Question

Read: Required chapters for this week and view the assigned videos

Questions:

1. What is the impact of culture on the degree that organizational behavior is ethical?
2. What examples of utilitarianism, the moral philosophy, in action within your organization?
3. Which of the moral philosophies do you personally favor? How does it impact your decisions?
4. Using the Framework for Understanding Ethical-Decision Making in Business, what are the most influential factors in the making of decisions in your organization?

Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases Twelfth Edition

Answer 1

The culture of a company , basically is the values and beliefs of the overall organization. The culture is considered quite strong when the company’s image gets reflected through its culture. All the major entities of the company – the vision and mission, value system as well as business processes of the organization must be in alignment with the company’s culture to make it strong and evident. So, in my views, culture plays a very vital role in deciding the extent to which a company’s organizational behavior is ethical or not.

Some of the frameworks which can be used for ethical decision-making are as follows:

• Utilitarianism: As per this framework, all ethical actions of business must be directed to generate the greatest amount of good for largest amount of people. Utilitarianism framework also suggests that the business must develop its processes and business actions in a way that they cause the least harm to majority of society.
• Virtue Ethics: This framework suggests that the decisions must be based on the moral virtues as well as that of person’s character and beliefs. This basis determines the factors which a person considers right or wrong.
• Consequentialist Theory: The decisions are taken based on the perception of the end results. The decision makers, in this framework, are required to assess and predict the outcomes of any situation and the choice of decision must be made, based on the most favorable outcome.

My company works on the framework of the consequentialist theory. The management assesses the situation at hand, consider the perception of various stakeholders, predict the outcome of each alternative and the alternative is selected, which is associated with the most favorable outcome.

In my personal opinion, the most favorable ethical framework is the Utilitarianism approach. As per this framework, all ethical actions of business must be directed to generate the greatest amount of good for largest amount of people. Utilitarianism framework also suggests that the business must develop its processes and business actions in a way that they cause the least harm to majority of society.

The most influential factors which affect the decisions in my organization, are as follows:

• Market trends
• Customer disposition and perception
• Government policies
• Economic conditions
• Competition
• Return on Investment
• Social responsibility