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- Moral ecologies in corporate
Breakdown of table
- Moral ecologies can be categorized according to a series of considerations. The table above focuses on five.
- First, managers and engineers occupy distinct roles and participate differently in the decision making process. Managers play the
line role. They collect information to make decisions that govern the day to day operations of the corporation. Engineers are hired as
staff employees. They provide technical information to decision makers but do not participate directly in the decision making process. This raises difficulties when engineers, for technical or ethical reasons, disagree with the decisions taken by their managers. The line and staff roles channel decision making and constrain dissent.
- Moral ecologies can also be typed according to the centrality of ethical considerations in the corporation's goals, charter, operations, and even identity. Ethical considerations can range from (1) playing a
central role, (2) to playing an important but subordinate role, (3) to being marginalized as irrelevant
side constraints . The importance a corporation places on ethics colors all the other categories mentioned in the table above. If ethics is central to a corporation then it plays a central role in the decision making process, guides the allocation of praise and blame, determines the nature and amount of information shared in the decision making process, and determines how an organization treats dissent and disagreement.
- A corporation's conception of responsibility is revealed through the ways in which it allocates praise and blame. Significant differences arise between the way finance companies assign praise and blame and the ways these are allocated in quality or customer driven companies. Again, this related to the roles played by engineers and managers and the centrality of ethics in the corporation's governance.
- Ethical problems arise when crucial information is withheld from the decision making process. Hence, the flow of communication and the kinds of situations in which communication flow is disrupted helps to characterize a moral ecology. For example, the Hitachi report asserts that communication between managers and engineers breaks down predictably within finance-driven companies. This breakdown is grounded in the characteristics of the finance-driven moral ecology, especially in differences between the managerial and engineering roles and the extent to which managers and engineers participate in decision making.
- Finally, moral ecologies can be classified according to how they treat dissent and dissenting professional opinions. Dissent is less likely in quality than in finance-driven companies. While finance-driven companies treat dissent as disloyalty, quality- and customer-driven driven companies treat dissent as a stage in the process of reaching consensus.
Finance-driven companies
- Finance-driven companies place financial objectives at the very heart of their constitutive objectives and corporate identity. For example, such companies are focused on maximizing returns for investors.
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Manager and Engineer Roles and Participation in Decision Making Process : Managers play the line role in that they make the decisions that drive the day to day operations of the corporation. They bear responsibility for the consequences of their decisions and they are also responsible as the faithful agents of the company's directors. Being a faithful agent requires that one treat another's interests as one's own, maintain confidentialities, and avoid interests that conflict with the director. Engineers play the staff role, that is, they answer questions put to them by managers and are responsible for providing competent technical information. However, they do not participate directly in the decision making process, nor do they bear responsibility for the results of their manager's decisions.
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Centrality of ethics and values in the corporations decision making process : Ethical considerations play only the role of side constraits in the setting of corporate policity and in the formulation and execution of its decisions. This means that ethical considerations are important only if they promote or interfere with the central, financial objectives. If appearing philanthropical is good for a corporation's image (and generates customers and profits) then the corporation appears philanthropic. If the corporation is likely to get caught in an ethical violation (excessive pollution) and this negative publicity will lower its prestige (and profits) then the corporation will not commit the violation. But in each case, the end is the promotion of financial objectives and the means are appearing ethical.
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Allocating Praise and Blame Jackall goes into detail on how finance-driven corporations (and bureaucracies in general) assign praise and blame. The crucial factor is one's position in the corporate hierarchy. Praise works its way up the corporate ladder. If engineer Smith saves the company from a sever financial loss, then Smith's supervisor (or his supervisor's supervisor) gets the credit. However, if Smith's supervisor messes up, the blame passes down the corporate ladder to Smith. Praise moves up the corporate hierarchy, blame down.
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Information Exchange between Engineers and Managers : In finance driven companies, managers withhold information from the engineers under their supervision for a variety of reasons. For example, if it is proprietary information, the manager may withhold all or part to prevent engineers from leaving the firm and revealing its secrets to a competitor. Managers may also use information to wield power and authority. By keeping engineers in the dark (like mushrooms) they effectively maintain authority and prevent dissent. On the other hand, engineers withhold bad news from their managers to avoid blame as well as the "shoot the messenger" syndrome. (When the incompetent general receives bad news from a soldier, he shoots the soldier rather than respond to the news.)
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Handling Dissenting Professional Opinions : Dissent is interpreted as disloyalty in finance-driven companies. This organizational habit (maintained by managers to hold on to their authority) will even undermine DPO (dissenting professional opinion) procedures that look good on paper. A good DPO procedure communicates the opinion to several levels of supervisor, allows for the independent investigation of the merits of the opinion, and prevents retaliation against the professional asserting the opinion. But ruthless managers find ways to undermine such a procedure at all levels. Engineers may claim the right not to be held as scape goats to administrative incompetence. (See the Theory Building Activities: Rights module) This right may be supported on paper by a detailed DPO procedure. But it also has to be implemented at all levels and continually monitored.
Source:
OpenStax, Introduction to business, management, and ethics. OpenStax CNX. Aug 14, 2016 Download for free at http://legacy.cnx.org/content/col11959/1.4
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