlying risks). A consequentialist perspective would have focused attention on the potential harms to multiple stakeholders (customers, society) of these risky mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. A deontological approach would have focused attention on the importance of responsibility, honesty, and transparency with customers about these products. A virtue ethics approach would have asked whether a person of integrity would sell mortgages to people with little or no income or rate these securities highly despite the lack of experience with them. A serious consideration of these factors by the actors involved could have averted a systemic crisis that harmed all of us. Next, we offer eight steps that aim to integrate the three types of analysis just discussed.17 Before presenting them, we offer a caveat. The eight steps suggest a linear decision-making process that is necessarily inaccurate. Ethical decision making is often not linear. Still, it\u2019s helpful to cover all of these points, even if they don\u2019t always occur in this particular sequence. Eight Steps to Sound Ethical Decision Making in Business Step one: gather the facts Or put another way, \u201cDo your homework!\u201d The philosophical approaches don\u2019t tell us explicitly to gather the facts. But they seem to assume that we\u2019ll complete this important step. You might be surprised at how many people jump to solutions without having the facts. Ask yourself, \u201cHow did the situation occur? Are there historical facts that I should know? Are there facts concerning the current situation that I should know?\u201d18 Fact gathering is often easier said than done. Many ethical choices are particularly difficult because of the uncertainty involved in them. Facts may simply be unavailable and you don\u2019t have that crystal ball we talked about earlier. For example, in our layoff case, Pat may not have good information about the legal requirements on informing workers about layoffs. Also, she may not have enough information to determine how long it would take these 200 workers to find new jobs or how much severance or help the company will give them. It\u2019s important to recognize these limitations as you do your best to assemble the facts that are available to you. In the financial crisis, decision makers not only failed to gather good information, but it appears that they may have explicitly avoided getting the facts. For example, mortgage lenders processed mortgages for unemployed people because they required no documentation to prove employment (as lenders had always done in the past). All the person had to do was claim to have a job, and the mortgage would be processed. The mortgage lender earned fees for creating and processing the loan and then sold it off in the secondary mortgage market, where it was packaged with other mortgages and sold to investors. The \u201cfact\u201d that the person with the mortgage was unemployed and would likely not be able to sustain payments was first ignored and then lost as the mortgage made its way through the mortgage market system. Step two: define the ethical issues Many of us have knee-jerk responses to ethical dilemmas. We jump to a solution without really thinking through the ethical issues and the reasons for our response. For example, in the layoff case, one person might say, \u201cOh, that\u2019s easy; promise keeping is the ethical issue. Pat has to keep her promise to her boss and protect her job.\u201d Another person might say that honesty is the key ethical issue: \u201cPat just has to tell the truth to her friend.\u201d Don\u2019t jump to solutions without first identifying the ethical issues or points of values conflict in the dilemma. Also recognize that the toughest situations usually involve multiple ethical issues that go back to the philosophical approaches we just discussed. For example, in the layoff case, one ethical issue has to do with the rights of both the workers and the company. How would you define the workers\u2019 right to know about the plant closing in advance? How much advance notice is appropriate? What does the law say? Another ethical issue has to do with the company\u2019s right to keep the information private. Furthermore, what is the company\u2019s legal obligation to its workers in this regard? At a more personal level, there are the ethical issues related to principles such as honesty, loyalty, and promise keeping. Is it more important to be honest with a friend or to keep a promise to one\u2019s boss? Who is owed more loyalty? Think about the situation from a justice or fairness perspective: What would be fair to the company and to those who would be laid off? Points of ethical conflict may go back to the conflict between consequentialist and deontological approaches. For example, if I tell the truth (consistent with the principle of promise keeping), bad things may happen (negative consequences). A consequentialist would think about the ethical issues in terms of harms or benefits. Who is likely to be harmed? Who is likely to benefit from a particular decision or action? And what is the bottom line for society overall? A virtue ethics approach would suggest thinking about the ethical issues in terms of community standards. Does your relevant ethical community (the one that would hold you to the highest ethical standards) identify a particular action as wrong? Why or why not? Especially when we\u2019re under pressure or in a rush, our inclination is to stop with the first ethical issue that comes to mind. For example, in our layoff case, we might be inclined to stop with the issue of loyalty to a friend. Challenge yourself to think of as many issues as you possibly can. What about loyalty to your boss or the company? What about concern for harm to other workers no matter which decision you make? Here\u2019s where talking about the problem with others can help. Present the dilemma to coworkers, to your spouse, or to friends you respect. Ask them whether they see other issues that you may have missed. Talking with people you trust who are not involved in the issue can be particularly helpful. Step three: identify the affected parties (the stakeholders) Both consequentialist and deontological thinking involve the ability to identify the parties affected by the decision. The consequentialist will want to identify all those stakeholders who are going to experience harm and benefits. The deontologist might want to know whose rights are involved and who has a duty to act in the situation. Being able to see the situation through others\u2019 eyes is a key moral reasoning skill. Lawrence Kohlberg, developer of a key theory of moral reasoning (discussed in Chapter 3), <\/p>\n
called this skill role taking. It means putting yourself in others\u2019 shoes and being sensitive to their needs and concerns. A more \u201cemotional\u201d take on this would call it sympathy or empathy for the harm experienced by others. Rawls\u2019s veil of ignorance exercise asks you to do this as well. Frequently, you have to think beyond the facts provided in a case in order to identify all affected parties and what\u2019s fair to them. It often helps to begin with the individuals in the case who are immediately affected (e.g., in the layoff case, it would be Pat, the worker, and Pat\u2019s boss) and then progressively broaden your thinking to incorporate larger groups. For example, in this case, you might include the other workers, the rest of the company, the local community, and society in general. As you think of more and more affected parties, additional issues will probably come to mind. For example, think about the local community. If this is a small town with few other employers, fairness to the entire community becomes an important issue. Shouldn\u2019t they have as much time as possible to plan for the impact of this plant closing? Try to put yourself in their shoes. How would they argue their case? How would they feel? Earlier, we introduced the concept of stakeholders, all of those individuals or groups who have a stake in the particular decision or action. In the context of ethical decision making in business, we should identify the stakeholders affected by the decision and ask how they are affected. Again, try to make your thinking as broad as possible here. Some of the stakeholders affected by the decision may not even be born yet. The best concrete example of unborn stakeholders might be \u201cDES daughters.\u201d In the 1940s, DES, a synthetic estrogen, was prescribed for pregnant women who seemed to be in danger of miscarrying. By 1971, it became clear that DES produced a birth defect in the daughters of these women. Because of the birth defect, DES daughters were more likely to develop vaginal cancer, especially between the ages of 15 and 22. They also had a higher than normal rate of cervical cancer.19 Once stakeholders are identified, role playing can help you see the issue from different stakeholder perspectives. In your classroom or your department, get individuals to seriously play the relevant roles. You may be surprised at how perspectives change based on this simple exercise. What decision would you reach if you were someone else (e.g., the customer) in the situation? This step incorporates the Golden Rule to treat others as you would like others to treat you. Imagine yourself as each of the players in a decision situation. What decision would they reach, and why? Another consideration may be to ask whether you can \u201ctest\u201d a potential decision with affected parties before your prospective course of action is made final. The objective is to gauge how various audiences will react, so that you can adjust or fine-tune a decision along the way.20 One question you could ask yourself is, how would this or that stakeholder react if this decision were made public? For example, imagine that ABC Co. (in our layoff case) had another thriving plant in another location. However, in the decisionmaking process, it was assumed that employees wouldn\u2019t want to relocate because of their ties to the local community. Wouldn\u2019t it be better to ask them their preferences than to assume what they would want to do? Step four: identify the consequences After identifying the affected parties, think about the potential consequences for each party. This step is obviously derived from the consequentialist approach. It isn\u2019t necessary to identify every possible consequence. You should, however, try to identify consequences that have a relatively high probability of occurring and those that would have particularly negative consequences if they did occur (even if the probability of occurrence is low). Who would be harmed by a particular decision or action? For example, in our layoff case, telling the truth to the worker might cause Pat to lose her job, which would have negative consequences for Pat and her entire family (especially if she\u2019s a major breadwinner in her family). However, it would give the worker (and presumably others who would be told) the benefit of more time to look for a new job and perhaps save many families from negative financial consequences. Can you determine which solution would accomplish the most net good and the least net harm for society? Consider the drug thalidomide. It was prescribed to women in the late 1950s to treat morning sickness and produced devastating birth defects in 12,000 babies in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan (the Food and Drug Administration never approved it for use in the United States). Many of the babies died, but others were left to live with severe deformities. Randy Warren, a Canadian born in 1961, is the founder of the Thalidomide Victims Association of Canada. His mother took just two doses of thalidomide, but Warren is only a little over 3 feet tall and has no thumbs, arms that are 2 inches too short, and stumps for legs. The consequences of this drug when prescribed to pregnant women were obviously devastating; and shortly after Warren was born, the drug was banned in most places. But continued research produced renewed interest in thalidomide as an effective treatment for Hansen\u2019s disease (a painful skin condition associated with leprosy) as well as for \u201cwasting\u201d disease in patients with AIDS, arthritis, blindness, leukemia, and other forms of cancer. This drug that had such terrible consequences for so many was being considered for approval because it also had the potential to help many people who were dealing with other devastating illnesses. As Warren put it, \u201cWhen I heard… that thalidomide takes people out of wheelchairs and I think of myself and others that were put in wheelchairs… tell me we don\u2019t have the moral quandary of the century.\u201d In the end, Warren was consulted and became involved in the decision to return the drug to the marketplace. In 1998, the FDA approved the drug to treat Hansen\u2019s disease under the highest level of restriction ever given to a drug. Doctors, pharmacists, and patients all must be registered with the manufacturer, Celgene. Two forms of birth control are required to prevent the possibility of pregnancy and resulting birth defects. Male patients are required to use condoms. No automatic refills of the drug are allowed. And Warren has become \u201csomething of a company conscience.\u201d Although extremely difficult, the decision to market thalidomide in the United States was made with input from those stakeholders most familiar with its potential for both devastating consequences and remarkable benefits. Regulators at the FDA and company officials got to know Randy Warren as a real person who continues to suffer consequences that they might not have been able to imagine just by reading reports and statistics.21 Long-term versus short-term consequences In business decisions, it\u2019s particularly important to think about short-term and long-term consequences. Are you confident that your behavior will be considered ethical over a long period of time, even if circumstances or people change? In the layoff case, is the long-term health of the company and the people who will remain employed more important than the short-term consequences to the 200 workers who will be laid off? In the U.S. financial crisis, if people had been thinking about long-term consequences, they would have been much more likely to question behaviors that focused primarily on short-term profits. Symbolic consequences In business, it\u2019s also extremely important to think about the potential symbolic consequences of an action. Every decision and action sends a message; it stands for something. What message will a particular decision or action send? What will it mean if it is misunderstood? For example, if Pat doesn\u2019t tell her coworker the truth, and he finds out later that she knew, what will the symbolic message be to this coworker and the others who work for Pat\u2014that she\u2019s more interested in saving her own hide than in taking care of them? From a leader\u2019s perspective, what are the symbolic consequences of accepting tickets to a football game from a valued client when your organization has a rule against accepting gifts from clients? Although the leader may see going to the game as important for getting the big sale, the symbolic message it will likely convey to employees is that the rule doesn\u2019t apply to senior leaders. Such a symbolic message can have dire consequences for the organization because employees may then feel that the rule shouldn\u2019t apply to them either and begin to break it. Consequences of secrecy Transparency is extraordinarily important. If a decision is made in private in order to avoid some negative reaction, think about the potential consequences if the decision were to become public. Think about the disclosure rule here. If you\u2019re inclined to keep it a secret, that should be a clue that something isn\u2019t right. For example, the public was outraged by the fact that tobacco executives secretly knew about the negative health effects of cigarette smoking and lied about it to the American people in testimony before congress. Step five: identify the obligations Identify the obligations involved and the reasons for each one. For example, in the layoff case, consider Pat\u2019s obligations toward the affected parties. When identifying Pat\u2019s various obligations, be sure to state the reasons why she has this duty or obligation. Think in terms of values, principles, character, or outcomes. For example, if you\u2019re considering Pat\u2019s obligation to keep her promise to her boss, your reasoning might go like this: \u201cPat shouldn\u2019t break her promise to her boss. If she does, the trust between them will be broken. Promise keeping and trust are important values in superior\u2013subordinate relationships.\u201d The obligations you identify will vary depending on the people involved and the roles they play. For example, our faith in our financial system depends in part on auditors\u2019 obligation to tell the truth about a company\u2019s financial difficulties and our faith in rating agencies to accurately grade financial instruments. Similarly, our faith in science as an institution depends on the integrity of the scientific data and how scientists report it. Individuals in these roles have a particularly strong obligation to tell the truth; and if they see themselves as moral actors, they will be motivated to do so. Step six: consider your character and integrity Here, think of yourself as a person of integrity. Ask yourself what a person of integrity would do in this situation. In attempting to answer this question, you may find it useful to identify the relevant moral community and consider what that community would advise. Begin by identifying the relevant professional or societal community. Then, determine how community members would evaluate the decision or action you\u2019re considering. Remember the disclosure rule. It asks whether you would feel comfortable if your activities were disclosed in the light of day in a public forum like the New York Times or some other news medium. In general, if you don\u2019t want to read about it in the New York Times, you shouldn\u2019t be doing it. If you would be uncomfortable telling your parents, children, spouse, clergy, or ethical role model about your decision, you should rethink it. Thomas Jefferson expressed it like this: \u201cNever suffer a thought to be harbored in your mind which you would not avow openly. When tempted to do anything in secret, ask yourself if you would do it in public for all to see. If you would not, it is surely wrong.\u201d This kind of approach can be especially valuable when a decision needs to be made quickly. Suppose someone in your organization asks you to misrepresent the effectiveness of one of your company\u2019s products to a customer. You can immediately imagine how a story reporting the details of your conversation with the customer would appear in tomorrow\u2019s paper. Would you be comfortable having others read the details of that conversation? The ideal is to conduct business in such a way that your activities and conversations could be disclosed without your feeling embarrassed. You can also easily use this to alert others to think about how the decision would look if disclosed. Another method might be to ask: \u201cHow will I be remembered when I\u2019m gone?\u201d23 Many young people don\u2019t often think about this question, but it\u2019s a good one. Will you be remembered as an individual of integrity? Students may not realize how small professional communities can be. This is especially true in today\u2019s world of social media and social networking. Although you\u2019ll likely change jobs and organizations multiple times over the years, many people remain in a single industry where they have developed industryspecific expertise. A reputation for trustworthiness, respectful interaction, and integrity will open doors to new clients and career opportunities. But the opposite is true as well. A stained reputation is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. Step seven: think creatively about potential actions Perhaps this should be step one. Before making any decision, be sure that you haven\u2019t unnecessarily forced yourself into a corner. Are you assuming that you have only two choices, either A or B? As an example, what if you received an extravagant gift from a foreign supplier? This situation could easily be conceptualized as an A or B quandary. Should you accept the gift (which is against company policy), or should you refuse it (which could be interpreted as a slap in the face by this important supplier, who is from a culture where gift giving is a valued part of business relationships)? A potential C solution might be to accept the item as a gift to the company that would be displayed in the headquarters entrance, explaining that large personal gifts are against company policy. Obviously, you would have to check with your company about the acceptability of this C solution. The idea here is to think outside the box. Here is yet another example. In an overseas location, Cummins Engine Company was having difficulty with local children cutting through a wire fence and stealing valuable electronic components. The A or B solution was to arrest or not arrest these young children when they were caught. After involving the community, the managers were able to arrive at a C solution. They discovered that the children were stealing because there weren\u2019t enough classrooms at the local school, thus leaving the children with little to do but get into trouble. Cummins made classrooms available on their site. The mayor provided accreditation, books, and teachers. This C solution cost the company very little and accomplished a great deal. A total of 350 students were accommodated, the stealing problem disappeared, and Cummins became a valued corporate citizen. Recent research24 has actually found that, instead of asking what \u201cshould\u201d I do in these tough dilemma situations, if you simply also ask what \u201ccould\u201d I (or we) do, you open your mind to divergent thinking and the possibility of multiple solutions that you would not have otherwise considered. Step eight: check your gut The emphasis in these steps has been on using a highly rational fact-gathering and evaluation process once you know that you\u2019re faced with an ethical dilemma. But don\u2019t forget your gut (this could also be step one). We are all hardwired to be empathetic and to desire fairness. Empathy is an important emotion that can signal awareness that someone might be harmed, and intuition is gaining credibility as a source for good business decision making. We can\u2019t always say exactly why we\u2019re uncomfortable in a situation, but years of socialization have likely made us sensitive to situations where something just doesn\u2019t feel quite right. So, if your gut is sending up red flags, give the situation more thought. In fact, this may be your only clue that you\u2019re facing an ethical dilemma to begin with. Pay attention to your gut, but don\u2019t let it make your decision for you. Once you recognize that you\u2019re facing an ethical dilemma, use the rational decisionmaking tools developed here to help guide your decision making. Practical Preventive Medicine Doing your homework There\u2019s no doubt that you\u2019ll encounter ethical dilemmas\u2014every employee probably encounters hundreds of them during a career; the only thing in doubt is when. Your mission is to be as prepared as possible before you run into a problem. The more informed you are, the more effective you\u2019ll be in protecting yourself and your employer. The best ways to do that are to learn the rules of your organization and your profession, and to develop relationships that can help you if and when the need arises. You can learn the rules in various ways. First, read your company\u2019s code of ethics (if it has one) and policy manual. Since most policy manuals are huge, you obviously can\u2019t memorize one. If you skim the contents, some of the rules will sink in\u2014you may not remember the exact policy, but at least you\u2019ll probably remember that one exists and where to find it. Second, ask questions. Managers, executives, and peers will admire your initiative when you ask what they think is \u201cimportant around here.\u201d Since many organizational standards are unwritten, and they differ from company to company, the best way to find out about them is by asking. Query your coworkers (including management) about what kinds of ethical situations are most common in your organization and how your organization generally handles those issues. Ask your manager how to raise ethical issues within your organization. Since he or she will certainly tell you to raise an issue with him or her first, be sure to find out how you raise an issue in your manager\u2019s absence. This not only gives you a road map for raising issues, but it also sends a signal to your manager that ethics are important to you. Finally, develop relationships with people outside of your chain of command. Get to know people in human resources, legal, ethics, and compliance. departments; they might be able to provide information, help you raise an issue or determine whether something is even an issue, or vouch for your credibility in a crisis. You might also want to join a professional group or association. Many professions have developed ethical standards apart from those that may exist in your company, and it can be helpful to know other people in your profession who can advise you if a crisis arises in your company. Some may say this is being political, but we think it\u2019s just plain smart to network with people outside of your immediate job and company. It\u2019s the difference between being a victim of circumstance and having the power, the knowledge, and the network to help manage circumstances. After you\u2019ve done your homework and learned about your company\u2019s standards and values, you may find that your values and your employer\u2019s values are in conflict. If the conflict is substantial, you may have no choice but to look for work in another organization. We address issues of company values and codes more in Chapters 5 and 6. When you\u2019re asked to make a snap decision Many businesspeople place value on the ability to make decisions quickly; and, as a result, many of us can feel pressure to make up our minds in a hurry. This can be a particular issue when people are inexperienced for whatever reason\u2014this may be their first job or a new company or industry\u2014and they may feel a need to prove their competence by making decisions quickly. Obviously, that can be dangerous. The ethical decision-making tools described earlier in the chapter assume that you\u2019ll have some time to devote to the decision\u2014to consider multiple sides of the issue and the inherent conflicts with any one course of action. Do your best to get the time to assess, think through, and gather more information. Also consider the following guidelines when a quick decision seems called for: 1. Don\u2019t underestimate the importance of a hunch to alert you that you\u2019re facing an ethical dilemma. Your gut is your internal warning system. As one senior executive at a multinational computer company said, \u201cThe gut never lies.\u201d When your gut tells you something\u2019s wrong, consider it a warning siren. 2. Ask for time to think it over. Most snap decisions don\u2019t have to be that way. Say something like, \u201cLet me think about it, and I\u2019ll get back to you soon.\u201d Bargaining for time is a smart way to give yourself a break\u2014then you can really think about the decision and consult with others. It\u2019s better to take the time to make a good decision than it is to make a bad decision quickly and have lots of time to regret it. Would you rather be known as cautious or reckless? 3. Find out quickly if your organization has a policy that applies to your decision. 4. Ask your manager or your peers for advice. You should consider your manager the first line of defense when you encounter an ethical dilemma. Regardless of your level within the organization, never hesitate to ask for another opinion. This is where a trusted network comes in handy. If you have friends in human resources or the legal department, you can float the issue with them on a casual basis to see if there even is an issue. 5. Use the quick-check New York Times test (the disclosure rule). If you\u2019d be embarrassed to have your decision disclosed in the media, on social media, or to your family, don\u2019t do it. <\/p>\n
Should Jordan Accept the Printer Discount? <\/p>\n
Jordan is upgrading his department\u2019s data processing capabilities and has just placed an order for four personal computers and two laser printers with a computer company representative. When he mentions that he wishes he had a printer at home like the ones he just ordered, the representative tells him that because of his large order, she can give him a 50 percent discount on a printer for his home. Jordan feels that this is not quite right, but he\u2019s not sure why and would like some time to think about her offer. In this case, Jordan could have real doubt about whether or not to accept a 50 percent discount on a printer for his home. Even though he feels funny about the offer, he might be thinking that he does a lot of work at home, so accepting a discount on a personal printer could be justified. And since the computer representative made the offer after the order was placed, there\u2019s no conflict of interest\u2014Jordan\u2019s decision to purchase obviously wasn\u2019t influenced by the offer of a discount. But he should listen to his gut, which is feeling that this isn\u2019t quite right. He can first stall the computer representative by telling her he\u2019ll get back to her later in the day or tomorrow. He can find out what his company policy says about making purchases. (Many companies would equate the discount with a gift and forbid accepting it unless it\u2019s available to all employees.) Suppose he finds nothing in the policy manual to prohibit the discount, and other workers have said \u201cgo for it.\u201d Then he can use the disclosure rule. How would the public react to his decision? Some people would probably think that his order was influenced by the offer of a discount. He knows that\u2019s not true, but it might be difficult to convince other people of that. This is called an appearance of a conflict of interest (an appearance that your judgment has been compromised), and an appearance can be as damaging as an actual conflict. So, if someone could think your judgment has been affected by a relationship\u2014or in this case, a discount\u2014it could be viewed as the appearance of a conflict and should be avoided. Appearances are extremely important in business and may not be accounted for by the philosophical tools provided earlier in the chapter. Whether you appear to be fair may be as important as whether you\u2019re really fair. Here\u2019s the bottom line: If you think that your decision could be misinterpreted or if someone could think the objectivity of your decision has been compromised, rethink the decision. In the example, Jordan can politely refuse the representative\u2019s offer by saying something like, \u201cMy company doesn\u2019t allow personal discounts,\u201d or \u201cI just don\u2019t feel right about it.\u201d If you ever feel that accepting a favor from a vendor will place you under an obligation to the vendor in the future, be very careful. For example, a public relations manager, Mary, described an incident with a printing company (we\u2019ll call it Type Co.) sales representative who was trying to get her business. Type Co. already did business with a number of departments within her company, but Mary was satisfied with her current printer and saw no reason to switch. Just before the holidays, Type Co. sent a popular electronic device (worth about $250) to Mary and to all of its customers in her company. Mary immediately felt that the gift was inappropriate; but to check out her judgment, she called one of Type Co.\u2019s other customers in her company. Mary\u2019s colleague assured her that there was nothing wrong with accepting the gift and that it was simply a token of good will. (If Mary had been friendly with one of her company\u2019s lawyers or human resources managers, she probably would have received very different advice.) Mary listened to her internal warning system, despite what her colleague said. She sent back the gift. When asked why she returned the gift, Mary said, \u201cI felt like I was being bribed to do business with Type Co.\u201d A reader of the New York Times would probably agree. Conclusion This chapter has presented a prescriptive approach to individual ethical decision making. When you\u2019re confronted with an ethical dilemma, you should find it helpful to inform your choice by considering the ideas and steps offered in this chapter. The end-of-chapter questions and case should give you some practice in applying these ideas and steps to real ethical dilemmas. <\/p>\n
Linda K. Trevino; Katherine A. Nelson. Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk about How to Do It Right, 8th Edition (p. 44). Wiley. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n
Linda K. Trevino; Katherine A. Nelson. Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk about How to Do It Right, 8th Edition (p. 42). Wiley. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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