NCM67: BIOETHICS
competent
WEEK 7: ETHICAL CONSIDERATION IN
LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT (7/04/2022)
 Always directs people and communities toward the
common good, i.e., towards justice.
 The study of ethical issues related to leadership and
the ethics of leadership.
 Consists of what is right, wrong, good, evil, virtue,
duty, rights, obligations, justice, and fairness, … in
human relationships with each other and other living
things
TWO TOP LEADERSHIP QUALITIES
1. Integrity (Being strongly committed to doing what
he/she knows right)
2. Trustworthiness (worthy of being trusted; honest,
reliable, and dependable
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP HAS TWO ELEMENTS.
First, ethical leaders must act and make decisions
ethically, as must ethical people in general. But,
secondly, ethical leaders must also lead ethically – in the
ways they treat people in everyday interaction, in their
attitudes, in the ways they encourage, and in the
directions in which they guide their organizations or
institutions or initiatives.
ETHICAL LEADERSHIP IS BOTH VISIBLE AND
INVISIBLE.
The visible part is in the way the leader works with and
treats others, in his behavior in public, in his statements
and his actions. The invisible aspects of ethical
leadership lie in the leader’s character, in his decision-
making process, in his mindset, in the set of values and
principles on which he draws, and in his courage to
make ethical decisions in tough situations.
SPECIFIC COMPONENTS OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
 Put the good of the organization and the general
good before your own interests and ego
 Encourage the discussion of ethics in general and of
the ethical choices involved in specific situations and
decisions as an ongoing feature of the organizational
culture
 Institutionalize ways for people to question your
authority.
 Treat everyone with fairness, honesty, and respect
all the time
 Treat other organizations in the same way you treat
other people – with fairness, honesty, and respect
 Collaborate inside and outside the organization
 Communicate
 Try to become culturally sensitive and culturally
 Work to be inclusive
 Constantly strive to increase your competence
 Don ’t outstay your usefulness - - Founder ’ s
disease
 Never stop reexamining your ethics and your
leadership
KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF ETHICAL LEADERSHIP
1. Moral conduct and adherence to ethical standards
2. Moral purpose
3. Moral accomplishment
4. Moral duty/responsibility and obligations
5. Moral knowing
6. Moral cooperation and the just exercise of power
7. Moral role modeling
MORALITY
 Principles concerning the distinction between right
and wrong or good and bad behavior
 Morality is the differentiation of intentions,
decisions, and actions between those that are
"good" (or right) and those that are "bad" (or
wrong)
 Conformance (compliance) to a recognized code,
doctrine, or system of rules of what is right or
wrong and to behave accordingly.
 No system of morality is accepted as universal, and
the answers to the question "What is morality?"
differ sharply from place to place, group to group,
and time to time.
MORAL KNOWING - Keys to successful ethical
leadership are the following kinds of moral knowing.
 Fundamental moral knowing – the art of
recognizing and responding effectively to ethical
issues
 Strategic moral knowing - understanding the
significance of moral interests, needs, motivations
and goals of the constituents
 Tactical moral knowing – taking the appropriate
and justifiable moral action to avoid harm/promote
benefits
NURSING LEADERS PROMOTING ETHICS
1. Autonomy
2. Fidelity
3. Veracity
4. Beneficence
5. Non-maleficence
6. Accountability
MORAL DECISION MAKING IN LEADERSHIP AND
MANAGEMENT
Making decisions is fundamental to the idea of
leadership since individuals who have the power and
capacity to do so are frequently considered to be in
positions of leadership. t is more likely that a leader will
include ethics into their decision-making processes if
they are a moral person and have a strong moral identity
and, thus, yield moral results.
KEY CHARACTERISTICS OF A LEADER
Leaders shape organizations through the decisions they
make. A moral person is a precondition to develop a
moral manager.
MORAL PERSON – behaves in a way that is believed
by most people to be good and right.
MORAL MANAGER – is a leader who will guide group
members ' ethical decision-making by serving as an
example of moral behavior, conveying pertinent
information, and utilizing rewards and punishments
strategically to build members ' capacity for independent
ethical decision-making.
TYPES OF MORAL DECISION MAKING
1. Duty-based Approach – it is wrong to steal. If you
break the rule, you are in breach. Most company codes
of conduct are duty-based.
2. Utilitarian-based Approach – pharmaceutical
company releasing a drug that has been governmentally
approved with known side effects. The drug is able to
help more people than are bothered by the minor side
effects. Act utilitarianism often shows “the end justifies
the means” mentality.
PRINCIPLE OF MORAL DISCERNMENT
Discernment refer to the ability to discern the moral
good, discern a moral right from wrong, and must have
the standard with measure or compare the good thing
and bad thing.
Olson (2002) defined moral discernment refer to the
ability to discern what is morally right from morally wrong
that requires moral reflectiveness on the meaning of
good and bad.
FOUR PRINCIPLES OF MORAL DISCERNMENT
1. Formal Cooperation – occurs when someone
intentionally helps another person carry out a sinful act.
It means that the person cooperating intends, desires, or
approves the wrongdoer's conduct.
Example: The nurse helps in the operation because she
wants the operation performed If the priest intends that
the sinner receive communion If the judge applauds the
couple's divorce
2. Material Cooperation – When a person’s actions
unintentionally help another person do something wrong.
Although we do not share the intention of the wrongdoer,
we are involved in the matter or the actual doing of the
action.
Example: A health care worker employed in a secular
hospital that also provides for morally prohibited
procedures, but does not require the conscientious
objector to such procedures to participate.
3. Lesser Evil – takes place when faced with selecting
from two immoral options – the one which is least
immoral should be chosen.
Example: Hiding of helpless Jews from the Nazis during
World War II. Example: Two moral wrongs are in conflict.
One is deceiving those in authority; the other is turning
over helpless people to be slaughtered.
4. Double Effect – aims to provide specific guidelines
for determining when it is morally permissible to perform
an action in pursuit of a good end in full knowledge that
the action will also bring about bad results.
Conditions:
 The act itself must be good or indifferent
 The good effect must not be caused by the
evil effect
 The good effect and not the evil effect must
be directly intended by the agent
 There must be a proportionality between the
good and evil result or the good must
outweigh the evil
Example: Performing an abortion when continuing the
pregnancy would risk killing the mothers.
MODEL FOR DECISION MAKING
INTERIOR:
Moral Purpose - shows the dynamic living out of values,
ethical beliefs and commitments about justice in a social
context
Personal Purpose - refers to the reflective capacity of
individuals to understand their reasons for acting, and
how they place these actions in a values context.
FUNCTION:
Professional Purpose - includes the norms and codes
of conduct relating to the profession itself.
Organizational Purpose - this encompasses what an
organization values and celebrates, and how this
influences the way leadership, management, resourcing
and relationships are conducted, both within the entity
itself and with external bodies.
ENVIRONMENT:
Public Purpose - involves these external contexts that
have the ability to influence the potency of leaders to
translate beliefs into action.
Cultural Purpose - involves an understanding that
every organization serves a role and purpose within
particular societal and cultural contexts; and these, in
turn, influence the way the organization itself operates.
STRATEGIES OF MORAL DECISION-MAKING
PROCESS
- Decision making is the process of selecting an
action from another alternative.
- It is a problem-solving process that is learned
and specific.
For decision making process it seeks to:
1. identify the problem such as what is wrong or where is
change needed
- The nurse sees what is actually happening and
what should be happening and seeks to identify
the problem by analyzing the situation
- What is the desirable situations, what are the
presenting problems, who is involved and the
questions of when, where and how are asked,
with analyzing the information the nurse begins
exploring solution.
2. Explore alternatives
- If situation is not under any policy, nurse should use
education and experience however might be inadequate
to directly solve problem
- More experienced nurses continue education,
professional meetings, review literatures and brainstorm
to solve other specific situations
3. Choose most desirable alternative
- Nurses should balance multiple factors such as safety
of the patient, acceptance, moral and etc.
- Does it maximize effectiveness and efficiency? Can the
decision be implemented?
4. Implement decision
- Nurses should communicate the decision to
appropriate staff to for cooperation
5. Evaluate results
- Evaluate the results to chosen alternatives
MORAL DECISION - MAKING MODEL: Crisham (1985)
M- Massage the dilemma
- To collect data about the ethical problem
O- Outline options
- Identify and analyze alternative and
consequences of each problem.
R – Review criteria and resolve
- Weigh the option’s consequences and the effect
of the decision
A – Affirm position and act
- Develop implementation strategy
L- Look back
- Evaluate on the decision making.
PRINCIPLE OF WELL-FORMED CONSCIENCE
- Conscience is a personal sense of moral content
of one’s own conduct intention or character with
regard to a feeling of obligation to do right or be
good.
- A well-formed conscience is an ongoing
exercise.
- To form one’s conscience, the church offers:
When examining issues or situations, we must begin by
being open to the truth and what is right
We must study sacred scripture and teachings of the
church
We must examine the facts and background information
about various choices
We must prayerfully reflect to discern the will of god
- The Church equips its members to address
political questions by helping them develop well-
formed consciences. “Conscience is a judgment
of reason whereby the human person
recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act. . .
. [Every person] is obliged to follow faithfully
what he [or she] knows to be just and right”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1778).
We Catholics have a lifelong obligation to form
our consciences in accord with human reason,
enlightened by the teaching of Christ as it comes
to us through the Church.
VIRTUE OF PRUDENCE
 - The Church also encourages Catholics to
develop the virtue of prudence, which enables
us “to discern our true good in every
circumstance and to choose the right means of
achieving it” (Catechism of the Catholic Church,
no. 1806). Prudence shapes and informs our
ability to deliberate over available alternatives, to
determine what is most fitting to a specific
context, and to act. Prudence must be
accompanied by courage, which calls us to act.
- As Catholics seek to advance the common
good, we must carefully discern which public
policies are morally sound.
1. Ends-based thinking or consequentialism:
consider the consequences of your action. The most
common form of consequentialism states that one
should do what produces the greatest good for the
greatest number.
2. Rule-based thinking or deontology: an action is
right only if it conforms to a universally applicable moral
rule. The most common moral rule that is thought to be
universally applicable is Kant’s categorical imperative:
“act only according to that maxim through which you can
at the same time will that it should become a universal
law.”

ETHICAL DILEMMA 3. Care-based thinking: asks us to empathize with

others and consider their needs. It is most famously
“An ethical dilemma is a conflict between alternatives expressed as the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you
where, no matter what a person does, some ethical would have them do unto you.” These three decision
principles will be compromised. Analyzing the options making principles are useful for resolving ethical
and their consequences provides the basic elements of dilemmas, which arise when two core values come into
decision-making” – Sushmitha Hedge conflict. When this kind of situation occurs, one must
decide between two right actions.
Ethical Dilemma are situation in which there are two
choices to be made, neither of which resolves the
situation in an ethically acceptable fashion. In such
cases, both options require the chooser to violate or
compromise on their ethical standards.

FOUR ETHICAL DILEMMA PARADIGMS

1. Truth vs Loyalty: Contrasts telling the truth or being

honest with the values responsibility or promise-keeping.
“Telling the truth” most commonly means accurately
reporting the facts, whereas loyalty focuses on
allegiance to a friend, a group, or a set of ideas.

2. Short-term vs Long-term: involves the immediate

needs of the present conflicting with those of the future.

3. Individual vs Community: pits the interests of the

individual, standing all alone, against those of some
larger group (to which the individual also often belongs).
Or it could be about the interests of one person
compared to another, or the interests of a small group
compared to those of some larger group.

4. Justice vs. Mercy: is a choice between going by the

book and bending the rules. It involves choosing
between fairness and equal treatment of everyone on
the one hand, and compassion and allowing for
exceptions on the other hand

DECISION PRINCIPLES
In order to resolve dilemmas, you also learned three
decision principles: