Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.'s Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right

Overview of main goals of the book

Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.’s book, “Defining Moments”, focuses on the ethical decision making process of “right versus right” from a management standing point. In reality, ethical decision making has two types of conflicts:”right versus wrong” and “right versus right”. “Right versus right” decisions are considered as the “grey” areas of ethical decision making. Badaracco saw the need to focus on it as “right versus right” decisions play a large role in ethical decision making for managers in real –life. To do so, he written “Defining Moments” as a way of showing the significance of “right versus right” decisions, their effect on decision making, and methods on resolve the dilemma posed by “right versus right”. Badaracco mention that “right versus right problems typically involve choices between two or more courses of action, each of which is a complicated bundle of ethical responsibilities, personal commitments, moral hazards, and practical pressures and constraints” (Badaracco, 6). It is considered a distressful and difficult moment for managers as they have to juggle between their personal values and the expectations of others. It is also what Badaracco interprets as “defining moments”.

Badaracco’s book follows the accounts of Steve Lewis, Peter Adario, and Edouard Sakiz, three different managers, as they encountered their “right versus right” dilemmas. He uses those scenarios as examples to guide the process of resolving right versus right dilemmas. With the insights and knowledge gained from moral philosophers, Badaracco constructed a realistic framework focusing on the method of knowing one’s own values and questioning how big of a role the values play in one’s life as the fundamental ste...

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...hem get bearings, stay their courses, and bind their daily work to larger ends and purposes"(Badaracco, 130).

I believe that the concept has practical relevance personally and professionally. The imagined best life" concept basically incorporates the "value of looking up from the urgent tasks of the moment and placing them in the larger context of the life" (Badaracco, 129) with considering what is at stake. It allows us to look at the goal we set and think of the things that would lead us there. By doing so, we could understand the values and stakes that we needed to be achieved. It is significant for people as they sometimes get bogged down by what is occurring at the present and neglecting the impact it has in the future.

Works Cited

Badaracco, J. . Defining moments, when managers must choose between right and right. Harvard Business Press, print.