Unethical Decision Making in Organizations

Introduction

Ethics are the guiding principles of any individual or organization. They are usually showed in response to a specific situation. Some examples of ethics include integrity, transparency, honesty, fairness,trustworthiness, law abiding,etc.

Business ethics is the application of ethics in all aspects of business conduct. It includes the actions and behaviors of both individuals and organization as a whole. Managing and maintaining corporate ethics is one of the most pervasive and  complex issues faced by businesses today. Decision making in particular is a process in which managers and leaders must be very cautious so to avoid making an unethical decision.

Types 

1. Intentional Decision: There are some bad people in an organization who  deliberately make decisions in order to harm somebody or take revenge.

2. Unintentional Decision:Sometimes we fall in a context in which we end up making an unethical decision even though we have good intentions.

3. By Product Decision: We tend to make an unethical decision as a result of unfair distribution of resources or interests.

Factors/Reasons

1. Pressures:In an organization there can be four major types of pressures which leads us to making an unethical decision and they are:-Authority pressure, Peer Pressure, Role Pressure and Time pressure. 

2.Information Overload:There are many small and big decisions to be made in a firm. The managers have to make tons of decisions daily therefore sometimes they may face an ambivalent situation in which they become victim of ethical blindness and end up taking a wrong decision.

3.Framing: "Frames" are the fixed mental structures in which we are locked or trapped. There are multiple ways to see the world;the viewpoint that we have may not be the same for another person. There are points of time where we are thinking and analyzing a decision and its consequences from a narrow perspective.

4.Organizational Climate: We cannot expect ethical decisions from an institution where there is fear, authoritarian leadership, poor evaluation and appraisal system, aggressive culture, greed,etc.

 



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