Introduction
In Chapter 1, we introduced ethics and showed how they can be useful in helping us make decisions in cases where there may not be easy answers. We described how some organizations were forced to fold due to a small group of people making bad ethical decisions. Because of these instances, many of today’s organizations have committed to fostering an ethical culture and improving ethical behavior in the workplace by providing employee training programs, workshops, and seminars on how to deal with ethical dilemmas. Ethics influence how certain decisions are made. Every decision we make includes some sort of moral choice. For instance, what would you do if you saw a good friend in your class cheating on an exam? Would you tell the professor or keep quiet and pretend you never saw anything? It is tough to know the right decisions to make in certain circumstances. This is where ethical decision making can be useful in guiding us to do the right thing.
Organizations often face ethical dilemmas in which they have to choose a certain course of action. There are three main ethical decision making approaches: utilitarian approach, rights approach, and justice approach.
Discussion Questions
Read the following article to answer the discussion questions (link below).
Dane, E. & Sonenshein, S. (2015). On the role of experience in ethical decision making at work: An ethical expertise perspective. Organizational Psychology Review, 5(1), 74-96.
“On the role of experience in ethical decision making at work: An ethical expertise perspective” (Links to an external site.)
Based on your reading of this article, how can managers facilitate ethical expertise in their subordinates?
What types of experiences are important to enhance ethical decision making in today’s workers?