Course Title :

GED-2211: Professional Ethics and Environmental Protection

Credit Hour: 3.0

Lecture 03 :
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN DECISION MAKING

Course Teacher :
Colonel S M Saiful Islam, SUP, psc
CSE (BUET), MBA (IBA), MDS
ITIL® (Expert), Prince2® (Practitioner), CDCP®, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor®

Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Bangladesh University of Professionals
 Ethical Considerations in Decision Making

Organizational decisions are complex and often dilemmas, involving conflicts

between economic and self-interest considerations and competing ethical,
legal, and social factors.
Ethical decisions are almost always complex for several reasons. Most ethical
decisions have:
▪ Multiple alternatives
▪ Consequences that extend beyond the immediate situation
▪ Uncertain consequences
▪ Outcomes that mix various economic, legal, and social benefits and
costs and
▪ Personal implications

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 Decision Making Process

Gather and analyze facts.

Develop Problem Statement Make no assumptions.
Identify stakeholders affected by the decision

Identify Alternative Involve others, including stakeholders, in brainstorming

What laws, guidelines, policies, and principles apply?

Evaluate and choose alternative What is the impact on you, your organization, and other stakeholders?
Evaluate alternatives based on multiple criteria

Implement decision Develop and execute an implementation plan.

Provide leadership to overcome resistance to change

Evaluate results Evaluate results against selected success criteria.

Were there any unintended consequences?

No
Success?

Yes
Success ?
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 Develop a Problem Statement

A problem statement is a clear, concise description of the issue that needs to

be addressed. Developing a problem statement is the most critical step in the
decision-making process.
A good problem statement answers the following questions:
1. What do people observe that causes them to think there is a problem?
2. Who is directly affected by the problem?
3. Is anyone else affected?
4. How often does the problem occur?
5. What is the impact of the problem?
6. How serious is the problem?

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 Develop a Problem Statement

As a decision taker, you must give attention while developing a problem

statement. Developing a problem statement is the most critical step in the
decision-making process.
To develop a good problem statement following strategies may be followed:
1. You must gather and analyze facts
2. Seek information and opinions from a variety of people
3. Don’t make assumptions about the situation
4. Identifying the stakeholders and their positions on the issue

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 Identify alternatives

At this stage of decision making, it is ideal to enlist the help of others, including
stakeholders, to identify several alternative solutions to the problem.
For identifying alternative ideas these technique can be followed:
1. Brainstorming with others
2. Broaden identifying range of alternatives
3. Determine the best solution among the alternatives
4. Don’t disclose participants information about the problem
5. Try not to be critical of ideas, as negative criticism tends to shut down
the discussion

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 Evaluate and Choose an Alternative

Once a set of alternatives has been identified, the group must evaluate them
based on numerous criteria as an alternative that sounds attractive but that is
not feasible will not help solve the problem.
For identifying alternative ideas these technique can be followed:
1. Search weight various laws, guidelines, and principles that may apply
– Do any corporate policies or guidelines apply?
– Does the organizational code of ethics offer guidance?
– Do any of your own personal principles apply?
2. Consider the likely consequences of each alternative
– What is the impact on you, your organization, other stakeholders including
your suppliers and customers, and the environment?
3. The selected alternative should be ethically and legally defensible
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 Evaluate and Choose an Alternative

Philosophers have developed many approaches to aid in ethical decision

making. Four of the most common approaches are discussed which provides a
framework for decision makers to reflect on the acceptability of their actions
and evaluate their moral judgments.
The four approaches to ethical decision making are:
1. Virtue ethics approach
2. Utilitarian approach
3. Fairness approach
4. Common good approach

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 1. Virtue Ethics Approach

• The virtue ethics approach to decision making focuses on how you should
behave and think about relationships if you are concerned with your daily life
in a community. It suggests that when faced with a complex ethical dilemma,
people do either what they are most comfortable doing or what they think a
person they admire would do.
• A proponent of virtue ethics asserts that a disposition to do the right thing
is more effective than following rules, and moral acts should be performed
out of habit. For example, businesspeople face situations that are peculiar to
a business setting, so they may need to tailor their ethics accordingly.
• A problem with the virtue ethics approach is that it doesn’t provide much of a
guide for action. The right thing to do in a situation also depends on which
culture you’re in and what the cultural norm dictates.

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 2. Utilitarian approach

• The utilitarian approach to ethical decision-making states that you should

choose the action or policy that has the best overall consequences for all
people who are directly or indirectly affected. The goal is to find the single
greatest good by balancing the interests of all affected parties.
• Business managers, legislators, and scientists weight benefits and harm of
policies when deciding whether to invest resources in building a new plant in
a foreign country or not.
• Measuring and comparing the values of certain benefits and costs is often
difficult which is the complication of this approach. It can also be difficult to
predict the full benefits and harm that result from a decision. Ex: How do you
assign a value to human life or to a pristine wildlife environment?

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 3. Fairness Approach

The fairness approach focuses on how fairly actions and policies distribute
benefits and burdens among people affected by the decision. The guiding
principle of this approach is to treat all people the same.
Decisions made with this approach can be influenced by personal bias, without
the decision makers even being aware of their bias. Discrimination imposes
burdens on people who are no different from those on whom burdens are not
imposed. Both favoritism and discrimination are unjust and wrong.
• It focuses on how fairly or unfairly our actions distribute benefits and
burdens among the members of a group.
• Fairness requires consistency in the way people are treated.
• The principle states: “Treat people the same unless there are morally
relevant differences between them.”

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 4. The Common Good Approach

The common good approach to decision making is based on a vision of society

as a community whose members work together to achieve a common set of
values and goals. This approach focuses on implementing social systems,
institutions, and environments that benefit everyone, such as an effective
education system, safe transportation, and accessible healthcare.
In ethical decision making, the common good approach has potential
complications. People have different ideas about what constitutes the common
good, which makes consensus difficult.
• It presents a vision of society as a community whose members are joined in
a shared pursuit of values and goals they hold in common.
• The community is comprised of individuals whose own good is inextricably
bound to the good of the whole.

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 Making Ethical Choice - Summary

Virtue ethics The ethical choice best reflects moral virtues in yourself and
approach your community.

Utilitarian The ethical choice produces the greatest excess of benefits

approach over harm.

Fairness approach The ethical choice treats everyone the same and shows no
favoritism or discrimination

Common good The ethical choice advances the common good

approach

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 Implement the Decision

Once an alternative is selected, it should be implemented in an efficient,

effective, and timely manner. This is often much easier said than done,
because people tend to resist change. Communication is the key to helping
people accept a change. It is imperative that someone whom the stakeholders
trust and respect answer the following questions:
▪ Why are we doing this?
▪ What is wrong with the current way we do things?
▪ What are the benefits of the new way for you?
***A transition plan must be defined to explain to people how they will move
from the old way of doing things to the new way***

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 Evaluate the Results

After the solution to the problem has been implemented, monitor the results to
see if the desired effect was achieved, and observe its impact on the
organization and the various stakeholders.
These questions can be taken into consideration:
▪ Were the success criteria fully met?
▪ Were there any unintended consequences?
This evaluation may indicate that further refinements are needed. If so, return
to the develop a problem statement step, refine the problem statement as
necessary, and work through the process again. This way the decision taking
process will continue to repeat.

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 Discussion Questions

1. This chapter discusses four approaches to dealing with moral issues.

Which approach is closest to your way of analyzing moral issues?
Now that you are aware of different approaches, do you think you might
modify your approach to include other perspectives? Explain why or why
not.

2. Should software piracy within the boundaries of third-world countries be

tolerated to allow these countries an opportunity to move more quickly into
the information age? Why or why not?

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 Recommend actions using Five-step decision-making process

You are a recent new hire at your company and have been given the
responsibility for soliciting the employees in your 10-person department for the
company’s annual drive to support United Way (a national nonprofit organization
that works with a coalition of volunteers, contributors, and local charities to help
people in their own communities). Your company sets “giving goals” based on
each employee’s annual salary. You have completed your initial solicitation of
your coworkers, and several of them declined to contribute, while others have
pledged amounts well under their “giving goal.” As a result, your department is a
few thousand dollars short of its goal. You have a meeting this afternoon with the
senior vice president responsible for the company’s United Way program. You
are concerned that you may be pressured to resolicit and encourage under
contributors to pledge more.
Do you think that this is a fair request? How would you respond if such pressure
is applied to you?
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 Recommend actions using Five-step decision-making process

You are a recent graduate of a well-respected business school, but you are
having trouble getting a job. You worked with a professional résumé service to
develop a well-written résumé and placed it on several Web sites; you also sent
it directly to contacts at a dozen companies. So far, you have not even had an
invitation for an interview.
You know that one of your shortcomings is that you have no real job
experience to speak of. You are considering beefing up your résumé by
exaggerating the extent of the class project you worked on for a few weeks at
your brother-in-law’s small consulting firm. You could reword the résumé to
make it sound as if you were actually employed and that your responsibilities
were greater than they actually were.
What would you do?

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 Recommend actions using Five-step decision-making process

While mingling with neighbors at a party, you mention that you are responsible
for evaluating bids for a large computer software contract. A few days later, you
receive a lunch invitation from one of your neighbors who also attended the
party. Over appetizers, the conversation turns to the contract you are managing.
Your neighbor seems remarkably well informed about the bidding process and
likely bidders. You volunteer information about the potential value of the contract
and briefly outline the criteria your firm will use to select the winner. At the end of
the lunch, your neighbor surprises you by revealing that he is a consultant for
several companies in the computer software market. Later that day, your mind is
racing. Did you reveal information that could provide a supplier with a
competitive advantage in the bidding process?
What are the potential business risks and ethical issues in this situation? Should
you report the conversation to someone? If so, whom should you talk to, and
what would you say?
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 Case Study – 3.1

You are a recent new hire at your company and have been given the
responsibility for soliciting the employees in your 10-person department for the
company’s annual drive to support United Way (a national nonprofit
organization that works with a coalition of volunteers, contributors, and local
charities to help people in their own communities). Your company sets “giving
goals” based on each employee’s annual salary. You have completed your
initial solicitation of your coworkers, and several of them declined to contribute,
while others have pledged amounts well under their “giving goal.” As a result,
your department is a few thousand dollars short of its goal. You have a meeting
this afternoon with the senior vice president responsible for the company’s
United Way program. You are concerned that you may be pressured to resolicit
and encourage under contributors to pledge more.
Do you think that this is a fair request? How would you respond if such
pressure is applied to you?
09-Feb-24 Lecture 03 : Ethical Considerations in Decision Making 20
 Case Study - 3.2

You are the customer support manager for a small software manufacturer. The
newest addition to your 10-person team is Sofia, a recent college graduate. She is
a little overwhelmed by the volume of calls; but is learning quickly and doing her
best to keep up. Today, as you performed your monthly review of employee email,
you were surprised to see that Sofia has received several messages from
employment agencies. One message says, “Sofia, I’m sorry you don’t like your new
job. We have lots of opportunities that I think would much better match your
interests. Please call me, and let’s talk further.” You’re shocked and alarmed. You
had no idea she was unhappy, and your team desperately needs her help to handle
the onslaught of calls generated by the newest release of software. If you’re going
to lose her, you’ll need to find a replacement quickly. You know that Sofia did not
intend for you to see the email, but you can’t ignore what you saw.
Should you confront Sofia and demand to know her intentions? Should you avoid
any confrontation and simply begin seeking her replacement? Could you be
misinterpreting the email? What should you do?
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 Thank You
For Your Attention
foreversaif@gmail.com
01769004659
Sm.saiful@bup.edu.bd