Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Ethics in Decision-Making
Clegg, Stewart Martin Kornberger & Carl Rhodes. (2007). Organizational ethics, decision making, undecidability, ethical decision-making. The Sociological Review, 55:2.
According to Stewart Clegg, Martin Kornberger and Carl Rhodes' article, "Organizational ethics, decision making, undecidability, ethical decision-making" from the Sociological Review, ethical decision-making is not optimized with either an outcome-driven consequentialist approach nor a rule-bound deontological approach. "We suggest that rules for ethical decision making, rather than ensuring ethical outcomes, can work to insulate organizations from moral responsibility" (Clegg, Kornberger, Rhodes 2007: 393). Because of recent ethical scandals, there has been a drive to seek a heavily prescriptive and rule-bound approach to ethics, but the authors believe that "ethics is best considered in terms of the way that organizations are sites for ethical difficulties, dilemmas...
Theorizing ambivalence in ethical decision-making is the ambitious goal of the article. The article uses the French literary theorist Derrida's approach to deconstruction to make sense of the seeming insurmountable paradox in ethics -- the need to be flexible to the needs of the situation, but to still have some coherent moral core.
The solution of 'going by the rules' is often offered because of the difficulties and complexities of managerial decision-making in large organizations. Managers cannot perfectly calculate the 'correct' decision. In contrast to the ideal of perfect rationality, contemporary organizational theorists tend to see organizations as 'garbage cans' or mixes of personal and organizational ethical orientations. It is often uncertain what will 'tumble out' decision-wise, even when there are efforts to have policies in words. In the face of such randomness, a personal ethical orientation…
The solution of 'going by the rules' is often offered because of the difficulties and complexities of managerial decision-making in large organizations. Managers cannot perfectly calculate the 'correct' decision. In contrast to the ideal of perfect rationality, contemporary organizational theorists tend to see organizations as 'garbage cans' or mixes of personal and organizational ethical orientations. It is often uncertain what will 'tumble out' decision-wise, even when there are efforts to have policies in words. In the face of such randomness, a personal ethical orientation and sense of justice is required. "In Derrida sees decision-making as irretrievably implicated with issues of personal responsibility and ethics" (Clegg, Kornberger, Rhodes 2007: 398).
For Derrida, rules are not useful and future-oriented utilitarian calculus is impossible. To simply follow the rules enters into the 'madness' of rationality, and echoes the protests of Nazi war criminals that they were just following orders and therefore their crimes were excused. A sense of personal responsibility and investment in every decision that has potential ethical consequences is required, and no human being, regardless of his or her level of the organizational hierarchy, can abdicate responsibility. Organizational acts that use authority, routine, and above all bureaucracy are usually the least ethical rather than the most (Clegg, Kornberger, Rhodes 2007: 403). This statement seems supported by recent history, in which some of the least ethical actions (the accounting fraud at Enron, 'robo-signing' for foreclosures after the housing crisis) were done as a matter of routine, according to the set procedures of the organization.
What is called for in the article is more humane but also more difficult -- the sharpening of the ethical faculty of all corporate decision-makers. Responsibility cannot merely be technical, and ethics strives to affirm the humanity of the person whose fate is being decided, rather than to distance the decision-maker from that person through the affirmation of 'rules.' Instead of forcing workers to learn a corporate manual by rote, managers should strive to create virtuous beings: "management's task in relation to ethics should be one of enhancing and maintaining structures within which moral agents face, understand and act within the conditions of undecidability (Clegg, Kornberger, Rhodes 2007: 405).
Ethics and Decision Making A definition of ethics broadly stated could be as that 'ethics is the science that deals with conduct in so far as this is considered as right or wrong, good or bad.' (Shapiro; Stefkovich, 2001) The word 'Ethics' has its root in the Greek language where ethos was the word used for a custom or usage for individual groups. This later moved on to mean the general
Decision Making Ethics is a philosophical term derived from the Greek word "ethos," meaning character or custom (Sims, 1994, p. 16). Ethics, therefore, is not just an ethereal concept belonging to the domain of philosophers and theologists, but a universal phenomenon that pervades the very functioning of individuals and society. Indeed, ethics can be said to be the guiding set of principles, based on which individual character, social and organizational custom
Decision Making Model Decision making is an important everyday activity which can have far-reaching implications on personal and business matters. People face challenging situations often that require them to make decisions. These decisions usually follow a pattern that has something to do with an individual's personal values and beliefs. Ethical decision making model is one of the most commonly used models today because it takes into account the interests of others.
Ethics, Values and Decision-Making in Nursing Practice RIGHT FROM WRONG A nurse's primary tasks are monitoring the patient's vital signs, administering medications, and helping doctors treat and perform procedures (Williams, 2012). Oftentimes and in many cases, these technical skills must be guided by certain and pertinent moral and ethical principles. This ethical and moral component of her overall responsibility is so important and critical that a code of ethics was created by
Decision Making and Accounting Theories Business owners find that they always have to put on business hats when they are starting up or managing their businesses. However in business it is not the owners who are meant to make decisions only, decisions can also be made by employees. When classification of business decisions is done it is on the basis of how predictable that particular decision is. Programmed decisions are those
While the initiative is laudable, the results are not palpable and cannot be extrapolated, indicating as such that research on the topic has still to be conducted. At the level of the individual, the reading of the article confirmed the complexity of the ethics and morals within the business community. Still, aside from this, it also indicated that the organizational entities are primarily focused on their profitability objectives, and they