DESARROLLO SOCIAL Y HUMANO PARA LA PRODUCTIVIDAD

Instructions

1. Identify any criteria you see as a veto item. Circle Y. Otherwise N. 2. Identify any item you see as a trigger item. Circle Y. Otherwise N. 3. Identify any criteria you see as a reject item. Circle Y. Otherwise N.

4. Answer each question. Circle + for a positive answer or – for a negative answer.

5. Ignore any criterion you have rejected.

6. Total the number of circles in the positive and negative columns

A veto item is any criterion that is so important to you that if your decision and plan scores negatively on it you will reject the proposal even if, overall, it scores more positives than negatives.

A trigger item is any criterion that is so important to you that if your deci- sion scores positively on it you will accept the proposal even if, overall, it scores more negatives than positives.

Ask the following questions of your

proposed decision and plan of action Reject Veto Trigger Positive Negative Virtue ethics

1 Light-of-day test. Would I feel

good or bad if others (friends,

family, colleagues) were to –

know of my decision and action?

2 Virtuous mean test. Does my

decision add to, or detract from, the creation of a good

Y

life by finding a balance between justice, care and other virtues?

Deontological ethics

3 Veil of ignorance/Golden Rule.

If I were to take the place of one of those affected by my

–

decision and plan would I regard the act positively or negatively?

4 Universality test. Would it

be a good thing or a bad thing if my decision and plan

were to become a universal –

principle applicable to all in similar situations, even to myself?

Let’s start with the reject column. We think that all the criteria are relevant apart from the ‘virtuous mean’ test that we have excluded on the grounds that it is not the purpose of businesses to define or implement the good life. We have checked the ‘Y’ response for this test and so we ignore it for the rest of the analysis. In the veto column we have checked the ‘consequential test’. This is because, we think, if the decision to pay bribes would lead to more harm than good then we would not pay the bribes no matter how good the option might score on all the other criteria. In the ‘trigger’ column we could have checked the ‘self-interest test’ because if the option to pay the bribe would meet that criterion we would accept the option even if it failed on all the other criteria, but we decided not to.

We can now move on to assess the option against each of the criteria/tests in turn.

• Light-of-day test – If we paid the bribe we would try to keep it secret from

friends and colleagues (who were not complicit in the act) because we would feel a bit bad about it . Our actions would not appear virtuous to others. The option scores negatively on this criterion.

• Virtuous means test – Unsurprisingly, for we are decent people at heart, we do

not think supporting corruption represents an aspect of the good life. Nor do we think it represents a proper mean between the two extremes of a puritan refusal to give small tokens and hospitality and the other extreme of blatant bribe giving. However, we also do not think that it is the job of businesses to

Ask the following questions of your

proposed decision and plan of action Reject Veto Trigger Positive Negative Ethical learning & growth

5 The communitarian test.

Would my action and plan

help or hinder individuals –

and communities to develop ethically?

6 Self-interest test. Do the

decision and plan meet or

+

defeat my own best interests and values?

Consequentialist ethics 7 Consequential test. Are the

anticipated consequences of

Y +

my decision and plan positive or negative?

8 The discourse test. Have the

debates about my decision

and plan been well or badly –

conducted? Have the appropriate people been involved?

provide role models for virtue or to promote conceptions of the good life. This test has been rejected and so is not scored.

• Veil of ignorance/Golden Rule – Certainly our competitors would think it unfair

if we got the contract through bribery. If we were to decide this issue under the conditions of the veil of ignorance, not knowing whether we would be the bribe receiver, the bribe giver or a member of the general community whose welfare is damaged by corruption, we might sensibly choose against bribery. We would score the option to pay bribes negatively on this test.

• Universality test – We think that it would be a bad thing if bribe paying were to

become the norm in international business. The bribe paying option therefore scores negatively on this criterion.

• Consequential test – If we pay the bribe the consequences will be good for our

company and lots of employees, who might otherwise have been made redun- dant, will keep their jobs with all the economic and social benefits that will accrue from that. The products we are selling will benefit the country that buys them. There may be some disadvantages in that we will be reinforcing the corrupt practices of that country but this downside is insignificant com- pared with the benefits. We therefore score the option positive on this test. As the option has not scored negatively the veto is not brought into action. If it had been activated the option would have been rejected without any further consideration.

• Self-interest test – Yes. If we pay the bribe and get the contract we will be in

for a big performance bonus and our promotion prospects will be much increased. So the bribe paying option scores positively on this option.

• The communitarian test – The payment of bribes would reinforce a culture that

accepted bribery and this would not be good for the ethical development of either individuals or of the society at large.

• The discourse test – Because of the sensitivity of the issue all our discussions about

it with the directors have been conducted huggermugger and ‘off-the-record’. The discussions have not been open nor have they included as wide a range of inter- ested parties as possible. The option scores negatively on this criterion.

If we now add up the positive and negative scores we have two positives and five negatives. Clearly, we should reject the option to pay the bribe. If having done this we are left with a nagging, intuitive feeling that we should pay the bribe then this implies that really we think that either or both the consequential test and the self-interest test should have been classified as trigger items. In other words as the bribe option scored positively on both these tests we should proceed with the option and ignore the negative ratings on most of the other criteria.

If you use this framework and you end up with an equal balance of positive and negative scores you should reconsider the decisions you made in the veto and trigger columns. If you do not make any changes here that help you clarify the action you should take, then toss a coin.

Although we claimed that this evaluation framework was a way of integrating many ethical perspectives it will have occurred to you that, through the use of the ‘reject’, ‘trigger’ and ‘veto’ options as trump cards that can rule out some eth- ical tests, the framework allows the rejection or prioritisation of ethical positions.

This thought leads us to an alternative approach – to choose one ethical approach and to ignore others, or at least to put the approaches into rank order of preference. Carroll (1990) proposed a simple exercise (Activity 3.10) for people who wish to reflect on the relative importance they give to a range of ethical perspectives. The list of principles he proposed included both normative approaches, methods for thinking about the right response, and norm approaches, which invite a person to accept the values and standards of a partic- ular group. The categorical imperative, the Golden Rule and the utilitarian principle are all methods for normative thinking whereas the disclosure rule, the organisation ethic and the professional ethic concern decisions about which social group one wishes to belong to. These norm-based questions could be seen as an application of a stakeholder analysis.

Here are a number of ‘principles’. Identify your top three and rank them 1, 2, 3 in order of importance/relevance to you and your decision making. Then mark your least relevant 9, 10 and 11.