Ethical Decision Making Paper

855 Words2 Pages

This paper will evaluate the role that ethics plays in decision making. I will analyze decision-making techniques that can be applied to different types of organizations. Next, I have selected the Albuquerque Veteran Affairs Medical Center, where as a result of unethical decision making there were negative consequences. Using two different decision making techniques, I will compare and contrast how using the techniques may have resulted in a positive consequence. Ethical Decision Making and Models Corporate financial and ethical misconduct is been documented in the media across many types of business and government over the years (Palmer, 2013; Wickham & O'Donohue, 2012). Most corporations have a Code of Ethics as a guideline for employees …show more content…

The contingency model in which the decision maker's behavior in response to an ethical problem is affected by two sets of contingency factors including individual factors (i.e., knowledge, values, attitudes, and intentions); and organizational factors (i.e., significant others including top management and peers, and opportunity including codes, enforcement, and rewards and punishment) ( Schwartz, 2016). The Person–situation interactionist model recognizes additional individual characteristics such as low ego-strength, low field dependence, and external locus of control which can constrain cognitions and impede EDM (Thiel et al., 2012; Trevino, 1986). Possibly the most prominent rationalist theory, Rest (1986), posited that there are four stages of EDM, starting with becoming aware of the ethical problem, developing a decision and finally establishing moral intent and acting on it (Thiel et al., …show more content…

I-EDM builds on Rest's (1984, 1986) EDM process as four stages, awareness, judgment, intention; and action/behavior (as cited in Schwartz, 2016). The preceding events to the EDM process include basic environmental norms, while the following stages of the process include potential learning feedback loops. The EDM factors that influence the process are individual or situational. The I-EDM model assumes that ethical behavior is contingent on which particular individual is facing the ethical dilemma and the situational context within which an individual faces a dilemma (Schwartz,

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