The Importance of Ethical Decision Making in Business Organizations
The success of any business or organization strongly lies in the hands of its management's ability to make effective and efficient decisions and at the same time observe ethical practices (Rees, Tenbrunsel & Bazerman, 2018). Thus, organizations that are fond of neglecting one or all of the above features often find themselves on the receiving end as their businesses find it difficult to compete with other established enterprises. There is a high urgent need for corporate managers to be ethical in their decision making to enable them to continue operating into the foreseeable future. This research paper will, therefore, seek to synthesize opinions from different schools of thought on how organizations we are associated with can lead to the emergence or occurrence of ethical issues.
Understanding Your Organization
We are going to consider the arguments of Dr. Vaughn, Malcolm Gladwell, and Bazerman and Tenbrunsel among other opinions of researchers by integrating them together. People form part of the organizations for which they work. Therefore, as Dr. Vaughn puts it, it is of great significance that we understand all aspect of an organization so that we can realize the impact it has on our lives. Understanding your organization means that you are well conversant with its history, culture, mission, and vision among other important aspects. This enables one to fully associate and identify himself or herself with a particular organization.
The Role of Decision Making and Ethics
Reading the articles of "The Engineer's Lament" and "Ethical Breakdowns" separately, one can see how decision making and being ethical at big and small organizations matters a lot. While the Engineer's perspective is deeply rooted in the practice of healthy business and observing the ethical component, the ethical breakdown analysis portrays a contrary, different opinion. We shall try to discuss these schools of thought concurrently by explicitly referring to some of the critical decisions their management had to make in the wake of mechanical breakdowns in the manufacturers' automobiles.
To begin with, we refer to one of the engineer's and ethical breakdown's case scenarios which sought to answer the question of whether defective automobiles that had already been released into the market should be recalled or not. The main driving point to this consideration of remembering such machines was based on whether end consumer's safety needs were to be given priority or whether the companies' need to make the profit was to be considered. Whichever the case, a rational business organization will automatically choose the need to ensure consumer safety first, because, in the absence of consumers, businesses will not have a market.
According to Malcolm Gladwell's article, when the question of recalling a product arises, some issues need to be factored in before the decision is made by the management. First, Malcolm argues that although fault is to the human being, automobile companies usually do their best to ensure the products released on the market are safe from any hazard (Gladwell, 2015). He goes ahead to state that before a decision to recall a product is reached, the thorough audit needs to be done to ascertain the cause of the defect causing the recall.
Like in the case of Toyota products, there was an idea of recalling the motor vehicles because of the hazardous accelerators (Gladwell, 2015). He notes that companies usually operate within their resources and budget and therefore, because of limitations in the resources, faults may arise. However, he suggests that drivers of such machines should also be questioned in the wake of such outcry.
On the other hand, Bazerman and Tenbrunsel's article focuses on the need to balance decision making by managers and strict adherence to the ethical code of conduct. The article looks at a similar case of Toyota, and in their article, the focus is on the Ford Pinto cars. A safety audit on the Ford Pinto cars revealed that the product was notorious for fuel leakage that eventually resulted in dangerous explosions.
This, notwithstanding, highly put the lives of the product users at risk (Gladwell, 2015). Although the company decided to recall the products, the hazard had already been caused. Investigations revealed that due to high competition the parent company (Ford) was facing from Volkswagen, the manufacturer rushed into releasing the Pinto model for the sake of competing. At this point in the investigation, it was also revealed that the engineers had detected the default at the production stage but the management literally overlooked this and instead released the product into the market.
The decision of Ford Pinto managers not to adhere to the safety measures in their decision making was seen as business-driven, rather than being ethical. Unless the management was not aware of the ethical component of a healthy business, their decision was uncalled for. All in all, both the readings on business decision making and practicing ethics in management were the issues that the writers dwelt on. On reading both articles, it is clear that ethical decisions should be made even when it is clear that the company is losing out for the sake of consumer safety.
Integrating Perspectives
When we integrate the three perspectives, for instance, that of Dr. Vaughn, Malcolm Gladwell, and Bazerman and Tenbrunsel, we find different schools of thought from their respective articles. For instance, while Dr. Vaughn maintains that we need to interact well with the organizations we work in so that we can understand the key issues in ethical practice read together with decision making, Bazerman's view has a different opinion. According to the latter, although ethics need to be observed, some situations call for radical decisions to be made so that the company can save itself from collapsing as a result of paying much attention to the ethical aspect.
Malcolm, on the other hand, was divided between the two perspectives. In his research, he chooses a more neutral position between consumer safety and the profitability of the business. In his argument, he looks at the extreme ends of the case scenario. One. He states that companies usually use what is available to them regarding the resources and do their best to ensure the products released are of the required quality. He states that decision-makers will not just make decisions to benefit their enterprises, but they will do so based on their capability.
On the part of consumer safety, he portrays a scenario whereby drivers' habits such eating, texting, talking, poor skills, and even smoking while driving may be questioned for the failures witnessed in the automobiles. He states that people expect a product to perform at 100% but at the same time are not willing to be responsible and practice safety measures recommended by the manufacturer while using such automobiles.
In their defense, the views that are pro-manufacturers argue that managers of the top automobile industries are aware of the underlying responsibility in the event of a failure in their products and will not release products that are not safe. They are, however, giving room for some human errors to occur in the course of the production process, and in the event this happens, the management is always willing and ready to recall all the products and correct the effect before the damage is severe.
Having considered opinions from the three different writers above, we can conclude as far as how organizations we are associated with impact or result in ethical issues. From my point of view, organizations led by their management should always focus on implementing the recommendations on ethical issues outlined in their codes of conduct. Decisions should always be made that are in line with the ethics of the organization. Strict adherence to the ethical conduct saves an organization from the underlying failures and makes it even more viable operating into the future.
The practice of ethics in decision making by company managers makes such organizations thrive and avoid business failures. This ensures safety and prevents the likely occurrence of disasters as a result of failing to adhere to the code of ethics.
References
Gladwell, M. (2015). The engineer's lament. The New Yorker
Nelson, S. H. (2017). Containing Environmentalism: Risk, Rationality, and Value in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 28(1), 118-136.
Rees, M., Tenbrunsel, A., " Bazerman, M. (2018). BOUNDED ETHICALITY AND ETHICAL FADING IN NEGOTIATIONS: Understanding Unintended Unethical Behavior. Academy of Management Perspectives, (a).
