Consider the theories presented in this article below. What do you think? Are the decisions that you typically make consistent with what you would have predicted you would do?

Organizational Ethics and the Ethical Decision-Making Process Think back to recent events when people making unethical decisions grabbed the headlines. How did auditors approve the books of Enron and Lehman Brothers? How did feeder funds sell Bernard Madoff's investments? We would never act as they did, we think. We operate under a higher standard. But the fact is that while we like to think of ourselves as fair, moral, and lawful, recent science shows us that we are quite capable of committing unethical acts, or approving of the dishonest acts of others, even as we believe we are doing the right thing. Research over the last two decades has documented that good people do bad things without being aware that they are doing anything wrong. Most ethicists define ethics to involve intentional action. In fact, we studied three individual approaches to making ethical decisions - (1) the conventional approach, (2) the principles approach and (3) the ethical tests approach. Each of these approaches focuses on the intent of an individual when he or she makes a decision. However, if unethical actions are occurring without intent, we need to solve those problems as well.

Recognizing why we do this and how we can get out of the trap is the subject of the book, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do About It, by Max H. Bazerman, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, a professor of business ethics at the University of Notre Dame. In short, there is a gap between intended and actual behavior, according to the authors. The rapidly developing field of behavioral ethics has described a decision-making process whereby we recognize what we should dogive equal weight to job candidates of all races, for examplebut in the end do what we want to dohire candidates from certain groups. The "want" selfthat part of us which behaves according to self-interest and, often, without regard for moral principlesis silent during the planning stage of a decision but typically emerges and dominates at the time of the decision. Not only will your self-interested motives be more prevalent than you think, but they likely will override whatever "moral" thoughts you have. If you find yourself thinking, "I'd never do that" and "Of course I'll choose the right path," it's likely your planning efforts will fail, and you'll be unprepared for the influence of self-interest at the time of the decision.

Thus, we have ethical blind spots and these influence our decisions. Blind Spots include having biases without knowing that you have these biases, overclaiming credit without meaning to do so, being affected by conflicts of interest, and favoring an in-groupsuch as universities often do when they give preferential treatment to the children of alumni. All these unethical actions can occur without anyone realizing that they are doing anything wrong. Later, when we recollect the decision, our should self re-emerges and we tend to gloss over the fact that our actions were not in line with our predictions and self- image. One useful way to prepare for the onslaught of the "want" self is to think about the motivations that are likely to influence you at the time you make a decision, as Tenbrunsel and her colleagues have demonstrated in their book. Drawing on a sexual harassment study that they conducted, participants were asked to predict how they would react if a job interviewer asked questions that qualified as sexual harassment. Participants who were induced to think about the motivation they likely would experience at the time of the decisionthe desire to get the jobwere significantly less likely to predict that they would confront the harasser and more likely to predict that they would stay silent (just as those in the actual situation did) than were those who were not asked to think about the motivation they would experience at the time of the decision. As this study suggests, thinking about your motivations at the time of a decision can help bring the "want" self out of hiding during the planning stage and thus promote more accurate predictions.

There is strong evidence of the overwhelming power of organizational climates on individual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Research indicates that an organizations ethical work climate can motivate us in ways that we may not have anticipated and overrides many of the individual factors that we commonly think influence decisions and behaviors. Further, as the chapter indicates, a survey of over 1,500 Harvard Business Review readers found that the behavior of superiors is the number one factor that influences unethical decisions and behaviors. Thus, why you may predict what you should do, what you want to do is more likely to be influenced by the behavior of your superiors than your use of ethical theory, etc. Hence, as the title of this course indicates, this course is about business ethics, not individual ethics. Even Lawrence Kohlberg, the pioneer of the cognitive moral development field, recognized the influence of group forces over the individuals ethical decision making, stating, Individual moral action usually takes place in a social or group context and that . . . context usually has a profound influence on the moral decision making of individuals. If we recognize the strong influence of organizational climate in conjunction with Kohlbergs observation that most adults make moral judgments at his level 2, we can see why organizational members are so compliant with their bosses demands or even mere suggestions.

One major misunderstanding in studying business ethics is to assume that a coherent ethical corporate culture will evolve through individual and interpersonal relationships. Because ethics is often viewed as an individual matter, many people reason that the best way to develop an ethical culture is to provide character education to employees or to hire individuals with good character and sensitize them to ethical issues, and that ethical conduct then will develop through companywide agreement and consensus. The only way to ensure consistent decisions that represent all the parties interested in an organization is to require ethical policies. However, current ethics programs and policies are limited, due to the limited attention given to bounded ethicalityor the ways in which good people do bad things without knowing that they are doing so. Thus, organizations must monitor how they are creating policies, institutions, structures, and incentives that increase the likelihood of bounded ethicality. They also must examine how corporate culture contributes to bounded ethicality. For example, when industries allow conflicts of interest to remain, the leaders are responsible for the boundedly unethical actions that follow.

Consider what effect corporate policies have on an individual's decisions. Consider what effect one's superiors have on an individual's decisions. Finally, note that an individual has a legal obligation to follow a company's policies (unless the company is directing the employee to commit an illegal act), even if the employee's individual ethics would lead them to make a different decision. This week concludes with a review of the Ethical Decision Making Process. This process combines all the material that we have studied thus far in the class. The purpose of the process is to help you prepare for ethical dilemmas that may occur in the future. As noted above, it is important to think about the motivations that may influence your behavior before the situation occurs. We need to be prepared for the want self, which, while hidden during the planning stages, often dominates at the time of the decision. It is also very useful to think about what you hope doesnt happen and practicing the response you would like to give will help you confront the want self that will rear up at the time of the decision. One important difference between the way we think about decisions that are going to happen (the prediction phase) and the way we think about decisions we have to make immediately is that our thinking is much more abstract in the prediction phasefocused on what principles should guide our behaviorthan it is in the decision phase. Thinking more abstractly at the time of the decision, then, is one way to give voice to your should self. Temptation to eat something you feel you shouldnt, for example, can actually be reduced by shifting attention toward more abstract thinking, imagining that the food is actually a picture rather than thinking about how good the food would taste. Similarly, when faced with an ethical dilemma, thinking about the values and principles that you want to guide your actions will make the should self more powerful. Envisioning the eulogy that others would write about you can be useful. Based on the decision you are about to make, what principles would others say guided your actions?

Does that correspond to what you hope they would say? Thus, we use hypothetical cases in order to practice such decision-making and, hopefully, to aid us in thinking more abstractly at the time of an actual decision. The process first asks you to identify the ethical dilemma and then consider the various alternative courses of action that you could take. Be sure you include all possible alternatives, even ones you don't like or don't believe will work, since such influences will show up later in the structured decision making process. We then must consider the economic, legal and ethical motivations and outcomes of a given alternative. When considering the ethical dimension of the decision (including ethical influences and outcomes), we must consider how corporate policy and culture will impact the outcome. The video that is posted on the Ethical Decision Making Process shows how a company's policies are built on the moral philosophies and tests that we've studied and how those policies influence an individual's decisions. Finally, the process asks you to reach a conclusion. How should you respond? Is it consistent with how you think you will respond? What actions, if any, should the organization take to prevent either intentional or unintentional unethical outcomes?