Dialectical Interactions: Decoupling and Integrating Ethics in Ethics Initiatives

ABSTRACT:Evidence abounds that when ethics initiatives are decoupled from the actual work of organizations, ethics policies may become little more than “window dressing” (Weaver, Trevino, and Cochran 1999; Collen and Gonella 2002). We found, however, an unexpected, positive feature of decoupling in the study of a local government; namely, when organizational members engage in discussions that turn away from the letter of an ethics code they often do so to address higher ethical principles embedded in the spirit of the code. The decoupled understanding of the code in these cases becomes a symbolic, legitimating gesture grounded not in strict provisions but in creative and complex interactions. This counterintuitive explanation of decoupling capitalizes on discourse that evolves from a legalistic interpretation to rich discussions that value the multiplicity of voices within organizational life. What follows is that ethical decision making emerges as creative, dynamic, and responsive to its constituents.

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The Effects of Blogger's Moral Intensity on Ethical Decision Making

Applied Mechanics and Materials ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.311.539 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 311 ◽

pp. 539-543

Author(s):

Hui Ling Yang ◽

Wei Pang Wu

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Ethical Decision ◽

Ethical Decision Making ◽

Moral Intensity ◽

Moral Code ◽

Moral Decision ◽

Moral Decision Making ◽

Internet Search Engine ◽

Ethics Code ◽

Conflicting Interests

Weblogs, or blog, are rapidly becoming a mainstream technology in the information world. By June 2008, Technorati, an internet search engine, was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. Blogs allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas and millions more to read and evaluate and comment on them. When bloggers write things on their blog they became public. Although bloggers use blogs for many different functions and would likely provide many different definitions of blog (Stutzman, 2004), as we have seen, many bloggers perform journalistic functions. Therefore most moral code for bloggers is credibility in a journalistic sense (Blood, 2002; Dube, 2003), but they are nonprofessional without such code. Generally, blog audiences are built on trust, so bloggers should be honest and fair in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. For example, bloggers should disclose every benefit to any monetary (or other potentially conflicting) interests when appropriate. However, there has been almost no talk about this kind of ethics in the blog world. This study designed three ethical scenarios of blogger behavior against ethics code. Scenarios include blogger promoted her favorable food without disclosure conflict of interests, post other people’s entries without referencing material, and decoding other bloggers’ picture. The purpose of current research was to examine the perception of moral intensity and how the perception directly affected the specific processes of moral decision making of bloggers related to three scenarios.

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Recognize Everyone’s Interests: An Algorithm for Ethical Decision-Making about Trade-Off Problems

Business Ethics Quarterly ◽

10.1017/beq.2020.29 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-24

Author(s):

Tobey K. Scharding

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Autonomous Vehicles ◽

Ethical Decision ◽

Ethical Decision Making ◽

Trolley Problem ◽

Loss Of Life ◽

Trade Off ◽

Group I ◽

Equal Concern ◽

Do So

This article addresses a dilemma about autonomous vehicles: how to respond to trade-off scenarios in which all possible responses involve the loss of life but there is a choice about whose life or lives are lost. I consider four options: kill fewer people, protect passengers, equal concern for survival, and recognize everyone’s interests. I solve this dilemma via what I call the new trolley problem, which seeks a rationale for the intuition that it is unethical to kill a smaller number of people to avoid killing a greater number of people based on numbers alone. I argue that killing a smaller number of people to avoid killing a greater number of people based on numbers alone is unethical because it disrespects the humanity of the individuals in the smaller-numbered group. I defend the recognize-everyone’s-interests algorithm, which will probably kill fewer people but will not do so based on numbers alone.

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ENVIRONMENTALISM AND ETHICAL DECISION MAKING IN BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS

Business And Management Studies An International Journal ◽

10.15295/bmij.v8i4.1703 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (4) ◽

pp. 37-49

Author(s):

Ahmet COŞKUN

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Ethical Decision ◽

Ethical Decision Making ◽

Ethical Behaviour ◽

Business Organizations ◽

Survey Analysis ◽

Online Questionnaire ◽

Ethical Business ◽

Business Decision ◽

Do So

This study tries to reveal the dynamics of ethical business decision making process about environmental issues, in terms of Theory of planned behaviour framework. To do so, a survey analysis was held with 167 university students by taking an online questionnaire and the data were statistically analysed by using a statistic software (SPSS). Results showed that ethical behaviour intentions have significant positive relationships with environmentalism, ethical attitudes toward environment and perceived behavioural control. Demographic factor groups were found to have no significant differences in any of the variables.

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