Question

Discuss is it possible to be fair and ethical in every decision? Why or why not? In general do you believe managers and organizations are in their nature fair and ethical or is fairness and ethicalness byproducts of mandates or its' self interest to avoid the negative consequences of being unfair and unethical? Why or Why not? For example left to an organizations own devices with no mandate: Would organizations look to pay a fair wage or lower wages / less than minimum wage? Would an organization seek to be more diverse? Would an organization be good stewards of the environment? etc.

Answer 1

Although the considerations might feel pessimistic, we have solid arguments for business organizations showing time after time that profit holds the biggest position in their vision. We can take Walmart as the prime example where continually new matters of ethical concerns are raised from minimum working wage to lower degree of concern for employee safety and if we compare the considerations with any of the other competitors like Target, although the initial assumptions would be similar, the fact that one company clearly focuses more on price leadership than the other means that if there were no policies in place to prevent exploitation, we would have minimal consideration.

I do however believe that it is possible to be fair and ethical in every decision we make, the consideration and the results would, however, have to match with utilitarian criteria. What this means is that while not everyone might be equally benefited from the decision, it would still be fair if the majority is satisfied with it. Ethics is one of the branches where individuals' considerations play a large role. What might be considered unethical by one, might be an SOP for another. This is where we need to consider ethics from a universal belief standpoint. Yes, paying employees less than minimum wage is unethical, and yes not being diverse or being selective with the recruits can all add to the factors that we can account for as a downside of the external business climate. We do however also have to consider that a company such as Walmart, needs to keep the wages minimum in order to ensure a lower per-unit cost so that the greater population can be served.

Both the opinions are debatable and we need to consider choosing a side before assigning the causes, and in doing so, we would eventually introduce bias into our thought process.

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