Policy Decision-Making

Public Institutions Professional ethics refer to the ethics that surround a particular profession. These are the ethical standards that surround the job, and they will typically encompass a range of job-specific ethics and basic ethical standards in general. Organizational ethics are the set of ethical standards by which the organization operates. Each organization has its own culture, and that culture will have a built-in set of ethics that may be different from those of similar organizations. Social ethics are the ethics of a society.

At their heart, each code of ethics reflects the standards by which the group of people agrees to operate. So a society, a firm and a professional body are three different groups of people, and each can therefore have their own set of ethical standards and guidelines. Ethical guidelines are part of an agreed structure for any group of people. When one belongs to a group, there is an expectation that the person will, more or less, conform to the norms of that group.

Ethical standards are very much fluid, and reflective of their times. Professional ethics and organizational ethics in particular are similar in that they are often explicit, and operationalized for the benefit of group members. Such best practices usually reflect the typical ethical dilemmas faced by people in a given profession or organization, as an attempt to provide specific guidance on these same ethical issues (Marcoux, 2008). The implication for organizational and professional ethics is that they may differ from the ethics of the society as a whole.

Otherwise, there would not be any need to elaborate with specific codes. The ethics for the society would be sufficient. Social ethics, on the other hand, are the predominant form of ethics in society. There is no one specific set of social ethics, at least not in a heterogeneous society, but there are basic norms that are understood by almost all members of society, and those form the basis of the common ethical code of a given people.

These can differ dramatically from one society to the next, based on a variety of factors. These differences, and the unpredictability of social ethics, is in part why professional and organizational ethics are demanded, so that there is no misinterpretation of what constitutes ethical behavior within a given professional or organizational context. Ethical standards can be useful in solving real-world problems, but their usefulness is probably overstated.

The reason for the latter statement is because genuine ethical dilemmas are not actually that frequent -- where one must choose between two "right" courses of action that will result in suffering to some party. Normally, ethical dilemmas are misinterpreted as the choice between doing the wrong thing and the right thing; restated choosing something that benefits you or benefits society.

This reflects public choice theory, but does not reflect a genuine ethical dilemma because in most professional or political instances one is supposed to act in the interests of society or organization, not oneself. Where there is a genuine ethical dilemma, an effective code of conduct can provide guidance. While the social ethics are supposed to be understood by all members of society, professional and organizational ethics are a unique subset thereof, and any person should have written guidance as to what their ethical responsibilies and obligations are.

Preferably, those professional and organizational ethical codes are operationalized to the extent that the individual can apply the ethical standard to assist in the decision-making process. 2. The rational-comprehensive approach to decision-making is when all of the possible options/solutions are evaluated, with a rational weighing of the costs and benefits of each option. The idea is that the option that produces the greatest net benefit is the one selected ("rational"), and that all viable options are evaluated ("comprehensive") (Johnson, 2005).

An incremental model of decision-making uses the status quo as a starting point, and then focuses on what adjustments to the status quo can bring about the desired result. This differs from the rational-comprehensive approach that puts all options on the table, and allows for the possibility that it might be best to start from scratch. The incremental approach is often easier to implement, and is a common component of decision-making in government and large corporations.

One of the biggest differences between the two is that the incremental model will encompass sunk costs, in that it is specifically desired to think about the money and effort that has already been invested in something, and build on that. The rational comprehensive model does not take sunk costs into account, but rather focuses on making decisions based on what will be spent and gained in the future, starting at the present moment in time.

Deborah Stone's polis model could fit with either; it seems to be on a distinct plane. The polis is the community, which means that the polis model is where decision-making takes into account the needs and outcomes that relate to the community. Stone's idea has been juxtaposed against a rational decision-making model, but that is not quite accurate. Even decisions made for the benefit of the community will typically take into account a cost-benefit calculus. The field of microeconomics addressed this a long time ago, with the idea of utility.

Not all "costs" and "benefits" are economics, and rational decision-making was never about strictly quantitative decision-making. That is little more than a straw man. The reality is that even community decisions based on non-quantitative factors reflect utility, and therefore reflect rational decision-making. The incremental approach is sort of off on its own somewhere, because it assumes a baseline that neither a polis approach nor a rational approach would assume inherently. The incremental.