Assessment Item 1: Individual Academic Essay

Ethical Dilemma # 4: Stuck in the middle?

Introduction

It is important to understand why ethical decisions are made in business and what, if any, factors can influence the processes/procedures and ultimately the consequences of these decisions (Crane and Matten, 2010). All business activities involve some sort of decision-making but how people integrate ethics in that process varies from person to person.

Many employees today are faced with situations that require decisions to be made based on their moral judgment. Our civil engineer was challenged with an ethical dilemma when she was put in a difficult situation with contrasting views to the Director of Public Works.
The civil engineer should strongly campaign for the utilisation of the fill time staff. In doing so the current full time employees are motivated to work harder as they are no longer stuck with the boring tasks and the organisation is spending less of the company’s budget on outside contractors. These are sufficient factors for the civil engineer to go forward with a good argument. Going to the entire management team with the proposal, would be more beneficial than expressing the concerns to only one of the management team as there may be conflicting opinions and would therefore be undemocratic.

Influences

When ethical decisions are made there are quite often factors that can influence the overall outcome. Individual factors obviously differ from person to person, as there is no one human being that thinks exactly the same as another. Each person has individual characteristics and traits that are unique when responding to an ethical dilemma (Crane and Matten, 2010). The situation that is present with the civil engineer and the Director of Public Works appear that they both have differing views on what is ethical and unethical, leading to the disagreement at hand.

There are numerous individual factors that could sway the decision in an organisation when responding to an ethical dilemma. Growing up with certain