Ethical Motive
Order Instructions:
Motives are a key consideration in ethical decision making. This assignment challenges you to apply the author’s four-step process as a tool to determine your motives.
Applying this knowledge is a good first step toward building the skills necessary to complete this same type of process when analyzing your motives at work or your organization’s motives in ethical decision making, designing social responsibility programs, and formulating organizational policy.
The author offers a four-step approach to analyzing your ethical motives. In this assignment, prepare answers to the four steps outlined.
Step 1: Describe an ethical dilemma that you recently experienced. Be detailed: What was the situation? Who did it involve? Why? What happened? What did you do? What did you not do? Describe your reasoning process in taking or not taking action. What did others do to you? What was the result?
Step 2: Read the descriptions of relativism, utilitarianism, universalism, rights, justice, and moral decision making. Explain which principles best describes your reasoning and your action(s) in the dilemma you presented in Step 1.
Step 3: Were you conscious that you were reasoning and acting on these (or other) ethical principles before, during, and after your ethical dilemma? Explain.
Step 4: Would you have acted differently in your dilemma than you did? Explain.
SAMPLE ANSWER
Ethical Motive
Step 1: An ethical situation that I faced was when working on a part-time basis as a sales person in a certain firm dealing in beauty products. I discovered that the beauty products I was selling contained a chemical substance that was harmful to the skin of the users. Though the company and all the employees in the company were aware of the fact that the products were harmful, there was a code of silence so that nobody was expected to inform the clients about the consequences of using the products. Therefore, I did not also tell the clients about the harmful chemicals in the products. My reasoning was in line with the code of silence within the organization that made employees reluctant to tell clients the truth. As a result, the company continued to sell the harmful products to the clients.
Step 2: The principle that best describes my reasoning and actions in the dilemma presented in Step 1 is ethical relativism which holds that there is no universal standard or rule that can be used in guiding or evaluating the morality of an act. According to relativism, people set their own moral standards for judging their actions. In this regard, I acted in line with my own moral standards which were guided by the code of silence in the institution. I also acted on the principle of utilitarianism in the context of maximum benefits for the maximum number within the organization. I felt that telling the clients the truth about the chemicals in the products would put the clients off and the organization would not make the desired benefits and the employees would be less paid and they would not be happy with my actions.
Step 3: I was conscious that I was reasoning and acting on these ethical principles during the ethical dilemma. I wanted to make a decision that would not hurt the company and my fellow employees; therefore I felt that concealing the truth from clients to attract more sales was for the good of the organization.
Step 4: I would have acted differently in the dilemma than I did because I could have broken from dependency to become independent in my decisions and make the right moral judgment as to balancing between the responsibility of the institution and the rights of clients to be sold safe products. I could have appreciated the principle of interpersonal leadership that involves building relationships through cooperation, based on a sense of integrity and moral maturity (Weiss, 2008).
Reference
Weiss, J. (2008). Business ethics: a stakeholder and issues management approach. Cengage Learning. https://zodml.org/sites/default/files/%5BJoseph_W._Weiss%5D_Business_Ethics_A_Stakeholder_a_0.pdf
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