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Ryan-PT1 SEG02

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Hello, again. Before we begin, I want to

remind you of something we mentioned in

the introduction. We're counting on

you as we go into the content now, that

you will have already printed out the

slides that are available on Blackboard,

so that as we use them here we'll kind

of flash them up--you can see what your

referent is and then it will go away

again and we can continue to talk. So

we're counting on you to have done that.

If you haven't, please pause now and go

over and get your slides printed out so

you're ready to go. We're going to start

with this first segment--it is just a

general overview of the ethical

decision-making process, kind of a broad

brush of what we're going to be doing in

the class, what the book is all about,

what some of the exercises and

discussions you'll be having in your

in-person sessions will cover. So

essentially what we're going to do is

start with this model, okay, this first

slide. You will see this often during the

course of this course, during the course

especially of the video segments. So

we're going to just walk through this

model in this initial segment. Notice

first the box. The box is the key part of

the ethical decision-making model. Step 1

is to recognize that you even are

facing a moral issue. That may sound

really obvious, but it isn't necessarily.

If someone asks you to do something and

you don't think about it too hard, you

might just go ahead and do it unless you

notice that there's something about that

particular issue that has moral content.

So just being aware of the issue being

moral is an important first step. Once

you have done that--once you've

recognized its moral content--

psychologists have found that people

enter into a different kind of decision

making than they do if they're just

making an everyday practical decision. So,

essentially, what they do at that point

is enter into this ethical judgment

phase. This is a very complicated project.

Many of us have been taught from, you

know, toddlerhood how to make an ethical

judgment. Not all of us are equally good

at it. So what we'll be talking about over

many weeks, in the course of this course, is

the methods that can be used to make

those ethical judgments. Today, we'll be

focusing more on the psychology, and the

early stages of the course will be

talking about these constraints and

factors that affect this process, but

then we're going to hone in

on ethical judgment segment. Finally, if

all goes well and you make an ethical

judgment, you will ultimately engage in

ethical behavior. Now the problem is that

there are some factors that may prevent

you from performing that ethical

behavior, even though you know it's the

right thing to do. So, for instance, there

are characteristics that you have, both

cognitive biases--ways that your brain

works, ways that you think--and individual

personality variables--individual

characteristics that you carry around--

that actually affect the way you make

your ethical decisions, and it doesn't

always come through in a conscious way.

Sometimes it's going to be a

subconscious process that you'll need to

figure out it's a characteristic that

you carry, and then control for and then

try to compensate for it. The other

segment of factors that we have to

consider in the business place especially

is there are characteristics

of organizations that are going to have

an impact on your ethical

decision-making model. So both the group

processes and the culture that you're in--

the organizational culture that you're

in--are going to have an impact. So

we will be talking about those

organizational factors in the next two

segments. I'll be back to talk about

individual factors in the two segments

after that. So let's take a look now at

the next slide and talk for a few

minutes about moral awareness. Moral

awareness is that first step in the

ethical decision-making process. And,

generally, research has shown that you're

more likely to recognize a moral issue

when three things happen, or any of those

three things will increase the

likelihood. The first one is say you're

in an organization and you are asked to

do something by your boss. If your peers--

if your co-workers--immediately recognize

that that request by your boss has some

kind of moral content, and they comment on

the fact that it's actually an ethical

issue, you're obviously much more likely

to recognize the moral content in that

instruction or in that request that your

boss has made. A second characteristic

that they found in moral issues that

people are actually recognizing is that

it's presented to you using moral

language. So your boss says something

like, "Oh, I have an ethical problem. I

don't know if I should do this or do that,

so I've decided I'm going to ask you to

do that." The fact that it was presented

to you by using that language gives you

a huge clue, obviously, and kind of kicks

or triggers your ethical decision-making

process to begin. The last one--and this

is one that actually a professor up at the

University of Washington that I've worked

with developed--and you'll be

hearing more about him in a few minutes--

is that the decision could cause serious

harm to others. The idea there is that

you are more likely to recognize that

something is a moral issue if it could

cause significant, serious harm to other

people. So, for instance , you will

recognize more quickly that falsifying a

report about the safety of an airplane

is far more serious and therefore more

vividly or intensely moral to you than

something where you know that somebody

could, you know, kick a shin into a desk and

therefore it could cause him some pain. So

the intensity or the serious harm that it causes to other

people is the last characteristic of moral awareness.

So, again, this is not where we're going

to be focusing our time. The important

part, probably, once you've gotten that

information into your head--that this is

a moral issue--the hard part, the

difficult part, is the moral judgment

phase. So let's look at... In the book, they

talk about seven issues or seven

characteristics of sound ethical

decision making. So let's just walk

through those on the next slide.

The first step--and, again, some of these sound

kind of obvious, but, if you very

carefully think through the process,

you'll probably do a better job of

making that ethical decision, so they're

really trying to give you very careful

steps that a good ethical decision maker would

go through. The first one is to gather

the facts--that you need to really look

around and get a lot of information to

help you to make a valid ethical decision.

You can't just do it on the fly

with minimal information. You have to be

a very careful information seeker. Ok? The

second one, define the ethical issues. And

this takes work, this is not something

that you can just do on the spur of the

moment. You have to sit down and think

about, what is the obvious ethical issue,

maybe, involved, but then again what is

the, you know, secondary or tertiary

ethical issue? What are all of the

characteristics of the situation that

could lead to ethical

decision making, or that could

eventually lead to ethical harm. You then

identify the affected parties, and you'll

see when we get to the ethical judgment

section of the course that some theories,

some judgment rules, that you would use

actually go further with this idea of

the affected party, some go further with

the actual content of the decision

that you're making. So in this case

you'd say, "Okay, these are the people or

the groups that would be affected by the

outcomes of my actions." You want to know

who those people are--what their

characteristics are. Then you would look

at the actual consequences of the

decision. You don't necessarily have

to have every last consequence,

because it would be almost impossible,

but you'd really think hard about what

would the impact of your decision--in

either case--be on those affected

parties? So you want to be very careful

about what you're doing to other people.

The next one is you identify your

obligations. So not only do you know that

this behavior that you're considering

would affect these parties, it's also, if

you've made a promise, for instance, to

someone that you would be somewhere at

six o'clock, you have to consider that as

a stronger obligation than just what

would the affected parties be if you

either showed up or didn't show up at

six o'clock. Consider your character and

integrity. This is obviously a little bit

of a sticky wicket, because everyone

thinks they have a great character and

they have lots of integrity, but you

really want to think through whether or

not a person--maybe an abstract person--

with good integrity or a good character

or someone you know and admire would

actually do the thing that you're

considering doing--whether you've

gotten that far in the decision-making

process. Finally, before you actually make

the last emotional move, you think

creatively about your potential actions.

And, again, as we were talking about

earlier in terms of information

gathering, that does not mean, "Oh, there's

an obvious answer to this." When I was a

manager, I often used to kind of take

action maybe prematurely. I look back

now on some of the decisions I made and

I maybe solved the problem a little bit

too quickly. Really, what you need to do

is consider alternatives and think about

the different actions you could take to

solve your problem--maybe even bounce it

around with some people, as we'll talk about

in a few minutes. But consider the creative

possibilities that are available to you

to solve this ethical problem. And, finally,

you know as comes up several times in

the book, check your gut. See if your

instincts or your intuition or your

emotions--whatever it is that makes that

gut work--check your gut and see if you

think, "Oh, if I did this, I'd feel good about it."

Or, "If I did this, I'd be kind of

embarrassed." "If I did this, my friends

would appreciate it." So, just, as a

last check before you go out and take

that ethical action, that you would be

seeing if you're okay with it

emotionally or from kind of an

intuition point of view. So those are the

eight steps of ethical decision-making

to a sound decision making process.

I know it sounds like a lot of work--it

actually is a lot of work--but what

you'll probably find is that you do this

all the time. You just maybe aren't aware

of it, you're not doing it consciously,

a lot of it you are running through

quickly because you've been doing it

your whole life. What we're trying to do

here is make it a little more explicit,

make it a little more important in the

workplace that you would actually

consciously go through these processes.

And, so, after it now, we've talked about

the general ethical decision-making

process, we're going to hone in, as I

mentioned, in the model on the

characteristics of organizations that

make it maybe more difficult, maybe

easier, to make that ethical decision and

the individual characteristics. So after

we talk to you about organizations, I'll be back

to talk about individual differences.

Thanks.

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