Flint Water Ethics

The Flint Water Crisis is nothing short of a modern day tragedy; so many innocent people have been permanently affected. Many people have put the sole blame on Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, but how much of his decision making process was effected by concepts of behavioral ethics, and how many other people are to blame for this disaster? The article Behavioral Ethics: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty by Max H. Bazerman and Francesca Gino gives an inside look into the studies of behavioral ethics and how decisions can be influenced by surroundings and even sequence that events are presented. The Flint Water Crisis is an ethical calamity that may be able to claim that one poor moral decision generated many more.

The Flint Water Crisis began with a decision about cost as many poor ethical decisions are. Flint wanted to switch from Detroit water to the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA) and enlisted ROWE Professional Services to do so. The switch was said to be more reliable, equal in quality, and reduced in price compared to Detroit water (Connexions, 2013). And in order to save about $5 million in the two years that it would take to switch to the KWA the city decided to treat water from the Flint River for use. This decision may have been made with the best of intentions as Flint is working towards a comeback, but what resulted led to great controversy.

I believe many people in this case have fallen victim to the wrong side of behavioral decision theory. Behavioral decision theory studies the trade-offs that people make when presented with different options (Bazerman and Gino, 2012, p. 11). As many politician do, it appears that Rick Snyder was saying anything he could in order to keep a good public opinion for re-election reasons. I say this because for most of 2015 he told the residents of Flint that their tap water was still safe to drink although there were arrangements made to bring in purified water to a state office...