1.3 Three frameworks for ethical problem-solving in business and  (Page 10/10)

Pitfalls of public identification

• Action not associated with agent. The most common pitfall is failure to associate the agent and the action.The action may have bad consequences and it may treat individuals with respect but these points are not as important in the contextof this test as what they imply about the agent as a person who deliberately performs such an action.
• Failure to specify moral quality, virtue, or value. Another pitfall is to associate the action and agent butonly ascribe a vague or ambiguous moral quality to the agent. To say, for example, that willfully harming the public is bad fails tozero in on precisely what moral quality this ascribes to the agent. Does it render him or her unjust, irresponsible, corrupt,dishonest, or unreasonable? The virtue list given above will helpto specify this moral quality.

Code of ethics test

• Does the action hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public, i.e., those affected by theaction but not able to participate in its design or execution?
• Does the action maintain faithful agency with the client by not abusing trust, avoiding conflicts ofinterest, and maintaining confidences?
• Is the action consistent with the reputation, honor, dignity, and integrity of the profession?
• Does the action serve to maintain collegial relations with professional peers?

Meta tests

• The ethics and feasibility tests will not always converge on the same solution. There is a complicated answer for why this is the case but the simple version is that the tests do not always agree on a given solution because each test (and the ethical theory it encapsulates) covers a different domain or dimension of the action situation. Meta tests turn this disadvantage to your advantage by feeding the interaction between the tests on a given solution back into the evaluation of that solution.
• When the ethics tests converge on a given solution, this convergence is a sign of the strength and robustnessof the solution and counts in its favor.
• When a given solution responds well to one test but does poorly under another, this is a sign that thesolution needs further development and revision. It is not a sign that one test is relevant while the others are not. Divergencebetween test results is a sign that the solution is weak.

Application exercise

You will now practice the four stages of decision making with a real world case. This case, Risk Assessment, came from a retreat on Business, Science, and Engineering Ethics held in Puerto Rico in December 1998. It was funded by the National Science Foundation, Grant SBR 9810253.

Risk assessment scenario

Part one: problem specification

1. Specify the problem in the above scenario. Be as concise and specific as possible
2. Is your problem best specifiable as a disagreement? Between whom? Over what?
3. Can your problem be specified as a value conflict? What are the values in conflict? Are the moral, nonmoral, or both?

Part two: solution generation

1. Quickly and without analysis or criticism brainstorm 5 to ten solutions
2. Refine your solution list. Can solutions be eliminated? (On what basis?) Can solutions be combined? Can solutions be combined as plan a and plan b?
3. If you specified your problem as a disagreement, how do your solutions resolve the disagreement? Can you negotiate interests over positions? What if your plan of action doesn't work?
4. If you formulated your problem as a value conflict, how do your solutions resolve this conflict? By integrating the conflicting values? By partially realizing them through a value compromise? By trading one value off for another?

Part three: solution testing

1. Construct a solution evaluation matrix to compare two to three solution alternatives.
2. Choose a bad solution and then compare to it the two strongest solutions you have.
3. Be sure to avoid the pitfalls described above and set up each test carefully.

Part four: solution implementation

1. Develop an implementation plan for your best solution. This plan should anticipate obstacles and offer means for overcoming them.
2. Prepare a feasibility table outlining these issues using the table presented above.
3. Remember that each of these feasibility constraints is negotiable and therefore flexible. If you choose to set aside a feasibility constraint then you need to outline how you would negotiate the extension of that constraint.

Problem solving presentation

Shortened presentation for fall 2012

Vigo socio-technical system table and problems

Test rubric fall 2009: problem-solving