Ethics, Organizations & Society @ethicsorgbeh - Tumblr Blog

Posts

Hey guys, welcome to our sixth and last blog already. America is messed up! This is our own opinion, and of course we cannot make this claim unjustified, so let us explain why we feel this way. First off, we do not hate the USA, quite the opposite actually. We have all been in the states a number of times, some of Lukas’ best friends come from the US and we really hope we still get to go over to the US regularly in the future. We watched a TED-talk by Jennifer Granick about the US government spying on its people (Granick, 2017). In her presentation, she starts off at a point of time that she is not used to. She talks about Martin Luther King Jr. and his “I have a dream” speech, which to this day resonates through the minds of countless people, making an impact on their lives, but she points out King was put under surveillance because J. Edgar Hoover thought he was plotting something. We are in no way saying what resulted from this was right or that Hoover had the right to have King under surveillance, but those were different times. People’s mindsets were different. The majority of people were okay with what was going on and that does not change just because someone today thinks what happened was wrong. Is surveillance wrong? No. Is it misused? Yes. Does that bother us? Hell no. Unless it impacts us. We are pretty sure most Americans have no problem with potential ISIS members being surveilled. And most Americans don’t even know about most of the surveillance happening. But because all of a sudden, the government is spying on their own people in their home country, things are different? A study released by CNN in 2018 shows that the US has 57 times more school shootings than other major industrialized nations combined. They’ve had 288 as opposed to 5 in Germany, Canada, France, Japan, Italy and the UK combined (Grabow & Rose, 2018).

These numbers exist and yet some Americans believe there is nothing wrong with it. If these school shootings could be prevented by surveilling troubled youth with access to firearms, then we would say go for it! Obviously there need to be rules for it, and not everything should be surveilled, but 288 shooting is not acceptable. Granick means that surveillance is the collection of private and sensitive data, nobody is supposed to see. She thinks surveillance is a crime but is also essential to fight crime. So basically, aiding surveillance is good but snooping around in her business, considering there is no cause to do so, is wrong. Surveillance doesn’t need to scan your computer every time you upload a dirty picture, Jennifer, it is meant to show potential threats. Looking into our private data, collecting that and using it against us without cause is wrong I get that, but speed cameras have been tracking our license plates for a while now, and if that data shows that someone is a danger to others, I’m happy that it’s been collected. So to conclude, Americans want everything done to prevent bad things from happening, but do not want to be part of this “everything” as it imposes rules to their freedom.

This is basically just a rant about why Americans confuse us more times than we would like, by doing things abnormal to me and then demanding to be exempted when someone shines a light on that abnormal behavior. Our ethics course was also about the Confucian ethical system used in China, and the impact this has on businesses. What we talked about is basically just that because people want to make use of cheap labor and resources in China, they need to expose their company to their values. We think that is a great way to see it. A company should not be able to operate in a country without getting influenced by the value system and culture at least a little bit. The companies should welcome the differences as a means to integrate workers from their headquarters in whatever country it is based, and the people employed in China. Confucianism provides a general principle of love for one’s fellow human beings and therefore emphasizes the good values in human beings and the relationships between them. This can lead to a great company climate as the respect between workers is something highly values under Confucianism and will therefore more likely to be source of motivation rather than monetary values. This goes hand in hand with western value systems, as companies tend to want intrinsic motivation to be dominant over extrinsic motivation for their workers. If companies let other value systems such as Confucianism influence their working ways, they might better their company in itself and learn something for the future. The best part of this is, accepting the different systems and learning from them does not mean fully letting it control the firm or even having to conform to those systems. Nobody forces the companies surrounded by different cultures to adapt, but it can be beneficial.

Watch Jennifer Granick’s TED Talk via the following link: https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_granick_how_the_us_government_spies_on_people_who_protest_including_you#t-847403

Picture retrieved from: https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/4855512081960181/

#ethics #confusianism

In our last blog post, we discussed quite important topics and hopefully this post made you question your consumption choices and its repercussions over society. We would like you to watch this video as a reflection. It shows you how we can save the earth together using just 5 minutes of your time per day!

#alltogheter #consumption #savetheearth

Welcome everyone again to our blog! Today we are going to talk about business ethics. The world is ruled by a variety of moral principles and rules that everyone should have present in their daily lives. Just like people, business have important laws and regulations to endorse ethics in business. But these rules have not always been the same, they haven’t been developed with the passage of time and with the appearance of new ethical theories. Although the world of business have experience great improvements regarding ethics, the news bombard us with numerous scandals about big corporations employing cheap labour forces, anti-environmental production process, sexual harassment, corruption, etc.

Sometimes the actions businesses should take, do not align with the actions they actually take. This is the point where problems arise due to the lack of common ethical standards and supportive institutions. The slightest unethical action can be the ruin of a company’s reputation, thus companies should establish ethical regulations and design an efficient CSR policy. Basic principles such as justice, fairness, freedom, rights, etc., should be present and integrated in any level of the organization. Brenkert (2018) defends the existence of an Evaluative component shaped by the moral imagination, self-interest and ethical leaders, but insufficient to fill the moral gap between ethical values and business behaviors. This evaluative component gives organizations the necessary clues to identify the direction in which moral change should go.

However we need something more, something that help and encourage companies to fulfill ethical regulations and align their self-interest with ethics. But, Is the accomplishment of ethical standards just the responsibility of businesses? Both Brenkert and Van Heerden defend the need of a higher level institution to create a safe regulatory system that ensures that human rights are in line with ethics. But, who is going be in charge? The first group of stakeholders that comes to our mind are governments. Governments have already developed laws, regulations, customs, unions, consumer and environmental groups, etc. concerning various ethical criteria, but most of them have failed due to national interests and not focusing on global public good. Governments have been too focused on national short term interest. Globalizations have allowed us to cross borders so why do not take a more international approach in politics? Nowadays we face many global challenges (global warming, women inequality, democratization of authoritarian regimes, poverty, ect.) and these can not be solve by one nation alone. Governments should prioritize long-term global interests instead of short-term national interests to build a stronger global society. However, the world is changing and governments are not the only agent to promote change.

Private firms and NGOs have begun to assume economic, social and political powers comparable to national governments. They have almost become public actors. They just need a boost to gather together and cooperate and agree to action. Ebay Inc., Ford Motor, Google Inc., Hasbro Inc. and Adobe Sytems Incorporated are some of the most ethical corporations in the world (Ethisphere Institute, 2014), all of them are international companies which promote ethical business standards, and transparency about their corporate practices. These companies are powerful enough to minimize or overcome the moral gaps business face. Other companies, like Fairlabour, have taken direct approach and offering tools and resources to companies delivering training to factory workers and management, conducting due diligence through independent assessments, and advocating for greater accountability and transparency from companies, manufacturers, factories and others involved in global supply chains (FairLabour.org).

We have already talked about pubic and private entities but, what happened whit the final consumer? We is the last step in the consumption process and we are responsible of our consumption choices. In order to save a few euros, people buy low cost brands, food, clothes, ect., which most of the time are produced in factories where ethical and moral standards are not fulfilled. Our actions have consequences which have a lasting impact on our economy, environment and society. So, think twice before you make a purchase. Public authorities, private agents, NGOs and citizens, all of them are responsible for achieving a fair supply change in which workers are treated with dignity, products meet safe standards and regulations and with transparent policies and manufacturing process.

Picture retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.com/millstirling/multi-prespectives/

Do you remember our poll regarding the first blog post? After gaining some more insights into ethics, would you still (not) pull the lever? Vote in our poll!

#poll ethical dilemma

Hi everyone! Welcome to our fourth blog already. This weeks’ tutorial was about ethics focusing on organizational cultures. One of the most interesting things that immediately caught our attention while reading the articles was the ethical marginality trap. The ethical marginality trap grasps all forms of behavior that are at the margin of acceptability (Balch & Armstrong, 2010). The most interesting thing about this, is that it is very hard to judge the behavior that is right at the boundary of doing ethically ‘good’ or ‘wrong’. This because people can have different opinions about the situation. What one perceives as wrong, can be the right thing to do in someone else’s eyes.

Highly competitive and performing business environments tend to stimulate behavior at the margins (Balch & Armstrong, 2010). Managers of these highly competitive companies often have a win-win-win mentality and are only focused on achieving the best results without paying attention to the means that are used to get these results. This puts a lot of pressure on employees, which stimulates them to do whatever it takes to get the best business deals. Because, after all, the quickest way to climb the corporate ladder is by satisfying your manager. Another reason why people involve in unethical behavior, is that when many people in an organization behave unethically, it is easier to follow than to resist yourself. One example of intentional corporate wrongdoing is from thé Dutch law firm Loyens & Loeff. A employee was fired, because he resisted to behave unethically. In this goodbye Email to his colleagues he wrote:

“Creative registration of hours: not my biggest talent. Unfortunately, I only just found out that you need to multiply your time spend on a job by three to come close to the (suddenly much more realistic) target.” - Quote (2017)

This statement was quite shocking to us. Because an employee that was behaving ethically right by writing down the hours he worked instead of adding a few hours more, was punished for doing ‘good’. Normally, one would expect that the lying colleagues would be fired.

As described above, the leadership style of managers plays an important role in ethical behavior of employees. One leadership style that stimulates unethical behavior is ends-biased leadership. Managers that execute the ends-biased leadership have a very strong focus on outcomes, that they do not pay sufficient attention to how these outcomes are achieved (Balch & Armstrong, 2010). As a consequence, employees will do whatever it takes to achieve those goals. Pleun once experienced a similar situation. She was addressed by someone of a charity when she was doing groceries. The sales representative tried to persuade her to donate a monthly aid to help refugees in a very aggressive way. After she told him that she was not interested, he continued to follow her to her house and kept telling her that she was a bad person. This boy was apparently really focussed to try to hit a high sales target, that he started to behave very rude. His tactic to convince her did not work, but we can imagine that most people would not dare to reject his proposal after such an aggressive sales pitch. In our opinion, it is very rude and unpolite to use such manners to achieve goals and we believe that behavior like this will not be beneficial for your brand image in the end. Referring to the second blog, unethical behavior can backfire you on the way consumers perceive your brand (Melo & Galan, 2010).

The leadership style of ends-biased leadership can be linked to the five barriers that is described by Bazerman and Tenbrunsel (2011). Using the example of the unethical sales pitch, the supervisor of the sales representative could have set ill-conceived goals. As a consequence, the sales representative behaved unethically to try to meet the high sales targets. However, as mentioned earlier this will not be favourable for the charity in the long term. Taking a look at the second barrier, motivated blindness, which basically describes a conflict of interest. The sales representative probably knows that his tactic is not the most friendly manner, but he is paid to the number of people he contracts and therefore remains ignorant. Another barrier that applies to this situation is indirect blindness. Indirect blindness refers to the fact that customers and managers often do not hold the people that behave unethically for account. This also applied to Pleun’s feelings, she expected that the sales representative was just following his script that was probably written by his supervisor. Even though, she was not sure if this was the case. To break down these barriers, organization should not force their employees to behave ethically, but they should ask them the question what implications could arise from the actions they take (Bazerman et al, 2011)

But how can organizations with thousands of employees monitor if all of their employees take ethically justified decisions? The answer is very simple, that is impossible. Conell’s (2017) theory of Convention is based on economic, psychological and anthropological insights and therefore takes subcultures into account. Which we believe is very important, because large organizations do not have only one culture, but many different subcultures, which need to be taken into account when analyzing an organizational culture. This links to a concept that was discussed in the previous blog, namely the economic theory of identity. The theory of economic identity assumes that people have multiple social identities, that are based on characteristics as their job, beliefs, but also ethnicity and gender (Cohn, Fehr & Maréchal, 2014). Combining these two theories, we can say that organizations and individuals are all unique, and there is no standard way to behave ethically at all times.

So if there is no standard way to stimulate employees to take ethically justifiable actions, what can organizations than do to implement change to the organizational culture? First of all, it is important to clarify specific areas in the organization where uncertainty has to be overcome. Than companies need to identify the order of worth that is most suitable to address each of the defined areas. There are six different orders of worth: domestic, civic, market, industrial/technical, inspiration and fame. What order fits the best depends on the situation. Moreover, behavior is measured in terms of someone’s obligations and rights (Conell, 2017). In the current times of COVID-19 someone’s rights are to work from home, to minimize the chance of becoming infected with the virus. However, some employers still want their employees to work at the office, which is in strive with employees’ rights. Lastly, companies need to secure that all actions are justified by the most suitable order of worth. In our opinion, this is could be a very effective theory, because it takes different points of view and does not assume one perspective as the only way to measure corporate behavior. Which fits perfectly to the diverse company cultures of big companies.

Picture retrieved from: https://mediatel.co.uk/news/2020/04/29/ipa-census-finds-marginal-at-best-improvements-in-diversity/

#organizational ethics #organizational culture #organizational diversity

Hi everyone, welcome to our third blog! Today we will tell you everything about ethical problems that occur in the financial sector. Could certain jobs favour unethical behaviors? Are people influenced by the environment when it comes to make decisions? Do you feel influenced by others decisions when you make individual decisions? Are our decisions consistent with our moral standards? Do we have different identities for different situations? In tutorial 4th we discussed about all these issues and how we can avoid situations that lead to unethical or dishonest behaviors in the market or business field.

Are you against child labour? Most of the people will answer ‘Of course’ with total certainty. But if you change the question to ‘Are you wearing clothes from a certain famous low cost brand?’ most of the answers will be ‘Yes, as the rest of the population’. The problem with these low-cost brands is that in order to sell new and fashionable clothes under the average price, they have to move their labour force to undeveloped countries where children are exploited and work under miserable conditions for a few coins. So, Are we being hypocritical? We are against child labour but our actions are not consistent with our moral convictions. Many people express objections agains child labour, animal exploitation in the meet industry, environmental damage, etc., but at the same time all of them are looking for the cheapest clothes, food or furniture and thus consciously or subconsciously creating a negative impact in society. Moreover, people tend to be influenced by other people actions or decisions. If our closest neighbor is buying cheap stuff although the negative consequences that can provoke, why we are not going to take the same advantage and pay less for the “same”. Market interactions develop a tendency to lower moral values, in contrast to individual human preferences. In addiction, people tend to have multiple social identities based on gender, ethnicity, profession, etc., these identities are associated with specific norm and behaviors which rule human actions in different scenarios. The theory of Economic Identity also has a lasting impact on consumers decisions and how they adapt their behaviors to each situation.

What would you tell me if you realize that your favorite chocolate bars are made by exploited children? Nestle is one of the companies that has been accused several times for the use of children as labour force. A total of 24 children were found working on farms as “family workers”, unable to attend to school, as they work with their parents and other relatives on plantations. They carry out dangerous and have tasks, including the use of machetes and transporting heavy loads (The Guardian, 2015). Although knowing this information, many people still eat products from Nestle, including one of their best sellers KitKat. Sometimes we look to the other side, justifying our actions based on other people decisions and being incongruent with our moral values.

Does your job influence in your moral standards? The bank industry has been always surrounded by numerous scandals, fraud and other dishonest behaviors that have undermined the confidence in the financial sector. People within the bank industry tend to favor fraudulent behaviors contributing to the loss of industry reputation. Why? Banking workers tend to be more competitive and more motivated by materialistic values. Monetary incentives combined with competitive behaviors are the main reasons that encourage workers to cheat. Apparently, jobs related with numbers are more likely to be involved in deception but other companies and people from different sectors have also act in a way not consistent with moral standards. Tax heaven scandals are the most sound in the news. A tax haven is generally an offshore country that offers foreign individuals and businesses little or no tax liability in a politically and economically static environment. Tax havens do not typically require residency or business presence for individuals and businesses to benefit from their tax policies. So, why do tax heavens exists? Technically tax heavens are legal but sometimes there is a slightly confusion between tax avoidance and tax evasion, the second one is illegal since it involve hiding wealth from the government and giving them a financial advantage over those who are paying tax correctly. Celebrities like Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Shakira and multinationals like Nike, Uber, Amazon have been recently linked with the Paradise Papers scandal. The Paradise Papers refers to a 13.4m files which set out the myriad ways in which companies and individuals can avoid tax using artificial structures. Governments start to question the legality and moral of Paradise Papers since the avoidance of taxes implies the loss of millions of euros for sectors such as healthcare, education, security, etc. So, Have Tax Heavens gone to far? Should be forbidden? or Should governments implement a more severe legislation?

Tax heaven can be a double-edge sword. On one hand, the offshoring of wealth implies less money for the government to spend in social welfare (Increase minimum wages, improve public healthy system, disability and retirement pensions, etc.) while high income earners take advantage of tax evasion/avoidance systems. In addiction, citizens could develop a sceptic view respect government institutions since these ones are refusing to take the money from those who have it. A feasible solution could be to find a way to take part of the offshore cash by establishing tax heaven levies and therefore spend more on public health, education, security, etc. By this way, fiscal deficit and public debt would be under control. Savings and tax receipts of rich people and big corporations are crucial for the feasibility of the welfare state and for the sustainability of the public budget. On the other hand, recent studies have shown that eliminate tax heavens can affect negatively to the economy. Tax heavens can enhance the growth of business in non haven countries located in the same region by reducing the cost of financing investment in those countries (Suárez Serrato, 2018). In any case, anti-avoidance tax measures must be taken to control those organizations whose moral usage of offshoring wealth paradises is questionable.

Picture retrieved from: https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/fighting-for-just-and-sustainable-trade/

#ethics&financialsector

Hi everyone! Welcome to our second blog. To begin with, we watched the TED Talk of WWF’s Jason Clay. While practicing his profession, he saw with his own eyes how the planet was suffering from overconsumption. In other words, our consumption exceeds the resources our planet has to offer. Important to know is that this problem is not only caused by the growth our worldwide population, but much more by the amount of goods people in the western world consume and their lifestyles. During the coronavirus, we all personally experienced that our lifestyles became less hectic than before. Normally, we all have a very busy social-life, just like many other people of our age, and we do not want to miss out on things. One of the pleasant experiences during the times of the lockdowns is that we experience that it can also be really nice to have some more free time and less obligations. Additionally, since we are more home-bound, we experience that materialistic belongings are less valuable than they were before. After watching the TED Talk, we gained more insights into the extent of this problem and we think we would think twice while making purchases in the future. We hope that other people experience the same and that we will all try to keep a lower pace after the coronavirus. Not only for ourselves, but also for the planet.

However, only changing our lifestyles is not enough to solve the problem of overconsumption. We need the help of world’s most influential companies to change the way in which consumers behave (Clay, 2010). Only they can push consumers to more sustainable and fairly produced goods. A good example is Unilever, they developed the ‘Sustainable Living Plan’. This plan serves three main goals: improve the health and well-being of at least 1 billion people, reducing their environmental footprint by 50 percent, and enhancing the livelihoods of millions of people. Some ways in which Unilever tries to achieve these goals are for example to reduce their water usage, waste and making use of sustainable sourcing. This does not only decreases their own environmental footprint, but also the ones of their consumers. In our opinion, it is very good that influential companies like Unilever give the right example, because they serve as an inspiration source for many other companies and individuals, which can sometimes have an even bigger impact than governmental regulations.

Overconsumption is the foundation of world’s biggest problems as poverty, inequality, hunger and climate change. Wendy Woods (2018) argues that money is not enough to solve these major problems. We need businesses to start thinking differently so that they can bring creative and innovative ideas to drive the solution! One example of a company that focusses a lot on the impact of their business is Just Smile. The company is founded by Helena Andre, who is a SBE student, and her co-founder Kazuna Yamamoto. Just Smile’s bamboo toothbrushes are a sustainable alternative for the normal plastic toothbrushes we all know. The company carefully selects their suppliers on plastic free and sustainable production processes. Furthermore, they stimulate their customers to purchase their toothbrushes in bigger amounts by offering a discount if you purchase more than 4 pieces so that the distribution is less harmful. Additionally, they also partner with Educate which is an organization against education inequality. To sum up, Just Smile has a positive impact on both society and the environment which creates benefits for the company in return. We believe that Just Smile is a really good example of the effects that education about CSV has on future entrepreneurs. Are you curious to Just Smile’s full story and how they try to be as sustainable as possible? Take a look at their website: https://www.just-smile.co/sustainable-development-goals

But how does doing good for environment and society benefit the company itself? The solution lies in the principle of creating shared value, which involves the creation of economic value and societal value by fulfilling society’s needs (Porter & Kramer, 2011). This sounds easy, but it is certainly not. Therefore companies often need the help of regulators to introduce measurable goals, performance standards and offer support for innovation (Porter & Kramer, 2011). One example are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. These goals serve as a blueprint of how companies and other organizations can contribute to a more sustainable future (United Nations, n.d.). By serving these goals, companies can perform strongly on both social and environmental areas, which leads to higher value creations. Higher value creation increases companies’ sales and brand image which stimulates future growth and longevity. If you want to learn more about the Sustainable Development Goals, take a look at the following website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/

Sometimes companies experience difficulties complying with the regulations that are introduced by governmental bodies. These difficulties are often a consequence of the lack of knowledge in an organization. Corporate social innovation describes the process where organizations integrate social innovation into their core activities and acquire knowledge from other firms by exchanging and co-developing knowledge and new technologies (Mirvis, Baltazar Herrera, Googins & Albareda, 2016). Coming back to Jason Clay’s TED Talk, the WWF collaborates with 100 of the most influential organizations when it comes to consumer goods to reduce these companies’ environmental footprint (Clay, 2010). One example is their partnership with Coca-Cola where they work together to save world’s freshwater resources by reducing Coca-Cola’s water usage and to integrate sustainably into Coca-Cola’s decision making process. Through the exchange of tacit knowledge, they already protected 350 hectares of forest (World Wild Life, 2016). If you are curious what other measures Coca-Cola took in corporation with WWF, take a look at the following link: https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1096/files/original/WWF_CC_Partner_Report_2017_WebFinal.pdf?1506450588

Just like Coca-Cola, many companies makes use of social media and other sources of media to get consumers’ attention for their contribution to the environment. These fast-paced means are a very effective way to create a reliable and honest brand reputation by showing your organizational contribution. This increase in brand value often causes high profits in the long run (Melo & Galan, 2010). We believe that companies should be very careful that their CSR posts should not look like a sales pitch, but truly serve the planet and society. Because, it can also create a backfire effect. One example of wrong use of CSR is the Gillette campaign “The Best a Man can get!”. The reactions on the campaign were very negative and Forbes even called the campaign toxic, which hurt their brand image a lot. This, because the campaign was full of stereotypes and insulting to men (Forbes, 2019). Watch the commercial by clicking on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koPmuEyP3a0. Therefore, we suggest companies to stay true to their core values and find the right balance when sharing their CSR contributions.

Picture 1 retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/309552174379610040/

Picture 2 retrieved from: https://fritsahlefeldt.com/2016/11/23/estimating-the-value-of-earth/

#/tagged/CSRValue&Strategy

After reading our first blog about normative ethics, would you pull the lever? Vote in our poll!

#poll #ethical dilemma

Hi there! Welcome to our first blog entry ever. To start things off, we had the first two sessions of our Ethics, Organizations and Society Class and we are super excited to share our thought and ideas with you guys.

Many of you have probably heard of normative ethics before, not everyone will know the name but once we get into it you will see that normative ethics is something many have learned about before. Normative ethics is the study of ethical action, so simply put, the study of distinguishing what we do is right or wrong. There are basic principles that were established in order for us to better judge our actions and if what we intend to do is actually good. One example is virtue ethics, it looks at the person rather than the action, meaning that if you do something bad with the intention of being good, your action can still be considered good. We personally dislike this way of thinking. Of course, the original intent of a person needs to be taken into account when looking at their actions, but you cannot disregard the actual action. So, for example, if someone opens a cage in a zoo to release an animal held in captivity, which is a noble thought, but this leads to property damage, maybe even personal harm. Then this action cannot be good in our opinion, no matter how noble the original thought. This example is a bit extreme as it goes against laws, but the gist is, if someone does something bad, it does not become better because the intent was good, or because the person normally is good. A wrong action remains wrong, even if the person doing it isn’t.

This is another extreme example, three women wanted to launch lanterns into the sky as part of a new year’s celebration and by accident lit a monkey exhibit on fire and killing the monkeys. The idea to celebrate the new year like that isn’t wrong, but the outcome is, and their good intent does not make up for killing dozens of monkeys.

A normative ethics theory that we actually really like though is consequentialism. It basically judges an action by its outcome and consequences, where bad consequences mean bad actions. We believe this is something very simple and can really serve as a foundation for people to not break the law and go absolutely nuts every now and then. If we were to rob a store and get caught, we would be prosecuted and might have to go to jail depending on the severity of our actions. This fear of going to jail is the main thing keeping us from going store to store taking what we want, that and our consciousness which would be screaming in pain if we did that. But what if we do not get caught and except for the fear of consequences our mind is good with it, does that make robbing a store good because of no consequences? NO! Of course not. The shop owner will have to take up new security measures, will lose profit on the items we stole and will feel less safe in his own store. Our action would not have consequences on us at first, but on the people involved.

All this talk about theories led to session two, ethical decision making. This session was more about what we do and why we do it. What moves a person to behave differently? What happens every day that changes companies and organizations form within? We watched a great video which still stays on my mind from time to time. Basically, the professor said that there are common misconceptions with the way we see business ethics. People misunderstand both business and ethics. If you think business is solely about profits, there’s your first misconception. Furthermore, ethics is about how we strive together not by ourselves, so there’s number two. And lastly, people are complicated. Not one person can cooperate the same with everyone, and no business process can run as smoothly with humans as it would be with machines, but that is a good thing because humans push innovation and lead to development. We highly recommend the video, so go watch it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7yjQzRcf-U).

We further discussed decision making and the ethical influence on it and let us tell you, decision making cannot be easy. It never is and never will be but that’s okay, because we can help each other. Hard decisions might come easier to some people because of their situation and their circumstances, but everybody can make a decision and if we make mistakes, we can help each other out when trying to fix it. We think one of the best examples is the corona pandemic going on right now. Some governments took it more strictly than others and profited from it. Some countries sadly are doing rather poorly with the pandemic affecting their people harshly, but other countries can help. China for example, sent doctors to Italy when the pandemic slowed down for them but continued in Italy. By now, almost every country is in full lockdown mode, but once this is over, we are sure we can help each other build up what fell.

If you want our opinion on ethical decision making, we don’t think there is a possibility to make the perfect decision. There will always be someone affected in a way that was not intended, or someone not gaining from a decision. Making the best possible decision is all we can do, and try to do, but under uncertainty that isn’t easy most of the time. Therefore, we have to collect information, consult with other people and accept the possibility of making a mistake. Only then can we learn and make future decisions the best we possibly can.

Picture retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/383650462002699211/

#tagged/ethicaldecisionmaking

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Ethics, Organizations & Society