Ethics Essay - Stuck in the Middle

The issue of ethical decision making has become more important in recent years for a variety of reasons. An understanding of ethical decision making in organizations is more significant to the development of organizational science. Managers engage in decision-making behavior affecting the lives and well-being of others. The individual responds to an ethical dilemma with cognitions determined by his or her cognitive moral development stage.

Once everyone who wished to speak had a say, it was time to talk go through the consent calendar. A few of the consents were easily passed with unanimous consent, but one council member, Christopher Armenta, and the vice mayor, Gary Silbiger, had issues with C-5. On the calendar, this agenda item reads as the following, “Approval of Professional Services Agreements with Associated Soils Engineering, Inc., Geo-Environmental, Inc., and Zeiser-Kling Consultants for Geotechnical Engineering and Construction Services.” Councilman Armenta was worried that the council would not have any oversight over the process of awarding geotechnical service agreements to particular firms, and that the amounts given to a particular firm could wind up being an exorbitant amount of money. Vice mayor Silbiger had similar fears.

Directions: Complete the tasks below. Replace the highlighted text with your own answers. Copy and paste your answers to the student comments box in 1.07 and submit for grading.

Roger Berg, the Vice President for Planning of the Lake Corporation, had to recommend a subcontractor for the environmental study project in connection with their planned large resort.  The contract has been decided in principle to be awarded to Ceil Grant, one of their regular subcontractors. However, after a lunch conversation with Del, who represented a larger contractor firm, Roger changed his mind, now recommending Del’s company to take on the project instead. Faced with a situation of moral dilemma, he has to decide what would be the right thing to

As the Director of Long Island and Cypress Hills National Cemeteries, I prepare, justify, and administer a combined operating of $9,259,500.00. Planning and evaluating contracting and procurements can be difficult if not coordinated and monitored correctly. LINC is currently under a large renovation period there are 12 multi-year contracts being managed valued at over $25 million. I oversee three National Shrine Concrete Beam System contracts. The first at Cypress Hills National Cemetery valued at $6,324,083.66, a second contract at Long Island National Cemetery valued at $3,686,856.50 and a third valued at $3,382,940. In addition to these Raise and Realign Millennium contracts valued at $13.3 million, I manage several internal maintenance contracts. The grave repair and fine-tune alignment contracts valued at $715,700.00. LINC’s mowing contract valued at $810,152.00, a mowing contract at Cypress Hills valued at $1,001,355.60, Headstone Setting and cleaning contract valued at $339,815.00, and a trimming contract for Cypress Hills and Long Island valued at $35,661.00. I maintain oversight and manage these contracts through my staff; I have five staff members that are Contracting Officer Representatives (COR). Though they are managing each contract, I conduct contract review and inspections on a weekly basis. To accomplish this I require each COR to complete and forward to me a weekly observation sheet. This sheet tracks all actions related to each contract on a weekly basis to ensure any errors by the contractors are documents and retained. I personally manage two of the larger contracts to provide my employees with a positive example of how to manage contracts. Managing a large number of contracts has provided me with the

The question of what is truly the nature of justice remains an unanswered question as noted by Bertrand Russell in ‘The History of Western Philosophy’ wherein he notes that Socrates was unable to provide a convincing rebuttal of Glaucon’s arguments on justice, and neither have all the social philosophers since, been able to do. Amartya Sen, in his book ‘The Idea of Justice’, has

Recognizing that not all decisions are ethical, one’s moral principles acts as a guide for their behavior and decision making. Therefore, ethics do (and should) play a major role in decision making.

An ethical dilemma is an incident that causes us to question how we should react based on our beliefs. A decision needs to be made between right and wrong. I have experienced many ethical dilemmas in my lifetime, so I know that there is no such thing as an ethical dilemma that only affects one person. I also know that some ethical dilemmas are easier to resolve than others are. The easy ones are the ones in which we can make decisions on the spot. For example, if a cashier gives me too much change, I can immediately make a decision to either return the money or keep it. Based on Kant’s, categorical imperative there are two criteria for determining moral right and wrong. First, there is universalizability, which states, “the person’s

Management constitute amongst major components of a company, organization or a business. As such, management oversees employees interactions with their supervisors and also control of people within a particular organization. Also, it includes critical and ethical decision-making process so as to address various ethical dilemmas experienced by employees while undertaking their respective assigned duties within the company. Ethical dilemmas are hereby to stay as issues usually arise now and then and place a variety of options that bear different repercussions. Therefore, it calls for ethical and critical decision-making skills so as to make the most appropriate option that bears more benefits in comparison to other options presented. While making ethical decisions, it 's substantially important to play heed to a certain ethical decision-making theory. This would enable an individual making the decision to ripe best possible consequences rather than living to regret. Moreover, ethical decision making is typically important in business as making a wrong decision may result not only in huge losses but also poor relationship amongst colleagues and miserable life for employee(s) working in a particular company or business in question.

Making consistently ethical decisions is difficult. Most decisions have to be made in the context of economic, professional and social pressures, which can sometimes challenge our ethical goals and conceal or confuse the moral issues. In addition, making ethical choices is complex because in many situations there are a multitude of competing interests and values. Other times, crucial facts are unknown or ambiguous. Since many actions are likely to benefit some people at the expense of others, the decision maker must prioritize competing moral claims and must be proficient at predicting the likely consequences of various choices. An ethical person often chooses to do more than the law requires and less than the law allows.

If there is a situation of mistrust, raising the frequency of interchange meeting from one meeting per month up to one meeting per week is important. But the negative thing of this change is the huge amount of paperwork. Meetings could also be postponed which leads to a time delay. Furthermore, to improve the interchange of information between the contractor and the customer, the contractor should place some stuff to the company of the customer.

The word “ethics” comes from Greek ethikas meaning character. Today, we use ethics to describe the normative standard of behavior. The history of philosophical ethics has been broken up into five rational methods: Virtue, Traditional, Modern, and Post-Modern Ethics. Within these periods, the philosophy of ethics changed along with the changes being made within society.

In their personal and professional lives, people can and, unfortunately, sometimes do go against their moral and ethical standards. Ethical standards are what it means to be a good person, the social rules that govern our behavior. Ethics in business is essentially the study of what constitutes the right and wrong or the good or bad behavior in the workplace environment. A business is an organization whose objective is to provide goods or services for profit. The organization has a group of people that work together to achieve a common purpose. The moral challenges that these men and women face each day along with a whole range of problems that could occur, are why ethics plays such an important

Negotiating Contract conditions – In my opinion it is project manger’s responsibility to negotiate with contractors regarding payment, quality assurance, Cost price per unit for execution of deliverables, and time bondage.

Boatright, J. R. (2009). Equality, Liberty, and virtue. In Ethics and the conduct of business(6th ed., p. 79). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall.