Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making: Mental Models, Milgram and the Problem of Obedience
Language: English
Pages: 260
ISBN: 1107442052
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In commerce, many moral failures are due to narrow mindsets that preclude taking into account the moral dimensions of a decision or action. In turn, sometimes these mindsets are caused by failing to question managerial decisions from a moral point of view, because of a perceived authority of management. In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted controversial experiments to investigate just how far obedience to an authority figure could subvert his subjects' moral beliefs. In this thought-provoking work, the authors examine the prevalence of narrow mental models and the phenomenon of obedience to an authority to analyse and understand the challenges which business professionals encounter in making ethical decisions. Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making proposes processes - including collaborative input and critique - by which individuals may reduce or overcome these challenges. It provides decision-makers at all levels in an organisation with the means to place ethical considerations at the heart of managerial decision-making.
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Familiar; and, somehow, they benefit us. Yet, mental models, even – and sometimes, especially – those that make us feel comfortable, happy and productive in our roles as employees, managers, and leaders, can devolve into barriers to ethical decision-making when they discourage attention to the fundamental vulnerabilities of our own processes. In this chapter, we propose a broad conceptual division of the ethical decision-making processes into five steps in order more precisely to identify the.
Requires that we expose ourselves to unfamiliar, even conflicting, ways of seeing the situation at hand and our own roles within it. Ethical decision-making has further risks or vulnerabilities, as well. It does not result in certain or precise knowledge, but in contestable claims, as others might disagree not only with our judgment about the best course of action, but with the selection of facts, points of view, and alternative solutions that we have considered in the deliberative process. As.
Theoretical framework or system of ideas to dominate our worldview. Ideologues provide an example of an extreme form of mental modeling in which experiences that cannot be fitted within a preconceived worldview or theory are ignored or rejected. Their extremism serves to remind us of the dangers of mistaking mental models, which are inherently partial and incomplete, for reality itself. Consider Reverend Harold Camping’s widely publicized (and just as widely dismissed) prediction that the Rapture.
Rawls’ “veil of ignorance,” see his A Theory of Justice (1971), chapter 3, section 24, “The Veil of Ignorance,” pp. 136–41. Egocentric bias, the “veil of ignorance,” . . . 151 from those surveyed? This is a very complicated question. Those who say yes to flipping the switch but no to pushing the man in front of the trolley seem at a loss in making good sense of their shift. But all seem concerned about the loss of innocent lives, not just their own self-interest. Of course, some may be.
Following case of a critical response of a real-life engineer to the hypothetical choices presented by an ethics training video illustrates the productivity of moral imagination. The video Gilbane Gold is a popular case study used to dramatize the ethical dilemma of whistleblowing in the context of a crisis, offering a fictional portrayal of a situation in which a young environmental engineer is trying to decide whether or not to blow the whistle on his company for covering up its failure to.