Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk about How to Do It Right, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 3

DECIDING WHAT'S RIGHT: A PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH

Chapter 2 introduced prescriptive ethical theories, developed by philosophers, which are designed to help individuals decide what they should do in response to ethical dilemmas. But psychology teaches us that people often don't even recognize the ethical dimensions of the situation at hand. And, when they do, they often don't think about it in expected ways. So, this chapter is designed to help you understand how people actually think and what people actually do by introducing the psychological factors—the individual differences and mental processes that influence how people think and behave. It also explains some factors that can keep well-intentioned people from making good ethical decisions and suggests some ways to overcome them. Finally, this chapter introduces relevant new neuroscience research and research on the role of emotions in ethical decision making.

ETHICAL AWARENESS AND ETHICAL JUDGMENT

If a decision maker is to engage in ethical judgment processes (like those discussed in Chapter 2) that will eventually lead to ethical action, she or he must first recognize the ethical nature of the situation at hand.

We refer to this initial step in the ethical decision-making process as ethical awareness. With ethical awareness, a person recognizes that a situation or issue is one that raises ethical concerns and must ...