A Simple Model of Analysis for

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A Simple Model of Analysis for Ethical
Decision-Making by Colin Boyd Professor of
Management University of Saskatchewan
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Oxymorons

• Business ethics

• Jumbo shrimp
• Military intelligence
• Postal service
• Gourmet pizza
• Dodge Ram

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Where is the boundary between morality and
immorality in the quest for profits?
Should there be a free market in the sale of
human organs?
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Ethical issues regarding the sale of human organs

• Informed consent
• Skewing of the incomes of donors
• Skewing of the incomes of recipients
• Sale of organs of executed prisoners

If you did accept that the death penalty was ok,
is it better that the organs of an executed
prisoner should rot in the ground, or be recycled?
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Social Consensus
The Law
Should the law be taken as the definition of
right and wrong in guiding managers as to the
morality of business conduct? If it is legal,
then surely it cant be wrong?
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The problem is that what is legal and what is
moral are not necessarily the same.
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All that is moral and legal at the same time
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You can't teach me ethics! I learned all my
values .....on my mother's knee
.....in kindergarten
.....at my church
Robert Fulghum
"eating meat is wrong - moral principles
You can move from lower to higher levels of moral
reasoning
"my friends won't like me" - peer pressure
"daddy says it is wrong - fear of punishment
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We spend very little time examining our core
values

• and yet they seem to have a great influence on
  our daily lives

for example, how much time and money do you
spend each week related to your core values
regarding PERSONAL HYGIENE ??
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Honesty Dinner with Jane
Jane Smith, an old school friend, calls you on
the phone to say that she is in town, staying at
the Sheraton for a night while on a business trip
for Ajax Limited, her Halifax-based employer. She
asks if you would like to get together and talk
over old times. You meet in the hotel bar, and
later decide to eat together in the hotel
restaurant. When the bill comes you offer to pay
your share, but Jane says no, she can charge the
meal and drinks to her room. Ajax will pay, she
says. She will pretend you were a business client.
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Jane later contacts you.....

• to ask if you will give her a reference for a job
• to ask for a reference for a job as a financial
  controller where she will be handling a lot of
  cash
• to apply for a job as the financial controller of
  the company that you own

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In business, which comes first? Which has
priority? What happens when you cannot satisfy
these different constituencies?
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ETHICS Greek - proper conduct
ETHNIC people of one's own kind a community of
shared values
ETHOS Greek - the essential character or spirit
of a person or organization the prevalent
sentiment of a community
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lay-offs can cause death
HR ethics example
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HR ethics example monitoring new trends.
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HR ethics example monitoring hand washing in
health care and food preparation.
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HR ethics example managing informal behaviour
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Ethical Analysis or Moral Reasoning

• Stakeholder identification
• End-point ethics, Utilitarianism
• Human Rights
• Justice or Rule-based ethics

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PRIMARY STAKEHOLDERS
(those who have a direct economic stake in the
welfare of the organization)
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SECONDARY STAKEHOLDERS
are affected not so much by the scale of the
organization, but more by its existence. These
stakeholders are not inferior to primary
stakeholders, but have a secondary type of
relationship
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A Utilitarian Analysis
Total Harms
Total Benefits
Do the benefits exceed the harms? At the
end-point, what is the balance?
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Do the total benefits exceed the total harms?
Alternative A Alternative B
Stakeholder 1
Stakeholder 2
Stakeholder 3
Stakeholder 4
Stakeholder 5
Net Outcomes
End-Point Ethics, or Utilitarianism
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Utilitarianism in action the Ford Pinto
The benefit is the saving of 180 lives _at_ 200,000
per life 36 million
The cost is 11 per car x 11 million Pintos
121 million
As the cost of 121 million outweighed the social
benefit of 36 million, Ford concluded that
improving the Pinto design would not be
profitable for Ford, nor for society in general.
Ford managers decided to go ahead with production
of the Pinto as designed.
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Utilitarianism at the Meat Counter
A dead happy pig is better than a dead miserable
pig!
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Automatic Vehicle Speed Control
Global satelite positioning systems (GPS) are now
widely available to be fitted to automobiles.
Any car can know its own position to within a few
meters. It is theoretically feasible to modify
current vehicle GPS systems so that the car can
know what the maximum speed limit is for that
precise location The Canadian and UK Governments
are considering a recommendation for making
automobiles automatically compliant with local
speed limits your car would not let you drive
any faster than the local speed limit. It is
estimated that this simple measure would cut road
deaths and injuries by around 60 per year. No
one would be allowed to speed.
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Are Human Rights Protected?
LIBERTY RIGHTS Things that I have that no one
else should take from me
WELFARE RIGHTS Things that I do not have that
someone else should give to me
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Are Human Rights Protected?
LIBERTY The duty not to remove rights, such as
the right to Privacy Free Speech Free
Consent Freedom of Conscience
WELFARE The duty to provide rights, such as the
right to Employment Housing Food Education
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Liberty Rights Personal Time at Work?
Timing Your Visits to the Washroom Workers at
the Gainers meat-packing plant in Edmonton lose
their pay when they go on bathroom breaks.
Company president Larry Harding said the
personal relief program was instituted in
January 1994 because management felt that
employees were taking advantage of bathroom and
phone privileges. Each of Gainers 850 employees
must ask a supervisor for permission to leave
work outside lunch or coffee breaks. The typical
Gainers worker earns 12 an hour and is docked 60
cents for every minute he or she is absent. If
the worker is away for more than 20 minutes a
week, he or she is temporarily suspended.
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• Welfare Rights Do We Have a Right to a Job?
• Loggers from North Vancouver Island protesting
  the creation of 23 new parks on Vancouver Island
  which threaten their right to their jobs
• Coal miners in Sydney, N.S. argue against the
  closure of their mines

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Are Other Rights Protected?

• Future Generations
• Stakeholders in Different Cultures
• Animals
• Plants
• Ecological Systems
• The Earth

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Late 20th Century Trends

• The evolution of rights issues
• The collapse of paternalism (e.g. not telling
  someone that they have cancer it is best that
  Aunt Betty not know)
• The emergence of animal rights e.g. the Body
  Shop, Cirque de Soleil, attacks on animal
  transport in UK

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Justice or Rule Ethics
Are the harms and benefits fairly and justly
distributed across the affected stakeholders? Is
it fair?
RAWL's THEORY of JUSTICE If you were to design a
system of distribution of the benefits and harms
across the stakeholders without knowing in
advance which stakeholder you would be, then how
would you want the harms and benefits to be
distributed?
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Justice or Rule Ethics
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Money for Nothing
Its just like money for nothing! exclaimed
Sally with a laugh as she put her glass back on
the bar. I cant believe my luck. 15,000 for
one days work, its just crazy!. Sally was a
consultant who writes computer software for
accounting systems. She was celebrating after
having received a contract to design a new system
for a client who was under the impression that
such a system takes about 2 months of design
work to complete. Sally was jubilant They dont
know that I designed an identical system for one
of their competitors only a few weeks ago. All I
have to do is to dust off that package, change
the clients name, and thats it. One days work
at the most! Isnt it great?
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A Framework for Ethical Analysis of Business
Decisions
Who are the affected stakeholders?
What are the outcomes for each stakeholder of the
proposed solution to the problem?
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Rule Ethics Are the harms and benefits fairly
and justly distributed?
End Point Ethics Do the total benefits
exceed the total harms?
Rights Are human rights protected?
Social Contract Ethics Are the stakeholders
willing partners, ready to swap positions with
each other?
Test of Disclosure How will the solution look if
headlined in the newspaper?
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My latest research
The Debate over the Prohibition of Romance in the
Workplace
Journal of Business Ethics??
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Banning workplace romance
Protects the rights of female employees to not be
subjected to post-romance harassment, but at the
cost of eliminating per 1,000 romances
440 marriages 230 long-term relationships 330
short-term relationships of which 1 or 2 result
in post-romance harassment
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