Ethics is at the forefront of all relationships when managing and directing staff. Through day-to-day interactions, ethical decision-making guides behavior.
Also, the way you obtain, serve and retain customers involves ethics. Their willingness to work with you is guided by the ethics of your decision-making regarding the customer experience. Equally important, determine whether keeping a customer is guided by ethical customer behavior.
And your willingness to stick with ethics, when the person isn’t around, is a real litmus test of your ethical decision-making.
In today’s workplace, ethical decision-making is at the heart of leadership and management. Upon reflection, over the past few months, where have you been challenged in your ethical decision-making?
In today’s workplace, where judgment is rendered in the court of social media, it’s smart to upgrade your moral compass to an ethical rotating compass.
ethics explained
Ethics is about what ‘we’ collectively value in our relationships with others. The ethic that ‘we’ identify takes into consideration the best of what it means to be human together. Therefore, you can say: “I am a moral person and I act ethically with others.”
Ethics is a guide in which ‘we’ agree on how I will behave with you and how you will behave with me. Morality is what we personally believe, guides our action towards ethics and exists to the skin. What we value with others through our action, from the skin out, is ethics.
Ethics guides the consideration of personal/collective motivation over ideas of right and wrong reactions: actions that are legal, moral, and useful or actions that are illegal, immoral, and/or harmful.
They guide the interpretation of a situation from the perspective of ethical dilemmas such as those identified below.
Ethical dilemmas
An ethical dilemma is a situation where making a decision involves choosing between two or more ethical courses of action. Examples of each dilemma are shared.
1. Between good and evil. For example, the customer has not paid his bill for six months Prayed The staff member has been arriving late and leaving early
2. Between two rights. For example, deciding between two new customers: who to add first Prayed Hire a new staff: Decide between two qualified candidates
3. Between two unacceptable alternatives. For example, the contracts needed to meet financial requirements are available from two new sources: a cigarette company and a weapons distribution factory. Prayed Low cash flow means two out of four employees of similar qualifications and performance levels must be laid off
4. Conflict of interest. For example, the new customer has been saying derogatory things about a vendor he supports Prayed One of your current employees has bought shares of a competitor, in a different country than the one where you work
5. Hospitality re: welcoming those who are to come and how to help their commitment. For example, incorporation of new clients from different national cultures. Prayed Through a merger and acquisition, you are reassigning existing staff while hiring new staff
Ethical Decision Making
Within your workplace, “Which of the five ethical dilemmas have you encountered?” Plus,
1. What is the situation about in the words of those involved?
2. Which of these six ethical values is affected by the dilemma: responsibility, solidarity, community, fairness, respect, and trustworthiness?
3. What options are available to deal with the dilemma in light of the core ethical value identified in #2?
4. Which priority option seems viable?
5. What result is likely to take action?
In formulating your answers to these questions, and before acting on your decision, can you describe and explain the dilemma, the ethical value involved, and the pathway of your decision toward the desired outcome for a twelve-year-old? More importantly, would the twelve-year-old understand and agree to the proposed action?
If so, it seems you are on the right track.
If not, go back and ask the questions again.
Ethical Decision Making and Your Healthy Workplace
Consider the following ideas on how to improve, focus, and strengthen ethical decision-making in your work organization.
As you establish and maintain a workplace where people work well together (that is, you create a workplace where people live well), your allocation of time, effort, and money to support ‘good-to-great’ work means that excellence and ethics meet.
A workplace that lives well allows for the full expression of the best in people as they articulate clear goals, receive immediate feedback, and accept demanding challenges. In your contribution you seek an authentic alignment.
Compromise ethical decision-making, authenticity, and dispersed alignment.
Furthermore, the good living workplace involves working according to a creed, a code of ethics, statements of business principles that bind the organization to its customers and clients. The creed serves as a constant reminder for those involved to be ethically responsible through everyday business and social decisions.
Compromise ethical decision making, brand loyalty falters, customers move on.