Ethical Decision Making Report: Mergers, Frameworks, and Ethics

This report delves into the critical aspects of ethical decision-making within the context of organizational mergers. It identifies key issues such as cultural clashes, including differing organizational cultures and the potential for illegal activities, impacting ICT professionals and overall organizational performance. The report advocates for the MacDonald Framework as the most effective approach for resolving ethical dilemmas, emphasizing its thoroughness through its nine steps and its ability to incorporate analogous cases. It then outlines the process of determining unethical situations, focusing on the analysis of consequences, intentions, and the ethical nature of actions, while also considering stakeholder perspectives. Furthermore, the report examines the significance of a company's code of ethics, emphasizing the importance of clearly communicating the code of conduct to all employees, and suggesting the implementation of orientation programs to ensure comprehensive understanding and enforcement of ethical standards.

Ethical Decision Making 1
Name of the student:
Name of the Institution:
Roll No:
Date of submission:

Ethical Decision Making 2
Ethical Decision Making
1. There are a lot of issues that arise during the time of organizational mergers. Some of
the main issues that ICT professionals face during the time of a merger of two or more
organizations are cultural issues. The biggest cultural issue would be the difference in
organizational culture. There are different kinds of organizational culture, such as a
clan culture, or market culture, and different organizations have different types of
cultures. When two organizations with different organizational cultures are merged,
there is a huge impact that is felt on the professionals who are working in the
organizations (Farmer, 2018). This can impact the ICT professionals, who might have
been used to one type of organizational culture, and it may affect the performance of
the organization as well. Another cultural issue would be the presence of illegal
activities. This could be something minor, such as theft or misstatement of financial
statements, but this is an issue that could influence the professional if they are in the
organization. The corporate culture of the merged company can affect the individuals
working in the organization, since a merger also brings in a large amount of
uncertainty (Dressler, 2018). This could mean that many individuals would perform
better or worse at their jobs, and it would drastically impact the performance of the
employees, and the profits of the company, since it would take a bit of time for the
employees to be able to adjust to the new environment. It is important to keep the
vision of the organization in mind, and not just think of the merger as a transaction
process.
2. The MacDonald Framework is the framework that would be the most efficient
framework for the scenario given. The scenarios in Assignment are related to ethical
issues, and the best method to solve the decision-making of these ethical issues would
be the MacDonald method. Making a moral or ethical decision for the organization

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has been an issue, and the MacDonald is one that is the most beneficial, since it can
involve the steps of finding analogous cases that are related to the problem as well,
which is a step that is not found in the White Framework. This helps the organization
understand the problem and the decision that needs to be made from another
perspective, which is why it is essential for the organization to have the MacDonald
Method (Rosenberg and Schwartz, 2018). There are 9 steps in the framework, and
looks at the individual choices, and what is best for the individual, as well as what is
best for the organization. The steps are mentioned in the following.

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Source: Rosenberg and Schwartz, 2018.
This method is extremely thorough, which is why this method would be the best to
ensure that the organization and individual in Assignment 1 has made the right ethical
and moral decision, and has put in a lot of profit.
3. In order to determine whether a situation might be unethical, it is important to keep
the situation in mind as well. It involves looking at the consequences of the action,
and whether the intention behind the action is right or not. It would also involve

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looking at the action, and deciding whether the situation itself is ethical or not. The
data about the consequences of the action, and the facts regarding the situation itself
would be important in order to analyse the situation effectively. It would be important
to take the opinions of everyone who could be affected by the situation, whether
positively or negatively (Watts, et al, 2018). This means that the stakeholders in the
situation would be analysed and the impact of the consequence of the situation would
be taken into consideration as well. there are 3 steps in the White Framework for
ethical decision making, and they have various impacts on the organization and the
individual who is making the decisions. The first step would be to analyse the
situation. This would have to be done in order to ensure that everything is appropriate.
This would help in ensuring that the right decision-making process is made, and the
decision is taken thoroughly and there is careful deliberation of the factors that could
be involved. The second step is to look at the stakeholders, and talk to the people who
would be implementing the decision, and those who would be affected by the decision
as well. This is important, since the people who are the stakeholders can be impacted
by the decision, and this would need to change the decision-making as well.
4. The code of Ethics of the company clearly look at the impact of the organization on
the industry and in the lives of the customers, and the work of the company as well. It
looks at the consequences of the actions that are taken on behalf of the company. The
Code of Ethics clearly states what sort of behaviour is expected from the employees in
the organization. It looks at the behaviour that is not allowed, such as harassment,
which can include verbal harassment, sexual harassment, or physical harassment. The
code of ethics also prohibits employees from behaving in a rash and irresponsible
manner, and in ensuring that customer service is maintained at all times. There are
strict laws in the organization against any type of hate that is displayed by the

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employees, such as Xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism and sexism. The punishment
for any of the following would be an immediate termination of the contract, which is
why the organization takes any complaints regarding harassment seriously (Valentine
and Fleischman, 2018). However, there is a need to ensure that the code of conduct is
given to every employee and that every employee knows about the code of conduct.
The code of conduct should also be checked if it is in line with the most recent laws of
the country. The code of ethics is one of the biggest issues for the organization, and
by not having every employee be aware of the code of conduct, it would be harder to
enforce the punishments that have been mentioned in the code of conduct. Thus, one
of the things that must be improved, is having an orientation program for the
employees, so that the code of conduct is mentioned, and explained in detail.

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References
Dressler, V., 2018. Framing Privacy in Digital Collections with Ethical Decision Making.
Synthesis Lectures on Information concepts, Retrieval, and Services, 10(3), pp.1-85.
Farmer, Y., 2018. Ethical Decision Making and Reputation Management in Public Relations.
Journal of Media Ethics, 33(1), pp.2-13.
Rosenberg, N.E. and Schwartz, I.S., 2018. Guidance or Compliance: What Makes an Ethical
Behavior Analyst?. Behavior Analysis in Practice, pp.1-10. Available at:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40617-018-00287-5#citeas
Valentine, S. and Fleischman, G., 2018. From schoolyard to workplace: The impact of
bullying on sales and business employees' machiavellianism, job satisfaction, and perceived
importance of an ethical issue. Human Resource Management, 57(1), pp.293-305.
Watts, L.L., Ness, A.M., Steele, L.M. and Mumford, M.D., 2018. Learning from stories of
leadership: How reading about personalized and socialized politicians impacts performance
on an ethical decision-making simulation. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(2), pp.276-294.