ROLE
& FUNCTIONS OF ETHICAL MANAGERS:
Managers in both large and small
enterprises face difficult ethical situations daily as they attempt to do their
jobs. Since management decisions inherently involve ethical considerations,
however, it is important that managers recognize the ethical elements that are
embedded in their day-to-day job functions. They need to be able to reason
through ethical decisions, just as they would reason through any managerial
problem facing them. Many times, ethics- laden situations involve issues that
are clearly right or wrong when judged by the manager's or organization's
values or code of conduct. Furthermore, most managerial decisions and actions
are legal, although there are occasions when a certain decision would clearly
go beyond legal boundaries and be illegal. Assuming that the law itself is
just, these decisions are not really ethically problematic in that what to do
to make an ethically sound decision is quite clear. In these cases, making a
decision to break the law or to do something that disagrees with a code of
conduct or set of values is clearly unethical. It is not difficult to know what
the right thing to do is in such situations.
Ethical decision- making problems
arise for managers and leaders when decisions involve a moral conflict—that is,
a moral situation in which a person must choose between at least two equally
bad choices, or when there are multiple ethical considerations, some of which
conflict with each other. In such circumstances, which are common in business,
the manager has to be able to think through the consequences and ethical
implications of the decision thoroughly and mindfully so that the best possible
decision can be made given the constraints, implications, and ethical
considerations. If the decision itself cannot be reframed as a situation in
which all parties can benefit—that is, a win-win situation—then the manager
needs a decision-making framework to help.
To help managers think through
ethical moral conflicts, the business ethicists Gerald Cavanagh and his
colleagues have developed a decision- making framework that relies on the ideas
of philosophers and ethicists and applies those ideas to business decisions.
This approach combines four methods of ethical reasoning rights and duties,
utilitarianism, justice, and the ethics of care— into a framework that helps
managers and leaders step through a logical thinking process to sort out the
ethical dimensions of a difficult and inherently conflictual situation.
Rights
and Duties
Rights are justifiable claims or
entitlements, frequently based on the law or other authoritative documents,
such as treaties and international declarations that allow people to pursue
their own interests. Rights can be viewed as the positive things that people
are allowed to do, but they come with an obverse side as well, in the form of
duties or obligations that go along with the rights. For example, in
democracies, one right is the ability to vote. Along with that right comes the
duty to exercise that right by actually voting. In many countries, employees
are granted certain rights, such as the right to safe working conditions or a
minimum wage, and employers have corresponding duties to ensure that these
conditions are met. These rights are based on laws and regulations. Other
rights are based on moral grounds and are frequently written into international
treaties, such as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and the
Natural Environment. Such rights include respect for human dignity, which
enables communities, organizations, and societies to thrive. In using
Cavanagh's ethical decision- making framework to assess a moral conflict, one
question that needs to be asked involves rights and duties: Would this decision
respect the rights and duties of the individuals involved?
Utilitarianism
A second way of reasoning through a
moral conflict involves using utilitarian analysis, or assessment of the
greatest good of the greatest number. This type of cost-benefit analysis is a
very common management approach, but as the framework suggests, it may not be a
sufficient basis by itself to make an ethical decision in a moral conflict. In
a utilitarian analysis, the harms and benefits of a decision to the different
parties that would be affected by the decision are evaluated, with some sort of
weight given to the various harms and benefits that assesses their degree. Most
utilitarian analysis focuses on the good of the group or collective as a whole
over that of any given individual, unless the most serious harm is to the
individual—for example, if the decision would be fatal to the individual.
Putting the collective, which can include an organization's interest, over that
of the individual avoids the problem of self- interest. A second question in
the ethical decision- making framework for managers, then, would be as follows:
Who will be affected by the decision and to what extent will the various
parties affected by this decision be harmed or benefited?
Justice
Principles of justice are a third
way for managers to reason about ethical decisions. Just decisions require
fairness, equity, and impartiality on the part of decision makers, particularly
with respect to the ultimate burdens and benefits that will accrue from the
decision. The philosopher John Rawls has discussed the justice criterion in
terms of a concept of what he terms distributive justice, which invites
decision makers to make a decision behind a veil of ignorance that suggests
that they do not know where in the system they will be after the decision is
made. This veil-of- ignorance consideration forces managers to take into
account the fairness of the decision to any party that will be affected.
Similarly, the philosopher Immanuel Kant suggests that justice can be taken
into account using the concept of ―categorical imperative‖; that is, one should
only act a given way or make a given decision if the decision maker can agree
that it would be all right if any person in a similar situation acted that way.
Alternatively, one can think of the categorical imperative as asking the
decision maker whether this action or decision would be all right if it became
a universal law. In considering justice, then, decision makers have to ask, How
does this decision square with the canons of justice?
Ethic
of Care
In addition to assessing a moral
conflict from the perspective discussed above, ethical managers and leaders
also need to look at the impact of a decision on the network of relationships
that will be affected. This perspective is called the ethic of care. Based on
feminist writings, the ethic of care proposes that one's moral responsibilities
vary according to how closely one is linked to other people. That is, if a
person is very close to another person, say, a family member, there will be
more moral responsibility for ensuring the well-being of the family member than
the well-being of an unrelated person. In an organizational context, using an
ethic of care, more consideration might be given to the impact of a decision on
long-term employees, who are more tightly connected to the organization and its
goals, than to its impact on newly hired employees.
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