#ethicaldecisionmaking

Introduction: In today’s competitive business landscape, success is no longer solely measured by financial gains or market dominance. More and more, individuals are recognizing the importance of running a business with integrity, ethics, and a sense of responsibility towards stakeholders and society as a whole. This blog aims to explore the principles and practices that define a true gentleman…

We introduced in the previous post how ethical decision making can be subject to biases. 

These 12 attribution biases can hurt the nature of a decision, affecting its final outcome and ultimately its ethical dimension.

These biases will be exemplified throughout this blog’s journey. All along this blog, we will illustrate how they have triggered and induced poor ethical decision making over time.

The concept of ethical decision making is a complex one. This mind map highlights the merge between the decision making, and the underlying ethics, that constitute an individual’s ethical decision making.

We observe that several factors play a role in affecting the holistic process.

Decisions that have an ethical aspect are subject to various biases in how people see the situation and how they tend to behave

Recent disclosures about the abuse of power and positions within aid organisations and charities  reminded me of the quote: “ A week is a long time in politics” ( Harold Wilson). In a very short time a few major charities have fallen from grace, no longer regarded as exemplars of altruism and good works. Rather some have been exposed as a refuge for serial abusers, demonstrating poor safeguarding and unsafe work environment and have lost the confidence and donations of their benefactors. High salaries for executives and poor HR practices for mainstream workers have been highlighted. These events have raised  doubts in my mind about the viability of promoting an idea that is linked to some fairly toxic associations. 

Then I muddied the waters further when I explored the ethics of charitable giving and philanthropy. 

Here are arguments favour of charity http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml 

and those against 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/against_1.shtml

My position is that while I hate the need for charity and the negative impact that some forms have on people’s ability to make positive changes, the needs of the poor and underprivileged still exist; I cannot simply take a critical stance, I still need to do something.