Business 303 Sheppard

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Business 303 Sheppard

• Business Society Ethics, Week 8
• Organizational Ethics

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BUSINESS ETHICS WEEK 8 MAIN QUESTIONS

1. What are the individual failures that lead to
   organizational problems with the truth?
2. What is a lie?
3. What would make lying acceptable?
4. Is business a special case?
5. Does it pay to lie?
6. Are privacy secrecy a special case?

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1a. Autocracy Symptoms / Side-effects (1 of 6)

• Workaholism
• Not just a work ethic
• Relations to others
• Business schools?
• Physical psychological harm
• Ethics
• Fixed focus on work lends itself to faulty moral
  decision making. A success at any cost!
  attitude prevails. Others are seen as means to a
  desired end.
• The obsession is justified by pointing out
  how success at work makes the individual a major
  contributor to the greater good.

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1b. Autocracy Symptoms / Side-effects (2 of 6)

• Groupthink (1/2)
• Grandiosity
• Management will solve it
• Scapegoating
• Ethics Loyalty
• Over-conforming nature the groupthink process
  lowers the quality of moral decision making.
• The groupthink process internalizes its own
  expertise and fails to assess its own moral
  position from outsiders perspective.

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Groupthink (2/2) Principles to reduce it
1b. Autocracy Symptoms / Side-effects (3 of 6)

• Foster critical thinking in members
• Dont proselytize about a preferred outcome
• Assign the devil's advocate role to 1 or 2
  (Their duty challenge assumptions reveal
  costs)
• Insist upon full open participation by all
• Emphasize reality testing over consensus as a
  test of the solution to be implemented
• Have a second-look meeting
• Foster, at set times, the groups examination of
  its problem-solving processes

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1c. Autocracy Symptoms / Side-effects (4 of 6)

• Escalation (1/2)
• Love of conflict
• Self-destructiveness
• Denial
• Ethics
• An entrapped administrator in an escalation
  processes fails to deal with threatening
  situations since these will prove that a previous
  decision by the decision maker was wrong.
• In covering up, decision maker plays loose
  with the facts

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1c. Autocracy Symptoms / Side-effects (5 of 6)
Escalation (2/2) results from

• Situational behavioral entrapment traits
• A prior investment in the pursuit of the goal
• A choice between, getting into or out of a
  situation
• Conditions of uncertainty surrounding the
  decision
• A repeated series of investment decisions.
• The behavioral or response components
• At each decision, continue debate over future
  steps increases / highlights avoid attract
  features
• Trapped administrators will shift from rational
  econ. to social psych. involvement in the
  situation
• Behavior self-perpetuates as added investments
  increase degree of commitment ?over-commitment

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1d. Autocracy Symptoms / Side-effects (6 of 6)

• Diffusion of responsibility
• Result of autocracy
• Indifference
• Ethics
• Tragedy of commons
• Case of WorldCom 615-619
• Kitty Genovese _at_ Kew Gardens
• Breann Voth _at_ the Coquitlam River?
• Moral dilemmas in business are particularly
  susceptible to diffusion of responsibility.
• Few see their prime task in the firm as
  attending to the moral portfolio. Attention often
  lapses or is taken seriously only when it becomes
  a crisis.

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2. A Short Story (or what is a lie?) (1 of 3)

• A certain abstemious ascetic was known for
  his probity, propriety, asceticism, and worship,
  and became famous for this.
• He feared the tyrannical sovereign and decided
  to run away from his city.
• The sovereigns command went out that he is to
  be searched for and arrested wherever he is
  found.
• He could not leave from any
  one of the citys
  gates and was
  apprehensive lest he fall into
  the hands of the
  sovereigns men.

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2. A Short Story (or what is a lie?) (2 of 3)

• So he went and found a dress that is worn by
  vagabonds, put it on, carried a cymbal in his
  hand,
• pretended to be drunk early at night, and
  came out to the gate of the city singing to the
  accompaniment of that cymbal.
• The gatekeeper said to him, Who are you? I
  am so and so, the ascetic? he said in a jocular
  vein.
• The gatekeeper thought he was
  poking fun at him and did not
  interfere with
  him. So he saved
  himself without having lied in
  what he said.
• -Alfarabi, Platos Laws

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2. A Short Story (or what is a lie?) (2 of 3)

• Really, did he lie?
• Is there a falsehood involved?
• When does a misleading statement become a lie?

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3. Three thinkers on Honesty 58

• Aristotle Truth as Virtue
• Kant Lies as a violation of the
• Categorical Imperative
• Mill Lying as having long term bad
• consequences

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4. Does it Pay to Lie? (1/3)

• Business Bluffing?
• Is there a special case for Business?
• Built-in obsolescence
• Pressure to deceive
• The poker analogy
• We dont make the laws
• Cast illusions aside

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4. Does it Pay to Lie? (2/3)

• Adversarial Relationships 67
• Internal and External costs 68
• Is it ever right to lie 69-72?
• The effort ( cost) of lying
• The diminishing of trust
• The duty not to lie

Do you really expect politicians to tell the
truth.
Do you really expect politicians to tell the
truth.
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4. Does it Pay to Lie? (3/3)

• Types of Lies 71
• Less than the whole truth
• The biased truth with self interest
• Idealizing ones own product or service
• Misleading information
• True statements intended to be misinterpreted
• Stating obvious falsehoods
• Stating vicious falsehoods
• Planned responses 85
• The zombie image 71
• Groupthink

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5. The Logic of Trust

• Game theory and the Prisoners' Dilemma

• Transactions Cost
• Tit for tat (Axelrod)

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6. Privacy, Secrecy Transparency (1/2)

• Definition of privacy 73
• Deception versus
  Secrecy 75, 77
• Equality
• Partial individual control
• Full control

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6. Privacy, Secrecy Transparency (2/2)

• Working on transparency
• 3 types of feedback 79
• Evaluative
• Interpretive
• Descriptive
• What makes feedback effective 79-81
• The Potemkin village problem
• Potemkin village as any hollow or false
  construct, physical or figurative, meant to hide
  an undesirable or potentially damaging situation
• Transparency International 88
• The need for mutual trust beyond law 65
• ISO to the Rescue?

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7a. Problems (1 of 2) Why Lies Fail 85-91

• Betrayal by clues
• Lack a practiced lie / Poor lie / Body lang.
• Detection apprehension
• Lying about Feelings / Feelings about lying
• Fear of punishment
• Psychopathy
  (Should we train em?)
• Shame versus guilt

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7b. Problems (2 of 2) Can there be too much
trust?

• Types of trust 91-93
• Simple Trust
• Blind Trust
• Authentic Trust
• Dialogue that creates trust 94
• Case 3.3 96 Blindsided by Bankruptcy

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8. Management Gurus Liars?

• The Japan craze of the 1980s
• And the Hollowing out of the Corporation
• Science or a quick fix? 83
• Risk awareness

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9. Solomon on Business Ethics (1 of 2)

• Myth of Amoral (not Immoral) Business
• Business and Ethics dont mix
• Morals are out of place in a profit making world
• Ethical Businesses are successful
• Ethics as a good business practice
• The practice of business ethics for long term
  survival (a professional way of life)
• Be aware of the 3 Cs of Business Ethics
• Compliance with the rules
• Contributions bus. can make to society
• Consequences of business activity

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9. Solomon on Business Ethics (2 of 2)

• Thinking of Ethics as rules of the game
• Consider other peoples well being
• Think as a member of the business community (not
  as an isolated individual)
• Obey, but dont depend solely on the law
• Think of you your corp. as part of society
• Obey moral rules
• Think Objectively (from others perspectives)
• Ask What sort of person would do such a thing
• Respect the customs of others but not at the
  expense of your own ethics

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