Resolving Ethical Dilemmas in Business Essay

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Business Ethics

An ethical dilemma is defined as a situation where "an agent has moral reasons for doing two different actions, but where doing both of those two actions in not possible" (McConnell, 2014). Businesses often find themselves in what they believe to be moral dilemmas, if only because of the way that they are framing the issue. In the first scenario, there is no ethical dilemma for James. He perceives that he could jeopardize his security, yet ethics hotlines are intended to be anonymous. Further, accounting fraud is a criminal activity, and the company stands to lose substantially if that fraud was discovered. James' fears are therefore irrational -- as in the Enron case once the fraud is discovered, James will lose his job anyway. His only choice to preserve his future is to utilize the hotline, or to otherwise report the irregularities.

In the second scenario, the company does have a dilemma, and it arises because of a lack of concrete information. The recall concept has arisen largely because there is a thought that the toy could bring harm to a child. This has yet to be proven -- indeed, proving it would probably imply bringing harm to a child -- but at the same time the company willingly losing money over its key holiday season over a perceived risk that may well be overblown is not the greatest decision-making either. The company in the second scenario has to learn more about the actual risk that its toys pose to children, rather than making a decision on some hypothetical, perceived risk Facts make for good ethical decision making, not speculation.

In the real world, there are many examples of companies that face ethical dilemmas. Often, the dilemma arises because of how the ethics of a situation are framed. When Apple faced controversy over Foxconn, the controversy was driven by people who had never been inside a Foxconn factory, never talked to workers there, had never been to China in all likelihood, and were applying Western contexts and values to a completely different company and culture. The company was faced more with a public relations dilemma than a moral dilemma, despite intensive media coverage (Bilton, 2014).

Not all dilemmas are genuine dilemmas -- some are driven by lack of knowledge, information or by logical fallacies.

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One genuine dilemma involves disclosure of potentially damaging information. An anecdote with respect to this comes from a company called Fermata Entertainment. An associate, Binta Niambi Brown, was closing a deal with a client when some information surfaced that could be potentially scuttled the deal (Giang, 2015). The senior partner was unavailable, so Brown was faced with the ethical dilemma. Revealing the information, if it scuttled the deal, would be damaging both to her company and to her career. However, no disclosing the information would be essentially committing a fraud on the client, who would be making a deal under false pretenses. There is no particular legal guideline with the respect to the disclosure of information when making private contracts, so in that sense this is strictly a moral dilemma.

The resolution was brought about by revealing the information to the client. The client was still willing to work with the company. The deal negotiations continued, and the problem was ultimately resolved and a deal signed. Brown therefore did not lose the deal, and being honest with the client paid dividends for years thereafter, both personally for her and for her company was well.

Brown's dilemma was essentially one that pit the good of herself and her company versus the good of the client. This is a different type of dilemma than, say, in scenario #1 where the choice is between the good of one person versus the good of many. There are different ways of evaluating ethical dilemmas, including deontological ethics and consequentialism. Consequentialism is where the decision is weighed by its consequences (Sinnott-Armstrong, 2015). In this case, Brown would have viewed the potentially negative consequences to her career and to her company versus the negative consequences to the client if she did not reveal the information. She chose not to use this method of resolving the ethical dilemma. In part, one of the challenges of consequentialism is that the consequences are usually not known. It can be very difficult to guess, sometimes, what the consequences of an action are. For Brown, the initial thought was that she would lose the deal, but in the….....

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