Ethical Issue

Descriptive ethical theories: seek to describe how ethical decisions are actually made in business, and what influences the process and outcomes of those decisions. Tell us what business people actually do, and why they do it.

* The decision is likely to have significant effects on others.

* The decision is likely to be characterized by choice, in that alternative courses of action are open.

* The decision is perceived as ethically relevant by one or more parties.

All models represent two things:

* The different stages in decision-making people go through in responding to an ethics problem in a business context.

* The different influences on that process.

Jones Model: provides the most comprehensive synthesis model of ethical decision-making. According to this model individuals move through process whereby they:

* Recognize moral issue

* Make moral judgment

* Establish moral intent

* Engage in moral behavior

The model distinguishes between knowing what is the right thing to do and actually doing something about it, or between wanting to do the right thing, and actually knowing what the best course of action is.

Influences on ethical decision-making

* Individual factors: these are the unique characteristics of the individual making the relevant decision. These include factors which are given by birth (age, gender) and those acquired by experience and socialization (education, personality, attitudes).

* Situational factors: these are the particular features of the context that influence whether individual will make an ethical or an unethical decision. These include factors associated with the work context (reward systems, job roles, organizational culture) and those associated with the issue itself (intensity of the moral issue, ethical framing of the issue).

US – individual factors influencing ethical decision-making

EU – situational factors have been subject to a lengthy debate principally originated and...