College of Business Administration College of Business Administration
2) Should individuals within a corporation be able to dissent regarding actions of the corporation and remain employed?
3) How can we ensure that the corporation's managers/employees are able to make just and ethical decisions without fear of penalty?
4) How can we make sure that corporations are going to behave ethically?
5) Does making individuals within corporations liable for actions of the corporation limit the financial capability of the corporation?
6) The “golden rule” is a thought process that asks for application of the “do unto others’’ standard. It can often reveal which actions are ethical and which are not. Can complicated business decisions be made within this model? Why or why not?
7) Which of the following decision making models do you think produces more ethical decisions? Which rule do you use when making personal decisions? Which rules do you use when making business decisions? If they are different, why? Which model would be better for a corporation to use? Why?
Utilitarianism — Consider the consequences of your actions and choose the alternative which produces the greatest good for the greatest number.
Deontology — Consider the rules/laws which govern your action and obey these.
Relational — Consider the existing relationships when making decisions and how your decisions will affect these relationships.
After considered these three models, are there alternative models which would work better? What are they and why?
8) Mark Pastin, in The Hard Problems of Management: Gaining the Ethics Edge (Jossey-Bass, 1986), provides the following four principles for highly ethical organizations:
1. They are at ease interacting with diverse internal and external stakeholder groups. The groundrules of these firms make the good of these stakeholder groups part of the organizations' own good.
2. They are obsessed with fairness. Their groundrules emphasize that the other persons' interests count as much as their own.
3. Responsibility is individual rather than collective, with individuals assuming personal responsibility for actions of the organization. These organizations' groundrules mandate that individuals are responsible to themselves.
4. They see their activities in terms of purpose. This purpose is a way of operating that members of the organization highly value. And purpose ties the organization to its environment.
Do you believe these elements are necessary for an ethical organization? Do you think corporations should be required to act ethically? Should this be through laws? Or should it be a corporations right to choose how it wants to conduct business? Can “collective responsibility” exist? Why or why not?
9) Doug Wallace asserts the following characteristics of a high integrity organization:
1. There exists a clear vision and picture of integrity throughout the organization.
2. The vision is owned and embodied by top management, over time.
3. The reward system is aligned with the vision of integrity.
4. Policies and practices of the organization are aligned with the vision; no mixed messages.
5. It is understood that every significant management decision has ethical value dimensions.
6. Everyone is expected to work through conflicting-stakeholder value perspectives.
Is it reasonable to ask an organization to align its reward system with the vision of integrity if this does not always lead to wealth maximization? Do any existing corporations do this? Have you ever been rewarded at work for preserving integrity while reducing your company’s wealth? In the long run, can this pay off?
10) In the “Complete Guide to Ethics Management: An Ethics Toolkit for Managers,” written by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Mr. McNamara advises: “Make ethics decisions in groups, and make decisions public, as appropriate. This usually produces better quality decisions by including diverse interests and perspectives, and increases the credibility of the decision process and outcome by reducing suspicion of unfair bias.” Some ethical decisions will never obtain a group consensus. What if one individual does not agree with the ethical decision of the group? Is there still a place for this person within the organization?
11) The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has developed a Code of General Moral Imperatives. They include:
1.1 Contribute to society and human well-being.
1.2 Avoid harm to others.
1.3 Be honest and trustworthy.
1.4 Be fair and take action not to discriminate.
1.5 Honor property rights including copyrights and patent.
1.6 Give proper credit for intellectual property.
1.7 Respect the privacy of others.
1.8 Honor confidentiality.
What is the value of a company or professional organization developing a code of ethics? Should the code be enforced? Have you personally worked at an organization with a code? Do you think individuals within the organization followed the code? Was the organization, as whole, more ethical?
12) Excerpt from the Bureau of National Affairs website:
There are serious pros and cons to implementing a full guidelines-type comprehensive compliance programs, which meet the standards of the Sentencing Guidelines. Those outside the corporate realm who fail to recognize this forget the basics of economics--only limited resources are available to any organization, and a compliance program places significant demands on those resources. Moreover, because of the intrusive nature of the U.S. legal system, a compliance program carries its own set of risks that can mean even greater costs to a company.
Do you agree with this statement? What are the benefits to implementing such guidelines? What are the costs? Do the benefits outweigh the costs?
Return to Professor Dunn's home page.