Ethical Decision Making by Individuals Essay

Existing theoretical models of individual honorable decision making in organizations place little or no emphasis on characteristics of the good consequence itself. This article (a) proposes an get by-contingent model containing a new set of variables called lesson warmth (b) using concepts, surmisal, and evidence derived by and large from social psychology, argues that clean intensity influences every component of lesson end making and behavior (c) offers four research propositions, and (d) discusses implications of the theory.Conclusions and Implications Existing theoretical models suck up ignored the effect of characteristics of the moral grapple itself on good decision making and behavior in organizations. Taken at face value, these models send word that individuals will decide and be watch in the same manner careless(predicate) of the nature of the moral issue involved.An employee of a drug manufacturer would slang the release of a dangerous drug by his or her fly ing with the same alarm (or lack of alarm) that he or she viewed the theft of a few diskettes from the company supply cabinet by a lumberman employee. The issue-contingent model proposed here explicitly rejects this view and suggests that the moral intensity of the issue itself has a significant effect on moral decision making and behavior at all tips of the process. If this model is establish to eat trial-and-error support, the testing of other models would be significantly affected.Controlling for issue traits would bring forth an integral part of a meaningful test of Trevinos (1986) person-situation interactionist model, for casing the relative importance of personal factors and situational factors might vary considerably, from issue to issue. Similarly, issue charucteristics could alter the balance of teleological and deontological considerations in the moral evaluation stage of Hunt and Vitells (1986) general theory model of marketing ethics.mayhap the most authorised p otential impact of an empirical finding that ethical decision making and behavior are issue contingent involves the pertinence of the models themselves. Moral intensity is expected to play a major position in the recognition of moral issues and, hence, in the actual engagement of moral decision-making processes instead of, or in addition to, other decision-making schemata. Simply stated, the detail of moral decision-making and behavior processes become irrelevant if the person does not accept that he or she is dealing with a moral issue.Future models of ethical decision making should include round consideration of the effect of the moral agents failure to recognize the moral issue. Moral intensity is also relevant to the general applicability of Kohlbergs (1976) theory of cognitive moral development. If moral development is issue contingent, as this article and some emerging empirical evidence suggest, then Kohlbergs theory would have to be substantially revised, and much of the research based on it would have to be reappraised.Future research based on his developmental theory would have to control for traits of the moral issues involved. From a practical point of view, issue contingency is important to normative judgments of moral decisions and of the people who make them. more of the elements of moral intensity (magnitude of consequences, probability of effect, temporal immediacy, and concentration of effect) are presently related to judgments of the importance of moral issues.If these elements of moral intensity are found to be positively linked to moral behavior, it can be think that people generally behave better when the moral issue is important than they do when it is unimportant. Regardless of a persons views regarding the overall moral tenor of society or its alleged decline in new-fashioned years, he or she could easily be encouraged by the finding that peoples best moral behavior is inspired by issues of substantial importance.