Ethics and Governance Assignment PDF

Running head: ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE
Ethics and Governance
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ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE1
Introduction
Ethical decisions develop and sustain trust while demonstrating respect, care, fairness
and responsibility (Northfield 2014). These decisions are consistent with good citizenship and
behaviours like such provide a strong foundation for making better and fair decisions by
means of setting the ground rule for everyone’s behaviour. This paper shall elaborate on
presenting a critical reflection on four different course literature articles by Gioia 1992; Jones
and Ryan 1998; Monahan and Quinn 2006 and Sonenshein 2007. The main aim of this paper
is to analysing these four articles on the basis of what they suggest about the meaning of
ethical decision making and the factors that influence the ethical decision making in
organisations. Lastly, I shall be presenting my explanation for choosing the perspective that I
believe best explain ethical decision making in the companies.
Differences in the four readings
Ethical decision making is very common in workplace and therefore, it is of a great
value to society and organisations for psychology in order to further explicate how an
individual makes ethical decisions. Different researchers have different views on what ethical
decision making is and the factors that influence this process. Gioia (1992) in his study has
detailed his personal involvement in the early stages of Pinto fire case. According to him, the
scripted decision making is efficient decision making. However, he did not regard it to be a
good decision making. On the other hand, Monahan and Quinn (2006) have contended that
ethical decision refers to the decision that balances the justice, rights and utilarianism along
with other different moral values. They have opposed the opinion of Gioia (1992) on the role
of scripted decision making to make the process of decision making efficient enough to
consider. Gioia (1992) have referred ethical decision making to be the process of evaluation

ETHICS AND GOVERNANCE2
and choosing among the present alternatives in a way that is consistent with the ethical
principles.
Jones and Ryan (1998) in this context have claimed that ethical decision making is
based on moral judgement. Unlike Gioia (1992) and Monahan and Quinn (2006), Jones and
Ryan (1998) have laid emphasis on the importance of schemata on ethical decision making
opining that by means of affecting a person’s choice of schema, companies can affect wide
range of choices that the individual feels that he or she has. So, in other words, according to
Jones and Ryan (1998) ethical decision making refers to the process of making moral
judgements. However, in this regard Sonenshein (2007) have a different viewpoint. In the
year 2007, he has proposed an ethical decision model. There presented a large number of new
orientations that deal with the ethical decision making. However, it is to mention that this
model did not define the concept of ethics and that of ethical decisions. According to him,
ethical decisions could be evaluated on the basis of individual or collective behaviour. He
considers that it is not true that the moral judgement is the outcome of moral reasoning. In
fact, it appears that individuals respond to the moral matters intuitively and then justify their
response.
Similarities in the four readings
Both Monahan and Quinn (2006) and Jones and Ryan (1998) have highlighted the
link between moral intensity and ethical decision-making. According to them, developed the
idea of moral intensity on the basis of social cognition theories and argued that the ethical
decision-making is issue contingent, i.e. the characteristics of the moral determinants and
issue of the ethical behaviour and decision making. With the same, all the four readings have
claimed organisational factors are the main factors that affect the experience of decision
makers on ethical issue. All of them have asserted that the organisational factors influence the