Ethical Issues in Business

Current Ethical Issue in Business

PHL 323 Ethics in Management

Business Ethics Ð'- Intro

Managers are faced with ethical and moral decision making in business dealings everyday. The way people make ethical decisions in their personal lives most times is not the same way that people make these decisions when they are in a business environment. Business decisions need to be grounded in ethics, but the manager also needs to make decisions that are in the best interest of the company he/she serves. This is where moral dilemmas can come to pass. Two possible solutions that can help managers sort out these moral dilemmas are; deliberative methods whose goal are decision making and deliberative methods whose goal is edifying perspectives. Several models need to be reviewed in order to determine which method best fits the particular moral dilemma that the manager is faced with.

Ground Rules

Managers may find themselves in ethical business situations that require decisions to be based on morally confusing situations. "A moral dilemma is a situation in which people judge that morally they ought to do one thing (A) and morally ought to do another thing (B), and sometime a third (C), or even a fourth thing (D) as well, however they cannot perform all of these mutually exclusive options together," (Lurie & Albin, 2006). Some situations may require a manager to face competing values, and tough decisions must be made in order to determine which moral value appears to be stronger than the other. As an example, a manager who is obligated to protect proprietary information about an organizational layoff in the coming months may also have to address a conflict with this knowledge as it relates to a friend who will become affected by this layoff. Would this manager make the same decision if they had knowledge that was going to affect a close relative? What if the scenario included both parties; would the manager make the decision to tell one and not the other?

Lurie and Albin expand further by pointing out that the traditional classical theories that are commonly applied to moral situations can also be misleading, "Ð'...it is important to remember that the point of traditional ethical theories was not to provide guidance in resolving decisions scenarios, but rather to revalidate our moral convictions on a non-religious basis." Since moral theories are based on