Deontology Vs Utilitarianism

John Dalberg-Acton once said that, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”, however what is often the case is that just a little bit of power can corrupt in a economy that has high unemployment rates, and low job security. In mid to lower level management there are individuals who use their position to dictate what employees do while on the job. According to Kellerman (2004), management has a lot to gain from dictating rather than cooperative work. Benefits of a boorish manager are primarily financial, although the benefits of bad management are usually short lived and result in high turnover. additionally, roughly 75% of employees report that their boss is the direct cause of their stress as reported by Robert Hogan an expert on personality assessment

(jayson,2012).according to Gordy Curphy a leadership consultant, there are far more advantages to employee engagement than bad management, but it takes considerably more effort to take the needs of individuals and workgroups into consideration when making decisions (jayson,2012). More specifically, the type of management being focused on is unethical management. Unethical management is usually a disregard of good interpersonal conduct, and common decincey towards those under supervison. Supervisors that act unethically usually employ tactics such as; misleading, confusing, distorting, among others to manipulate the work group to their advantage. Nevertheless, there are advantages to having any type of management good or bad, that will lead a group to praise a good manager or ignore the misdeeds of a bad manager. All managers provide a group with basic cohesion, give employees identity within the workgroup, and maintaine order so group members will often ignore some deeds done by a manager as long as some type of stability can be accounted for. the management and workgroup dynamic is mutually dependent, and management develops based on the group, the task, and the individual that is the leader. It is imperative to understand how our moral systems work within a work space. The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationship between moral judgments, management, and the workgroup according to the emotional contagion madel. It appears that within a complex social network such as a workplace, emotions and reason play a role in work belonging or a decision to leave.
Moral judgments in the workplace are particulary important because the decisions made here can effect whether you decide to stay with the company or seek employment somewhere else. More specifically, if your supervisor is inatintive, gives negative criticism, or outwardly boorish the work place becomes unsatisfactory, and the feelings carried because of the supervisor can be shared with the entire workgroup. Fundamentally, moral judgment are essintial for cooperation among groups and takes priority of the interests of an individual person (Haidt, 2011). For example, when individuals start a new job they will be attentative, respectful, and listen carefully to new collegues and supervisors in order to get to know everybody and to establish whether they would be a good fit for the group. morality evolved to support and foster cooperation among people, This dual system allow’s for the dual development and sustained use of social systems, and negotiation between social systems, which require reason, emotions, and motivation to achieve. if emotions such as anger are an essential part of our evolutionary history, then the evolution of moral emotions such as disgust must be important as well (Machery, & Mallon, 2010). These two systems encompass an intuitive, automatic, fast paced, spontaneous system based on emotions that utilize heuristics. Heuristic can be found in moral judgments but are more generally used in all types of judgments heuristics are like gutt feelings, biases, or beliefs about social norms. Our emotions to situations, events, actions, and people can shape what we believe about our environment. Examples of heuristics Within the emotional system that we believed to make in moral judgments are;
confirmation bias- where individuals carry preconceived ideas about reality, then look for validation that the belief is true (Haidt, 2012). Availability biases- is the extent to which an individual can easily recall information (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Representativeness- evaluating a situation based on a mental construct an individual has of the situation (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). Lastly, familiarity- in which an individual assumes a behavior for a past situation is useful in a present situation (Kahneman, 2011).
While this is not a complete list of heuristics employed by our automatic system, this allows for a general understanding about the schema our automatic system has in place to prevent the need to use the cognitive system. whereas the other system is a rational, manual, deliberate, controlled system that is based on logic and requires time, deliberation, and reflection. there are restrictions to whom we are willing to help; we prefer to help individuals that are apart of our group (Greene, 2013). The dual process model is a twofold system that involves an intuitive/affective system and a cognitive/conscious system. The intuitive system is an unconscious processing system that relies on emotional states that even though our biases are meant to help shape our fast emotional system for more efficient use, environmental factors (e.g. media, social norms, personal beliefs) can harmfully effect how are biases form. According to Haidt (2012), we employ instinctual feelings such as disgust, anger, contempt, elation, and admiration these are feelings that happen instantly without any evaluation of a moral situation. The difference between moral emotions and basic emotions is that moral emotions respond to stimulus concerning fairness, harm, and the welfare of others and cooperate with others. There are limitations to what our automatic system can do and is often prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and other fallacious errors. Individuals use a substantial amount of effort evaluating the appropriateness of behaviors done by their self and others, and group beliefs can shape or influence our individual beliefs (Moll, et al. 2006). For example, the ash conformity experiement demonstraighted that indivduals will conform their own opinion to that of the majority of the group. in a workplace setting this conformity can be particularly important if you are trying to establish trust and acceptance of the other group members. The dual process model of moral judgment allows for adaptability in which the human brain can switch from an intuitive to rational based judgments (Greene, 2013). According to Greene (2013) adaptability and flexability are important human behavior and the more flexible our behavior is, the more our environment changes, and the more our behaviors change to become efficient in that environment. This system allows humans to evaluate internal beliefs and compare our beliefs to the environment for modification and maintenance. Our moral judgments are a multifaceted collaboration of various psychological systems. Research on the human brain suggests that there are brain regions, neural connections, and neurotransmitters fundamental to how these two systems communicate, and interact with each other.
There is robust evidence that this dual process of moral judgment connects to existing philosophical theories concerning moral judgments. The two normative theories guiding philosophical assumptions on the dual process model is that of deontology and consequentialism. Ethics- the branch of philosophy concerned with morals, character, virtue, etc. lays Deontology and Utilitarianism. While deontology, the word deontology derives from the Greek word Deon that means “duty” or “obligation”. To Kant, following moral principles was an end in and of it self, and that moral duties are separate and distinct from cultural norms, legal duties. These moral duties are binding and meant to be followed by all individuals (Boss, 2008).
Deontology is a philosophical theory proposed by Kant, this theory argues that the individual is duty bound to asses what ought to be done, and centers around our choices for actions.

Our moral emotions are important to how individuals behave in a social environment. According to Greene (2001), when we are confronted with a moral dilemma where an individual has to be harmed to save a group of people, there is an immediate negative reaction, this negative reaction, if strong enough, can override our decision making process. On the other hand Utilitarianism is a subject of ethics that is fundamentally concerned with the great happiness for the greatest number of people (Boss, 2008). The way utilitarianism evaluates whether something provides the greatest happiness to the greatest number is through Consequentialism. Consequentialism holds that the outcome of our action is more important than our intention, meaning that actions are not intrinsically wrong or right. Instead the wrong or right is established by the consequence of having performed an action (Boss, 2008). Consequentialism is a theory of moral philosophy established from utilitarianism. Proposed by Mill, Sidgwick, and Bentham consequentialism argues that the consequence, or the result of an action is what determines if an action is moral, not the action itself. The ideal rooted in consequentialism is the enhancement of human experience (Greene, 2013). The human experience is comprised of external environmental

influences and internal dispositions shape how we experience the people and situations around us. As we accumulate experience and advance in age our ability to judge situations based on reason improve. Additionally, moral judgments based on reason suggest that, by default, people will seek to maximize the amount of people who can befit from “the greater good” when given the opportunity to do so. Through extensive research psychologists have discovered that deontology fits more closely with our emotional reasoning and consequentialism fits more closely with our logical reasoning when it comes to making moral judgments.
Even though there is raising interest in the dual process theory, there are still developing arguments about how the dual process of moral judgment would hold up to other types of dilemmas besides the “Trolley Problem”. For example, when an autocratic supervisor blames you for mistakes they make, and takes credit for your work that presents us with a modern delimma. Continue with the job and let the supervisors actions slide or confront the problem. Idealy, you could bring this problem to the next chain of command however that does not garuntee justice and correction of behavior. In actuality, confronting this problem with no proof garuntees that you will be viewed as a non team player and your willingness to work as a group will be questioned. Researchers argue that it takes more time to make a rational moral judgment than an emotional moral judgment and by nature humans prefer to make decisions without depleting cognitive resources. So, in this case doing what your employer wants would be more benifical to getting along at work, even if you know that standing up for your self and confronting a work problem is best. Social Learn shapes the way cultural systems form, by favoring behaviors that benefit social systems (bandura, 1989). The general argument for moralities evolution is that the basic components such as emotions, rule-based reason, and dispositions are adaptations in order for functioning in a social environment, and the more complex our social environment becomes, the more complex our social adaptions become. “Moral dilemmas are complex, involving different levels of thought process and the moral dilemmas presented in a controlled environment do not reflect the intricate nature of moral dilemmas faced by people in actual life “(Ferreria, Garcia-Marques, Sherman, & Sherman, 2006). Research in the dual process of moral judgment is conflicting in which system takes precedence over the other. Presently, there is more evidence for use of a emotionally driven system than a reason based system. Based in evolutionary ethics, arguments for moral evolution explains why individuals strive to be a part of social systems. Sharing resources with others shows that you have resources to share and that there will be a return on investment.
To further understand the work group dynamic, it is essential to understand how the workgroup works, and what it is comprised of.

The emotional contagion model suggests is that the feelings held by an individual can be shared by a group, and the feelings held by a group can be shared with an individual. Group emotional states happen when individual feelings join with the feelings of the group. Additionaly the influence of an individuals emotions on a group depends on continuity, familiarity, duration of contact, and the psychological investment made by the individual and the group. Meaning that a new employee can become acliamated to a new work environment when their emotions complement the group to which the new employee will become apart of. When people enter a group they bring all of there experiences, their disposition, and skills. Coordinating behavior among members of a workgroup helps to promote efficiency among tasks exsepcial positive emotions, because positive emotions illict positive behavior towards other. On the other hand, negative emotions are easily spread, throught groups. Tension and stress is believed to be the precursor and outcome of a negative distressing experience. Like wise there are those who can manipulate the feelings of others to create a particular environment to promote their own goals. The most immediate person with the power to promote their own goals is mid to lower level

supervisors.