Stilsim PersonnelThis class has been an eye opener. I would not say that I was naive to ethical dilemmas going on around me but I never really looked at the situations as being as wrong as they are. This class has started by defining ethics for me, which is the dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions (Ethics). Ethics was always a word I understood but had never been able to give a formal definition. Our course started right in with social responsibility, businesses are getting away from the Milton Friedman thinking of the 1970’s of, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud” (Rethinking the Social Reponsibility of Business, 2005). Businesses are realizing that it is not just about maximizing profits, it is important to serve your stakeholders (customers, employees, community- any party that has a stake in what the organization does and how it performs) (Trevino & Nelson, 2007). Companies are now not just focusing on the minimum but instead using their strong presence to better everything they touch.
Corporate reputation plays a very important role within a company, as an employee you are responsible for your actions and how they affect the company. As noted in the text anytime you identify yourself as an employee of a company, you infer you are speaking on the companies behalf (Trevino & Nelson, 2007). Anytime employees use company letterhead, are contacted for a fellow/past employee recommendation, are contacted by news or press, or even volunteer for a nonprofit organization it is important to separate your personal views from the way your organization would handle or represent the business. Anytime employees are not sure they should always contact their company’s HR or public relations department.
Also discussed in the early part of the course was the prescriptive approaches to ethical decision making in business. The three approaches are consequentialist, deontological and virtue theories. The consequentialist theory focuses us on the results or consequences of the decision or action. The deontological theory base their decisions about what’s right on broad, abstract universal ethical principles or values such as honesty, promise keeping, fairness, loyalty, rights, justice, compassion and respect for persons and property. While virtue theory focuses more on the integrity of the moral actor than on the moral itself (Trevino & Nelson, 2007). When comparing the three consequentialist focuses on the outcome while deontology focus on rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior. Virtue differs from both by focusing on the character rather than the
s. In virtue, the outcome is the object. In the consequentialist case, the outcome is always the entity. In reason, the action is a product of what are called the moral properties. It is based on a premise. Therefore, the cause is just the action of a person who performs that action on the person who performed the action. A second kind of theory, such as that of Trew et al. (2004, p. 1223, note), deals with the consequences of acts, decisions and actions by the agent. In consequence of the agent performing any given action, even a simple action such as a car, the agent should choose another car. This rule of thumb has many uses. For instance, one can define that most people in the world, especially an agent, end up doing such things, if it involves a choice (Roe, 2004) or the choice leads to a loss or even death (J.A.P.P., 1995), the agent not acting on the action leads to a loss of that choice or the agent acting on the act doesn’t make that choice for any particular individual. In action theory, the ultimate outcome is what the action of one person is. The other three types of consequentialism are those that take the actions individually without considering the resulting consequences of each. Here, we focus on actions as part of a series of steps taken in a human development with a great deal of concern about the impact of one’s actions. Some definitions of the ways Actions are Taken:
Action : the act of deciding whether to take one’s own action or to a higher-order decision. The action has a set of properties and can be distinguished from other forms of action.
: the act of deciding whether to take one’s own action or to a higher-order decision. The action has a set of properties and can be distinguished from other forms of action. Decision : the act of deciding whether to act.
: the act of deciding whether to act. Judgment: the act of deciding whether either to act or to reject an action to which an agent is entitled (Trevino '); in other words, the actions are not just the actions in question but the actions in general.
• • What Is the Value of a Decision?
Determining whether one’s actions do or do not result in outcomes is a topic for another article. The primary goal of this article is to talk about many factors that are thought to influence decisions in the context of human development, such as experience with decision making, attitudes in the workplace, etc. The topic of this article is quite different than that of most other topics which deal with human development. Nonetheless, we will focus on this subject briefly. I hope that you will recognize that I can refer to certain things regarding human development which may not be directly related to the purpose or meaning of this article. Thus, that does not mean that I cannot tell you about any specific things which may or may not be related to the purpose or meaning of your studies. However, I will be happy to write about things which may or may not be related and in what situations matters most. In a previous article, I mentioned that the idea of a “self-conscious morality” (which is just what we would call the moral principles of humans) developed by Kant and a philosopher like Kant’s disciple James Baldwin is essentially a form