In: Operations Management
1. If you had to choose just one of the philosophical approaches discussed in this chapter to guide your decision making (listed below), which would you choose? Why? Or, if you had to rank them from most to least helpful, how would you rank them?
2. Albert Schweitzer (philosopher and mission doctor) said “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” What do you think? How does this relate to the prescriptive approaches listed above?
Answer 1= I would select the philosophical approaches of Focus on duties, obligations, principles. This is due to the fact that every decision has to be made in the view of duties and obligations. For making any ethical decision, it is important that the person must consider his duties and obligations. One should always take care that whether he or she is able to fulfill his duties and obligations related to the job which he or she has been assigned. The decision-maker must not be driven by the moment or the feeling but the decisions are to be based on how well the duty and obligations in hand can be addressed or satisfied.
Principles will also help in this regard as they will make sure that the decision making is done by following the stated principles that will support the decision making.
Answer 2= It is true that happiness is the key to success as once the individual is happy, he or she can focus on the target or the goals. He or she will be single-minded and concentrated and thus all the efforts and attempts will be combined to achieve what has to be accomplished. On the other hand, if the person is not happy, he or she will not be able to focus on the given objective and it may distract him or her from the goal.
This is related to the first approach in the sense that once the person is happy, he will focus his attempts on the key factors while still understanding the consequences of his attempts. He will perform all the actions according to the duties and responsibility and by following all the principles and thus will ensure that all the objectives are fulfilled and thus obtaining the success.