The Five Steps of the Baird Decision Making Model
The Baird Decision Making Model is based on the five steps to being attentive, reasonable, awareness, responsible and intelligent. The framework of this model is used to analyze complex scenarios where personal ethics coincides and clashes with the given situation to search for appropriate solution. As per Yoo and Kim (2018), there are four views of ethics which assist the ethical decision making process. These are result lens, rights and responsibility lens, reputation lens and the relationship lens. Firstly, by being attentive means accumulating all the relevant data to get hold of the situation. Then, by using the power of being intelligent, one organizes, analyzes and reviews the information related to the conflicting and challenging situation along with indentifying the conflicted values. Every individual is blessed with the power to evaluate the situation. The ethical lens of an individual guides the belief system of him or her. Thirdly, the point of being reasonable comes where one needs to analyze the situation using all the information collected about the situation along with the use of four ethical lenses mentioned above. On the fourth step, by being responsible one decides to act and choose the steps suitable to make a move by being courageous for seeking justice with the highest good faith. This step requires one to be critically challenge the situation from upfront and sometimes it may welcome more challenging situation to one by creating clashes with the authority, as per Gharizadeh Beiragh et al.( 2020). The last step is to return to awareness. This is the step where, after understanding, observing, analysing the challenging situation, the individual decides with the reflection of the decision making process by relating it with the core value of oneself. This is the step to decide if the particular individual will take a step or not by challenging the situation or maintain the professionalism in the working space (Tseng et al. 2018).
The Baird Decision Making Model has been chosen and not the other ones like Longstaff Decision Making Model, Hartman Decision Making Model, and the AAA Decision Making Model because the concept of the Baird Decision Making Model is one of the most effective model in terms of making good and sound decisions, especially when a challenging situation comes up in a professional front. It comprises of five steps of decision making that helps one to critically understand, observe and analyze the situation in a more responsible manner. The core idea of this conceptual model is used to justify organizational behaviour as many a time challenging situation may arise where it is necessary to look into the fact of that one and the company does not get into any unnecessary trouble as it creates provisions for rational decision making. The model helps a professional to recognize the issue of the situation, critically try to find out the solution that can balance the challenging factors of the situation, gather solid information about the situation and then assume the consequences, draw conclusions over the solutions and evaluate which step would be ethically right to take that would be rightfully beneficial for the organization.
The Four Views of Ethics to Assist in Decision Making
The given case study of ethical dilemma revolves around a situation Mary, a very responsible and diligent employee of a financial advisory firm. She had been assigned to prepare annual budget for a client who had been associated with the firm for 30 years, and whose track record of the finances had been critical from before. But after some managerial conflict regarding the client, her supervisor had been dismissed by the company without any clear reasons. After working with the client, she found out that some of the interpretation of the finance record of the client had been distorted, which means that the client was never provided with a clean report of the budget. She reached out with the accountants of the firm, but they clearly stated that whatever had the reports of the budget been for so long, had been attempted in the correct process. With the last hope, she reached out to the CEO of the firm to discuss the issue with him, who asked Mary to completely concentrate on her own job and never interfere with the respective client’s recorded finances history as the client had been linked with the firm for such a long time and who had been a very valuable client to the firm. Here, Mary was faced with an ethical dilemma between her mind and her profession. According to the Baird Decision Making Model, it is important to develop the ability to make a clear and sound decision by critically analyzing the situation on a broader perspective. Here, in this case of Ethical Dilemma, Mary Rogers is faced by a situation which makes her question the very functioning of the organization she worked it, showing her values of honesty and responsibility towards her job and the client. Based on her behavioural pattern of decision making ability, the four different lenses of the Baird Decision Making Model can applied. After Mary found out that discrepancy involved in generating the budget report of an individual client, she felt it’s her responsibility to talk about the situation so that transparency can prevail in the organization. This quality of Mary in showing responsibility towards her client relates with the Rights and Responsibility Lens of the Baird Decision Making Model. Mary observed the situation closely before taking any step towards the discrepancy taking place in the company by generating all the previous data and information of the individual client. With this gesture that she showed, she relates it with the attentive quality, one of the five steps of the Decision Making Model. By being attentive to the situation, she researched about the client with whom the fraud was going on for nearly 30 years but none had spoken about it ever before, except it is assumed that her supervisor did found out about it and talked it through the upper authority, after which he had faced the consequences by getting detained in the firm. When she looked closely by researching all the available material about the client, she found out that the client shared family relationship with the authority of the firm, even many a time they went out to have a nice time. But she never understood why such dishonesty was carried out with him for all this years. Thus, this quality of Mary is exactly related to the intelligence step of the five steps of Baird Decision Making Model. Mary thought of discussing the issue with the authority by putting out reasonable questions as to why the things happened with the client for so many years. She had reasonable issues to talk about the problems related to the client with the authority at large. This quality of hers coincides and relates with the reasonable aspect of the Baird Decision Making Model. In the first few stanza of the case study, Ethical Dilemma, it was mentioned that Mary had been a very diligent and a responsible person towards her work in practice. She showed her responsibility towards her client as well whose responsibility was given to her when she joined the firm. After she found out the dishonesty carried out with her client by producing loose interpretation of his budget reports, she was courageous enough to go and inquiry about it to the accountants of the company. To which the accountant straight away said every budget report which had been made all these while for the client maintain all the data and information about his budget plan, had been made according to all the processes in the correct way, and according to the prevalent version of the ongoing legislation of the firm. Although it is true for the other clients, whose financial information had been prepared with strict regulatory application by putting all the financial information and protocols in the proper way, but only exception was taking place with this client who had the trust for the firm for nearly 30 years at that point of time. With the sense of her responsibility and duty towards her client and to find out the truth of the ongoing discrepancy taking place with her client itself, she directly went up to discuss the matter with her CEO. In spite of her genuine, prompt, responsible intention to raise a question as well as challenge the functioning of the company, the CEO also, very surprisingly, turned his back to her attempt by saying that the client had been connected with the firm for a very long time so as to the extent that he had become a family to the firm and at any cost the firm did not want to lose such a client. He checked her upon the fact that every client had their own set of needs and requirements to be served regarding their financial budget which the firm had been doing it passionately for many years now. Additionally, he warned Mary that it is better for het that she did not need to worry about any technical matter related with the client’s financial information at any point of time, and that she must carry on with the tasks that she was hired to do for the company. Even though Mary tried to change the way the company behaves with the client, or at least wanted to try and find out the reasons behind it, she was deliberately opposed by the system of the firm and by the people who work there. And in fact, she was stopped to dig into the matter by the CEO himself. This means that everyone including the CEO knew about the discrepancy going on with the client for so many years. This quality of Mary coincides and related with the responsible aspect of the Baird Decision Making Model. After reaching out to the CEO and not getting any help from there too, she was very much aware of the fact that the fact that the very management and the functioning of the company is not so much proactive in nature. Moreover, she found out that no one actually wanted their name to be dragged in this matter related to the individual client, and also nobody really wanted to work with the client before. It can be assumed that the reason might be because everyone knew about the discrepancy related to the client that went on for years, it is just that nobody wanted to take the responsibility of it because if any day it is found out then the person might get into trouble along with the company. Mary found out that only she is the one who was writing legal information and financial budget for the client and that if anything happens and goes wrong with the financial files, she had been the only one who would be hold responsible even though everyone knew such dishonesty with the files of the client had been going on for years. But, still the CEO, other staff members and the senior managers wanted her to keep shut and not do raise any challenge towards the company and to simply carry on with her job like any other day. She still felt that whatever financial information that she had been providing the client with were all incorrect, but the client had been impressed with the service provided by the company for a very long time. Though, it is true that she was aware of the consequences which were going to be done with her if she did not keep shut about the matter and carry on with the work. This quality of Mary had been related to the awareness aspect if the five accumulative steps of the Baird Decision Making Model. Additionally, the relationship lens of the Baird Decision Making Model can also be related with the case study as it tries to signify the good relationship with the clients and the company. The model lets one to think, understand, observe, and analyze every situation that anyone is put into, and helps in making wholesome, responsible, ethical and sound decision making in the professional front.
Why the Baird Decision Making Model is Effective
The preferred lenses that came out as a result of my ethical lens inventory are the reputation and the result lenses. I think the result were right as I generally listen to and do everything that my intuition tells me to do. I have always acted according to my intuition in order to determine and differentiate what is good and what is bad for me. Additionally, I have always valued autonomy as well as equality in the same manner while I have sought for interdependence along with demanded stability for value system in everything. The results were, again, very much accurate with my characteristics as it resulted that I follow my heart in order to make sound and prudent choices, aided by rationality as well as reasoning over the decisions I make always. Whenever anything critical and challenging comes up in my life, I have always followed my ethical values, wisdom as well as foresight. I have always chosen to work for my self-respect with optimism, courage to overcome nay obstacle. Furthermore, the tools which I will use to understand analyse and observe the problems I face are tradition and experience. I always judge the problematic situations in the sheer light with experience and I have always tried to solve the problems using my imagination, wisdom, ethics and intuitive amalgamation. I do consider several perspective of the situation I am put into and do not have any problem dealing with ambiguity. One of the most important strength according to me is that I am very self-reliant as well accountable. I am very resilient and responsible at doing my work. Whenever I have faced any ethical dilemma, I have always followed my heart and did what is ethically correct to do. For example, during one of classes, a student had leaked the question paper to all the other students but when it was found out, some other staff member was blamed. It did not occur to me ethically right to see such an incident. So, I straight away went up to the principle and complained about the same. This unit has taught me how to find out the Ethical Lens Inventory for oneself, and how one can develop and improve one’s value of ethics in personal and professional life, the ethical paths in order to become ethically mature as well as aware, ethically make solid and sound decisions. I have always tried and followed my heart as well as mind and judged the situation a number of times before taking any action. On the professional level, I need to develop more concentration my job so that I do not need to look away over anything else apart from my job. I need to develop leadership qualities, confidence, and promptness as well so that I can make the right decision at the time. Also, I require learning to take effective responsibility whenever the company demands me to do one and show thorough professionalism and accountability towards every action I take as needed.
References
Yoo, S.K. and Kim, B.Y., 2018. A decision-making model for adopting a cloud computing system. Sustainability, 10(8), p.2952.
Tseng, M.L., Wu, K.J., Hu, J. and Wang, C.H., 2018. Decision-making model for sustainable supply chain finance under uncertainties. International Journal of Production Economics, 205, pp.30-36.
Gharizadeh Beiragh, R., Alizadeh, R., Shafiei Kaleibari, S., Cavallaro, F., Zolfani, S.H., Bausys, R. and Mardani, A., 2020. An integrated multi-criteria decision making model for sustainability performance assessment for insurance companies. Sustainability, 12(3), p.789.