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ETHICS Introduction to Ethics | True or False? | To believe or to Know? | Ethics and Business A Paradox? Ethics Defined | Heisenberg's Dilemma | Ethical systems | Can ethics be taught? | The Problem Space | The 4-Minute mile Ethics in the real world | Ethics in the business world | Ethical Decision-Making Process | Ethical problem solving process | Selling Panaji Kolhberg's Moral Development | The Universal Chart of Choices | Universal Ethical Principles The Threshold of belief - defined (PP presentation) Time continuum priorities: What do believe? why? What is truth? Is truth knowable? The Onion - a Framework to build effective organizations LINKS: Resources | Selected Readings on Ethics, privacy and security | Ethics and Technology | Ethics and the Decision Making Process: | Industry Association Code of Ethics
Surveys have shown that some 75% of US professionals subscribe to situational ethics (PeopleSoft CEO Ousted for "Situational Ethics" ) The opening of a trial related to Oracle's takeover bid of PeopleSoft featured the revelation that CEO Craig Conway was fired for making misleading statements about PeopleSoft's sales. http://www.tscpa.org/ethics/default.html ). Additionally, certain Ivy League MBA programs have been under fire on a regular basis, and most recently in 2011, because of ethical lapses, and the schools have been forced to retool its curriculum. Some say that part of the problem is that ethics is for the most part an afterthought in any given class, and that most instructors are not qualified to teach ethics. Some Ivy League schools students say the focus is on the 3S: Sleep, Study and Socialize We like to star the ethics conversation asking the audience to look at the chart below, and then determine if there is a common denominator. The list was composed from headlines from the Wall Street Journal over a period of some five years. The common denominator is that the individuals and or organizations listed have been involved in some sort of breach and or allegations of breach.
We then discuss the specific breach or alleged breach, such as the soda vendor pushing extract shipments to its Japanese distributors, even when the extract was not needed. These distributors were offered extremely favorable payment terms so they could simply store the extract for a rainy day. Or take for instance Harvard professor Adrei Shleifer, sent to Russia to teach and implement an open capital system - he liked it so much, he participated in it. Usually some in the audience do not think there is anything wrong with this practice, The US government thought otherwise. A plausible question then may be: Is Business and Ethics a Paradox?
What is the common denominator?
The conclusion then is, if corruption and or the appearance of corruption is so prevalent, why should we even bother to study business ethics? After all, in marketing we are taught to think outside the box. In decision-making we are taught maximizing strategies and in business law we are taught to find the loopholes. In creative accounting we are taught to minimize payments to the government and in creative financing, we are introduced to shelters so the government cannot claim ownership on non-existent profits - wink, wink.
The Universal Chart of Choices
Ethical Decision-Making Process How we frame the issue more often than not determines the outcome: if we view the war in Afghanistan as a counterinsurgency issue, the strategy to use is clear cut. If we see it as counter terrorism, a different one is called for, for instance. Likewise, if we see an issue as an "ethical issue," self-bounded rationality has already been injected into the process, reducing the problem space. Treviño, L. K., & Nelson, K. A. (2007) for example, suggest the following process: Step One: Gather the Facts Which in essence is the
equivalent of the intelligent and design phase below
and largely ignores the choice phase, reducing the problem
space, not unlike the views held on the four-minute
mile:
Take for example the following activity, Selling Panaji, India as a travel destination - invariably many people are hesitant to sell Panaji as a travel destination. However, when looking at the issue without constraining the problem space, Panaji was sold to the right target marketing in a manner that is sensitive to stakeholders: See Rest of the Story:
SELLING PANAJI AS A TRAVEL DESTINATION
A
good number of us avoid doing things because we think we can’. . Take for instance the 4-minute mile. Experts
feared that the human body was not designed to run the mile at less than 4
minutes, and if people tried, the body would be damaged at that speed. Once
Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile barrier, Sports Illustrated named it the
twentieth century’s greatest sporting achievement. Psychological as well as
physical, it opened the floodgates for those who followed. As Steve Chandler
wrote in 17 Lies That Are Holding You Back & The Truth That Will Set You
Free, after Bannister turned his dream into reality, runners "expanded
their minds and accomplished even bigger things." Something
similar happened to me in my high school Algebra class.
While by any measure I was an excellent student, I was having great
difficulty with Mr. Albano’s Algebra class, so much so that I was averaging a
D by the middle of my first semester. I
worked very hard trying to understand the concepts.
That is, I did the same thing over and over again, trying to understand,
but nothing work. I was ready to
give up, until one day I was sitting in class day-dreaming, while all of the
sudden I understood what Mr. Albano was saying – I went on to take advanced
math, and eventually get an engineering degree.
Time continuum priorities: What do You believe? why?
Some authors define ethics as "The principles, norms, and standards of conduct governing an individual or group—focuses on conduct" and dismiss the alternative definition of "A set of moral principles or values" on the grounds that it leads to controversy. Further, the same authors proceed to describe the following ethical systems: a. Duty-based ethics: focus on duty rather than results, moral obligation over what the individual would prefer to do. h GAP - Universal Ethical Principles- widely accepted ethical principals: The implications are that using the aforementioned definitions for ethics and or the ethical systems, the Enron and or Worldcom debacles would not have been prevented. Quite the contrary, their behavior could have been justified as ethical.
The problem with the previous definitions is that they separate the objective and the subjective - or as we refer to, the Heisenberg Dilemma - the same one that when identified, led to the First and the Second World Wars. Heisenberg's Dilemma Just prior to World War I, Werner Heisnberg and other scientists were engaged on the question as to how to handle the objective and the subjective, where the former could easily be treated using the scientific method. That group agreed to keep them separate, although Heisnberg was skeptical: "I have to admit that I do not feel happy about this division. I doubt whether any human society can in the long term live with this sharp division between knowledge and truth." Wolgang Pauli was more emphatic and predicted that in the "not to distant-future traditional morality will rapidly break down and things will happen that are more frightful that we can yet imagine," and he was right. Twelve years of war followed.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger frames it as follows: " The present day crisis is due to the fact that the subject and objective realms has disappeared. Reason that operates in specialized areas in fact gain in strength and capability, but because it is standardized according to a single type of certainty and rationality, it no longer offers any perspective on the fundamental questions of mankind, resulting in unhealthy over-development in the realm of technical and pragmatic knowledge" Thus, Ethics is not:
Religion; Ethics is: •
What we believe, why we believe it, and how
(The
Threshold of belief)
we act out those beliefs; •Personal
& public display of personal attitudes and beliefs; •An aid in decision making
The question as to whether ethics can be taught often comes up. Kohlberg, like other social scientists, for instance, views it as a cognitive process. In our case, we view ethics as an aid in decision-making. It is said that a free society is a relativistic society, the notion that no one can claim to know the right way forward, and only on this condition can it remain free. Perhaps this is the reason why even bringing up the issue of good/bad, right/wrong and or ethics in a public setting, can be frowned upon. Now consider the various so-called ethical systems. And we are back to where we started from: The conclusion if corruption and or the appearance of corruption is so prevalent, why should we even bother to study business ethics? After all, in marketing we are taught to think outside the box. In decision-making we are taught maximizing strategies and in business law we are taught to find the loopholes. In creative accounting we are taught to minimize payments to the government and in creative financing, we are introduced to shelters so the government cannot claim ownership on non-existent profits - wink, wink. Take for instance the recent ENRON and Worldcom debacles. The ineffective US government's response was the Sarbannes-Oxly Act (SOX) followed by the financial meltdown and subsequent yet-to-be proven ineffective financial reform. Or consider Peter Singer. Peter Singer, an internationally known Princeton bioethicist who says he' would kill disabled babies if it were in the best interests of the family, because he sees no distinction in the child's life whether it is born or not, and the world already allows abortion. Short of a Pavlovian process, it is very difficult to imagine an ethics class that would change the behavior of the aforementioned actors Our conclusion as to whether ethics can be taught or not then, is that the question is more analogous to asking a drug addict as to whether he or she can be taught to stop the vice. That is, it is a choice. On the other hand, in a free society, truth cannot prevail other than through the power of persuasion. That is, persuasion must compete and prevail in the marketplace of ideas. While we can all compete, learn and or teach about the various ethical systems, selecting the right one is still a choice. In other words, the drug addict must realize he or she has a problem, or in our terminology, reach the threshold of belief, then the process can start. Likewise with ethics.
Kohlberg's Levels of Cognitive Moral Development
After a brief discussion of what ethics implies, a business person left asserting that ethics in business was a paradox. Five weeks later he came back and said he had changed his mind - he now thinks ethics in business is not only possible, but is indispensable, albeit not an easy thing to accomplish. We view ethics and or social capital analogous to an investment in a quality control initiative - you may not see a financial return in the short terms, but certainly will pay for itself in the long run. The Josephson's Institute of Ethics lists several challenges (r excuses or rationalization) we face in the real world including:
It is widely known that discussing religion and or politics in the workplace is not acceptable, for obvious reasons. This implies that any attempts to search for the truth in the workplace may be frowned upon. This being a typical situation, is it even possible to speak about ethics? Elsewhere we noted than in a brief discussion of what ethics implied, a business person left asserting that ethics in business was a paradox. Five weeks later he came back and said he had changed his mind - he now thinks ethics in business is not only possible, but a necessity, albeit not an easy thing to accomplish. We view ethics and or social capital analogous to an investment in a quality control initiative - you may not see a financial return in the short terms, but certainly will pay for itself in the long run. The good news is that although there is no consensus about how to search for the truth, or whether there is such a thing as absolute ethics, there are four widely accepted ethical principals, in addition to the previously mentioned ethical systems
Additional Ethics Links:
Ethics and the Decision Making Process:
Industry Association Code of Ethics
Apples and Cabapples = Pineapples Objective of
activity A
cursory compare and contrast exercise between the Ivy League and the Oak League
Business schools programs. Description
of Activity The
Ivy League MBA program has experienced at least three major revisions over the
last ten years. Diane Middleton and Joe Light chronicle the last major
revision in an article titled Harvard Changes Course, published by the Wall
Street Journal Thursday, February 3, 2011(http://
online.wsj.com/public/page/0_0_WZ_0_0221.html )
While ethics continue to receive most of the attention, the piece
suggests that the schools my be embracing the learning team concept, as opposed
to simply case studies While
most Ivy league graduates, according to the same piece end up in either
financial services and or consulting, professor Rakesh Khurana is quoted as
wishing graduates would if end up in either entrepreneurial ventures or in
fields like health care, energy and environmental sustainability. Apples
and Crabapples- On the other
hand, the University of Hard Knocks MBA Leadership class as of
2011, is on its third
revision, where the major change includes a final exam and is shifting away from
the learning team model. Pineapples
– Arguably the Ivy League
and the Oak League business programs address two significantly different needs,
although both deal with the same subject matter.
Particularly as it relates to topics such as leadership and management.
Activity: As
a group A.
using your own perception of the Ivy League and Oak League business
programs, the information presented above and your own research, determine the
strengths, weaknesses, threats, trends and opportunities
of each. Present your
findings along with the identification of right corporation/ industry/profession
for graduates from each league, along with
compelling argument presented
to potential recruiters of said corporation B. Additionally, based on the activity, present the group’s conclusion anent relationship between organization structure, management and leadership with particular emphasis on the question: Can leadership be taught? If so, what might be the best model to teach leadership?
Selected Readings on Ethics, privacy and security Surfers
want privacy Squatting
for the Cause TRUSTe A privacy protocol 'watchdog' for Web users and Web publishers. Electronic Privacy Information Center EPIC is a public interest research center in Washington, D.C. Personalization Consortium Personalization and Privacy Survey. (PDF file.) CAUCE (The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email) Cookie World Everything you always wanted to know about 'cookies'. Internet Privacy Home Page Offer lists of Internet privacy links. The Electronic Frontier Foundation Covers free speech, encryption, privacy, and intellectual property. The Internet Privacy Coalition Their mission is stated as '...to promote privacy and security on the Internet through widespread public availability of strong encryption and the relaxation of export controls on cryptography.' Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility A public-interest alliance of computer scientists and others concerned about the impact of computer technology on society. Includes 'hot topics', publications and events
Kohlberg, L. (1976) “Moral Stages and Moralizatiorr. The Cognitive-Developmental Approach.” In Moral Development and Behavior: Theory, Research, and Social Issues, edited by T. Lickona. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, pp. 34–35 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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