Factors affecting ethical sensitivity in business managers' decision making

Introduction True and effective leadership is that in which the leader’s behavior are consistent with ethical and moral values. In each and every day business leaders must make ethical decisions that involve choices ... [ view full abstract ]

Introduction
True and effective leadership is that in which the leader’s behavior are consistent with ethical and moral values. In each and every day business leaders must make ethical decisions that involve choices between more than one course of actions. Ethical issues do not appear in everyday life with a red flag flying over them. In most cases the ethical issue requiring attention appears in a latent state within a broad and sometimes misleading context of social behaviors. Bazerman and Chugh (2006) contend that since relevant data for our decision making is not presented to us on a silver platter, we often fail to identify the problem facing us:
"The information that life serves is not necessarily the information that one would order from menu, but like polite dinner guests and other victims of circumstance people generally seem to accept what is offered rather than banging their flatware and demanding carrots”( Bazerman & Chugh, 2006, p15).
The ethical dimension of a decision is not necessarily visible to the decision maker which may behave unethically without being aware of it and he could be ethically blind. Wiggins (1980) contends that numerous moral situations do not automatically catch the attention of the decision maker and can pass him by without his knowledge:
“few moral situations come already inscribed with the names of all the concerns they touch or impinge upon [and]… the relevant features may not all jump to the eye” (Wiggins, 1980, p. 231).
A decision to act ethically in a given situation is conditional on the decision maker recognizing that the situation with which he is contending comprises ethical components. The process of recognizing ethical issues requiring is therefore critical to the decision making process which should also take ethical considerations into account. According to Messick & Bazerman (1996), business leaders work in “a moral minefield” in which “at any moment, a seemingly innocuous decision can explode and harm not only the decision maker but also everyone in the neighborhood…” (p.9).
The recognition of moral issues also came to light in the field of moral philosophy. A number of philosophers identified the importance of the stage of recognizing moral issues in the process of moral decision making and described it in different ways (Blum, 1991; Herman, 1993; Johnson, 1993; Murdoch, 1970; Nussbaum, 1986; Sherman, 1989; Werhane, 1998).
The subject of recognizing moral issues gained scant attention in moral psychology research, and was criticized for its ambiguous definitions of concepts and lack of theoretical foundations (Collins, 2000; Weaver, 2007). The need to define the recognition stage of moral decision making was presented by James Rest (1982), a moral psychologist, in a model involving four stages of moral decision making which he developed. Rest calls the recognizing stage 'moral sensitivity' and defines it two ways : a minimal definition and a wide definition. The minimal definition includes the general feelings of the moral agent in the matter any possible injury:
"Minimally in component 1, a person realizes that she/he could do something that would affect, the interests, welfare ,or expectations of other people" (Rest, 1986, p.5)
According to Rest's wide definition at the stage of moral sensitivity he includes the interpretation of the situation:
" Interpretation of the particular situation in terms of what actions (are) possible ,who (including oneself) would be affected by each course of actions , and how interested parties would regard such effects on their welfare (Rest, 1986, p.3)
Rest relates to moral sensitivity as an individual characteristic differing in power amongst different people. Rest claims that there are people who, before they recognize a moral issue must 'smell blood' in the potential victims. On the other hand, there are those whose moral sensitivity is so highly developed who merely need to see a gloomy face to enact their own moral awakening.
In the literature we find three main approaches which describe the factors influencing ethical recognition. Each of these approaches highlights different components in defining the process of ethical recognition. One approach sees the objective characteristics of the perceived issue as the most important factors in identifying ethical issues (Jones, 1991). According to this approach, an issue ('the amount of blood spilt') can only be identified from a certain level of identification of the issue as an ethical one, any lower level will cause the issue to be dismissed as a ethical issue. The second approach concentrates on the influence of the situation in which the ethical issue appeared (Butterfied et al, 2000; Hunt & Vitell, 1993; Wittmer, 2000). The third approach perceives the process of recognizing an ethical issue as a function of inter-personal differences (Butterfield et al, 2000; Rest et al, 1999; Schwartz, 1977).
The current explorative study examined the process of recognizing ethical issues by applying developmental mixed methods methodology. In the study we focused on the process of recognizing ethical components in complex business situations in an attempt to gain an understanding of the factors influencing failure to recognize ethical issues. The studies addressed the ethical recognition process of business managers working in a business environment, which is an ambiguous and turbulent one.
Method and summary of main findings
The research design included a sequence of three studies, each of which was built on the results and findings of its predecessor. Each of the studies embarked from a different aspect of the process of recognizing ethical issues.
In the first study (Study 1) managers (220 MBA students with more than 5 years management experience) were asked to report retrospectively on the way they contended with ethical issues in the workplace. The reporting focused on describing the process of recognizing/failing to recognize ethical issues. The findings of Study 1 indicate seven principal influencing factors in recognizing (and failing to recognize) ethical issues: “Nature of the motivations for action”, “degree of ethical openness”, “nature of emotions”, “level of experience and knowledge”, “nature of organizational culture”, “level of stress/load on attention”, and “content of the ethical issue”. The ethical issues reported by the participants were manifested in three principal spheres of activity: true reporting to stakeholders, managing human resources, and relations with stakeholders in the organization. The study shows that emotional factors influence both recognizing and failing to recognize the issues. Positive emotions function as ethical markers, whereas negative emotions function as ethical obstructions. An additional factor found to crucially influence recognizing and failing to recognize was the manager’s accumulated experience in contending with ethical issues in the workplace. The findings of Study 1 led to the need to examine the way in which experts on the one hand and novices on the other contend with the process of recognizing ethical issues by constructing a uniform series of experiences for the two groups and observing the recognition process as it occurs.
In Study 2 a management process simulation was designed employing the in-basket items method, in which three ethical issues were concealed. The participants in the study (24 managers with more than ten years management experience, and 24 economics and accountancy BA students without management experience) were asked to contend with a series of problems representing a company CEO’s typical workday and to verbally reflect their thoughts as they solved a problem ( think aloud procedure),listening to the recording of their thoughts (which were manifested by the think aloud procedure), and then report retrospectively on the experience. Three types of findings emerged in Study 2:
1.Three patterns of moral recognition
2. The context in which the moral agent encountered an event with moral qualities as well as prior events was found to influence the moral recognition process.
3. There was a difference between experienced managers and inexperienced students in the level of ethical recognition.
In study 3 we used a priming effect experimental design. We tried to examine the influence of events experienced by the decision maker prior to recognizing an ethical situation on the way in which he frames an ethical issue encountered later on time. We found significant influence of the primed situations on the participants’ reactions. The priming emotions of compassion and care increases the probability that these emotions will influence the framing and interpretation of a ethical issue that appears later in the sequence of events.
The findings of the three studies indicate the importance of the ethical recognition stage in the decision-making process and show three principal influencing factors on the recognition of ethical components in complex situations:
1. The environmental context in which the ethical issue is presented and previous events experienced by the moral agent prior to his encounter with the same issue (Studies 1, 2 and 3).
2. Characteristics of the ethical schemas in the individual’s knowledge base (Studies 2 and 3).
3. The content of the ethical issue with which the moral agent is contending (Studies 1 and 2).
The finding have theoretical importance for the research of the ethical decision making process and shed new light on the relationships between the cognitive and emotional dimensions in the ethical recognition process

Ethical decision making, Ethical sensitivity, Mixed methods research design [ view full abstract ]

Ethical decision making, Ethical sensitivity, Mixed methods research design