Professional Issues Assignment: Ethical Decision Model Analysis Report

This assignment analyzes a complex ethical dilemma using the Ethical Decision Model, a framework designed to analyze complex situations and arrive at optimal, ethical solutions. The report details the analysis of various factors including legal, professional, employment, social, personal, and intrinsic factors. The analysis involves prioritizing these factors and arriving at a decision based on a rational choice, considering the benefits to the organization, respect for stakeholders, and the public interest. The report emphasizes the importance of considering the lasting effects of decisions and using ethical filters, such as the PLUS EDM, to make comprehensive and ethical judgments. The assignment highlights the importance of ethical considerations in professional settings, particularly in the IT industry, and the application of ethical decision-making models to address complex situations. The report provides a detailed breakdown of each stage of the ethical decision model, including analysis, prioritization, and decision-making, and offers insights into how to apply the model effectively.

Student Name
Student No.
7101ICT
Trimester n, 201n
Professional Issues Assignment Part 1
Due Date: time, dd/mm/yy
Lecturer: David Tuffley
Campus (NA, LG, GC):

Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
Contents
1. Introduction 2
2. Analysis 3
2.1. Legal factors...............................................................................3
2.2. Professional factors....................................................................4
2.3. Employment and Social factors..................................................4
2.4. Personal factors..........................................................................5
2.5. Intrinsic factors............................................................................6
2.6. Prioritisation................................................................................7
2.7. Decision......................................................................................8
3. Discussion 9
4. Conclusion 10
5. References 11
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
1. Introduction
Dilemma is considered as an issue that is complex in
nature, which does not have any obvious solution. A
particular solution does exist but it is usually obscured by
the nature of its complexity. According to common sense,
the way by which complex problems can be dealt with
include simplification of the problem (Ling and Hauck
2017). This can be done breaking a specific complex
problem into certain sub divisions, this makes it easy for
an individual to simplify the problem and know which part
of the problem is more complex. Business ethics is a
specific tool that can be used by an organization for
ensuring that employees, senior leadership and managers
act in a responsible manner in a particular workplace with
external as well as internal stakeholders. Ethical decision
making model is a particular framework which is used by
leaders for bringing the principles to the company and
make sure that these principles are followed. This
assignment outlines the ethical Decision Model, this
model is a model that has been designed for general
purpose in order to analyse various complex situations
and reveal optimal solutions. These solutions are meant
to be ethical (Heyler, Armenakis and Walker 2016). This
model has three vital stages; the stages include analysis,
prioritization and decision. These stages have been
describes in details later in this assignment. A decision
has been taken on how this model would be applied in
this particular case.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
2. Analysis
During the preparation of ethical analysis, there are few
questions that must be asked, these questions include
“what are the relevant facts in this particular case? What
data we have been collected, what are the data that we
do not have hold of and how are we supposed to get hold
of the data? Who are the stakeholders? Is this an issue
that is legal in nature and due to which a particular
prescribed course of action has already been developed?”
these efforts are need to be taken in order to receive
satisfactory answers to the presented questions before
the model is proceeded with (Pohling, Bzdok and
Eigenstetter 2016). It has been a nature of ethical dilemma
that there is a specific complex set of factors which does
not have any solution. The factors that are included in the
provided situation are defined as extrinsic as well as
intrinsic factors; the factors include the ones that are
present in the outside world as well as the ones that are
present within a particular individual. The extrinsic factors
are subdivided into legal, professional, social,
employment and personal factors (Dunn and Sainty 2019).
The intrinsic factors are not subdivided and are included
within a single heading.
2.1. Legal factors
Various legal factors are usually prioritized over others
because the breaking of the law would result in numerous
troubles, it might cause the loss of liberty. Sometimes
breaking the legal rules might cause an individual to
spend time in jail depending on the crime. Professional
factors do not have chance to collide with the legal factors
because none of the professions or organizations would
want its employees or members to break any law
(Schwartz 2016). One more reason due to which
professional and legal factors would never collide include
the fact that various professional bodies usually deal with
creating respectable and solid public image for its
employees or members. They would ever advocate the
concept of acting legally against any employee.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
2.2. Professional factors
Professional factors include a list of obligations that are
usually followed by employees within an organization.
These obligations are usually factors that are followed by
employees in order to respect their profession and keep
up a good image of the entire organization (Valentine,
Hollingworth and Schultz 2018). These factors are usually
taken precedence over these obligations of employees
towards their employers because it might be possible that
the employer asks or demands that the employee has
done something that is unprofessional in nature according
to the interests of the employer. This source raises
numerous dilemmas.
2.3. Employment and Social factors
Usually employees have their own codes of the ethical
conduct, according to the prescribed in the mission
statement and many more documents which defines
various values of the enterprise. This code sets various
standards of the ethical conduct (Lehnert, Park and Singh
2015). These would be generally compatible with legal,
professional as well as social standards because no
enterprise especially the ones that are commercial in
nature would want to be seen as the deviating from
various standards within the society. There would be
various expectations in this factor, in case the
organizations on periphery of a particular society, the
ones that do not usually share its mainstream ideals.
Society where the employer operations would have their
own inherit standards which are also reinforced by
particular family, schools in media as well as many more
institutions. Society is usually complex in this case; as a
result the standards would not be unanimously agreed on
(Wang, Xu and Liu 2018). Various members within the
society would agree and some of them disagree on
rightness of numerous issues. This is very common in
case of political debates. The employment, legal and
social factors would take precedence over various social
factors where there are chances of conflict (Reed, Petty and
Jones 2016). The conflicts with the social values that are
mainstream in nature usually do not occur often.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
2.4. Personal factors
Personal factors include some aspects of the makeup of
individuals that various psychologists divide into various
categories that come from the “Nature” perspective of the
“Nature-Nature” theory, this theory describes regarding
the factors that clarifies the concept of what makes a
person that they are (Wittmer 2016). These factors are
usually acquired from the environment, an individual’s
family, associates and close friends and many more.
These factors are within a individual but they have their
own origin from external factors of an individual (Driskill
2018). Personal factors account for most of a person’s
sense of morality.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
2.5. Intrinsic factors
Various personal factors as well as intrinsic attributes
usually exert the most strong as well as most relatable
influence over the entire process of a decision making.
These results in a particular potential problem, an
individual who includes personal as well as intrinsic
attributes makes them very uncomfortable with what have
been generally accepted for a specific IT developer is not
likely to last for a long time in this particular capacity
(Pohling, Bzdok and Eigenstetter 2016). For example, a case
has been considered the case of market research
Company which collects information that is demographic
in nature and is collected from a broad range of
community; this sells contact lists to various interested
parties that might want to carry out targeted marketing.
This company collects people’s consent for collecting as
well as storing this data. The company changes hands
and then the new owner tries to increase profits (Scalia
and Elwyn 2018). This owner now instructs their web
programmer for implementing various deceptive
strategies. These strategies deal with gathering data for
which they do not receive any consent. This particular
instruction deals with contravening the privacy legislation
as well as the professional code of conduct. It is also
contrary to the expectations of community over the idea of
privacy. In this particular case, the organization promises
the factors, it is very clear what the developers are
supposed to do, some activities include refuse to comply,
even if they have the risk of losing their jobs (Bonnemains,
Saurel and Tessier 2016). In this situation, it would be worse
in case the new owners have been convinced to supply a
specific gay hate group with various names as well as
addresses of people that are known to be interested in the
culture of gay. This is completely wrong from the
perspectives of professional, social and legal. In case an
individual is intrinsically homophobic, it would affect his
thought on the concept, if it is appropriate to supply the
particular list containing names (Úriz, Idareta and Viscarret
2017). The individual might properly perceive this as a
particular ethical dilemma when an individual present in
the next cubicle could clearly realise that it is a wrong act.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
2.6. Prioritisation
The prioritization has been carried out on the basis of the
list that has been provided above. The prioritization has
been performed on the basis of the ideas received from
the text book.
Factor Related Issue
1 legal factors Breaking of rules and not
abiding by the law.
2 professional factors Not abiding by the
commitment made to the
organization
3 social factors The breaking of the
ethical codes of conduct.
4 employment factors Not following the ethical
code of conduct followed
by a particular
organization.
5 personal factors The personal freedom of
an individual ends and
the public interest
begins.
Table 1: Priority List
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
2.7. Decision
After drawing the factors into a prioritised list which shows
every factor in the order of their importance, now a
decision has to be taken based on the rational choice, this
part discusses regarding the course of action that would
be most ethical in nature (Andersch, Arnold and Seemann
2019). While taking a decision it must be taken into
consideration that which course of action would provide
the most benefits to the organization or would cause he
least harm to it. It would also respect the stakeholders,
would treat people justly, and would serve the public
interest in the best manner and which would allow the
individual to be a best person that he can be. Before this
particular model is utilized, the leaders would have to
work through particular steps in order to be sure that they
are bringing about a comprehensive lens for handling
ethical issues or disputes (Dane and Sonenshein 2015).
These steps include the consumption of time for the
purpose of defining the problem, consulting with various
resources and then seek proper assistance, thinking
about the lasting effects, considering various regulations
in other industries and then deciding on the decision and
implementing as well as evaluating the decision taken.
In order to implement the model, it has to be set in
specific way that it would provide the leader with ethical
filters in order to make decisions (Yacout and Vitell 2018).
This would help in creating a clear as well as cohesive
approach for implementing a specific solution to the
ethical issues. This leaves anything that relates to profit,
this is done so that leaders are able to focus on various
values and not on potential impact on the revenue of the
organization. For this particular case the PLUS EDM
would be utilized (Caldwell and Stone 2016). This ethical
model is one of the models that is utilized as well as sited
widely. The letters in PLUS stands for a filter which is
useful for the purpose of decision making. Policies and
procedures define the policies that are laid out by an
organization, legal describes the violation of any legal
regulations and parameters, and universal is usually
tuned with the core values as well as the company
culture. The self part requires meeting various standards
of justice and fairness (Úriz, Idareta and Viscarret 2017).
This aspect perfectly fits properly with the virtue approach
which is a part of five common standards.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
After the decision has been taken, it has to be considered
that all the decisions should be taken into account the
impact to numerous stakeholders. The fact that ethics has
always the greater priority over the non-ethical values
should also be considered (Tuffley 2016). One more factor
that needs to be considered includes the thing that it is ok
if an individual violates other ethical principles in case it
advances a good ethical climate
3. Discussion
This section discusses regarding the factors that were
considered to be important and why this decision have
been taken. The important factors among all that have
been inherited in the scenario include legal professional
and social factors. The legal and professional factors
have been prioritized to be the most important ones
because they create the most ethical issues. The legal
factors such as breaking rules and regulations might
create serious issues for the individual and professional
skills such as not abiding by the regulations of the
company. The legal issues might result in putting an
individual behind the bars and professional issues might
result an individual in losing his job. These create issues
because they require them to abide by certain laws either
under the legislation or under a specific organization.
Employment factors have been prioritized in the fourth
position because they deal with the issues created by the
employees when they do not follow the rules and
regulations or code of conduct that are followed by a
particular organization. Last prioritized factor is the
personal factor; this factor is prioritized at last because it
deals with the personal freedom of an individual. This
issue describes the issue when an individual’s personal
interest’s end and the interest of public begin.
This decision has been taken because it would help the
leaders to have a clean ethical framework. Defining
problems would automatically require leaders to have a
look on the fact if it has been violating any one among all
the filters of PLUS. It would also be utilized in order to
access the viability of any of the decisions which have
been considered for the purpose of implementation and
then take a particular decision regarding if the decision
taken has been successful in resolving the issue. This
model cannot be considered as perfect but this is
considered as a standard way for considering the vital
components which have a substantial impact that is
ethical in nature.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
4. Conclusion
In most of the cases it is not very difficult to know
regarding the right or ethical course of action. There are
times when right course of action is not considered as
obvious, this happens mostly in case of ethical dilemma.
This is the cause of two or more obligations that are
competing in nature or in case of non-win situations
where the outcomes are considered as undesirable. It is
difficult to solve a situation where individuals are forced to
choose among two or even more alternatives. The usage
of an analytical model or a framework solves the issue.
This model or framework must be chosen such that it
allows the individual to examine various elements of
dilemma in a systematic manner. Application of this model
allows the individual to arrive at a specific rational
conclusion. In this case the ethical decision model is
introduced. The utilization of ethical decision model is
done by practicing on various typical ethical dilemmas,
the kind that is faced by IT professionals in their daily
work, because this way they can be anticipated.
Anticipation of these would make an individual ready for
acting appropriately when the proper time comes. The
way by which EDM would be applied within an
organization has been discussed in the assignment.
Various factors that cause ethical issues have been
discussed above along with prioritizing them in a specific
able. The factors have been prioritized on the basis of
their importance.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
5. References
Andersch, H., Arnold, C., Seemann, A.K. and Lindenmeier, J., 2019.
Understanding ethical purchasing behavior: Validation of an enhanced stage
model of ethical behavior. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 48,
pp.50-59.
Bonnemains, V., Saurel, C. and Tessier, C., 2016. How Ethical Frameworks
Answer to Ethical Dilemmas: Towards a Formal Model. In EDIA@ ECAI (pp.
44-51).
Caldwell, B.E. and Stone, D.J., 2016. Using Scaling to Facilitate Ethical
Decision-Making in Family Therapy. The American Journal of Family
Therapy, 44(4), pp.198-210.
Dane, E. and Sonenshein, S., 2015. On the role of experience in ethical
decision making at work: An ethical expertise perspective. Organizational
Psychology Review, 5(1), pp.74-96.
Driskill, G.W., 2018. Organizational culture in action: A cultural analysis
workbook. Routledge.
Dunn, P. and Sainty, B., 2019. Professionalism in accounting: a five-factor
model of ethical decision-making. Social Responsibility Journal.
Heyler, S.G., Armenakis, A.A., Walker, A.G. and Collier, D.Y., 2016. A
qualitative study investigating the ethical decision making process: A
proposed model. The Leadership Quarterly, 27(5), pp.788-801.
Lehnert, K., Park, Y.H. and Singh, N., 2015. Research note and review of the
empirical ethical decision-making literature: Boundary conditions and
extensions. Journal of Business Ethics, 129(1), pp.195-219.
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
Ling, T.J. and Hauck, J.M., 2017. The ETHICS Model: Comprehensive,
Ethical Decision Making. VITAS online retrieved from https://www. counseling.
org/knowledge-center/vistas/by-year2/vistas-2017/docs/default-source/vi
stas/the-ethics-model.
Pohling, R., Bzdok, D., Eigenstetter, M., Stumpf, S. and Strobel, A., 2016.
What is ethical competence? The role of empathy, personal values, and the
five-factor model of personality in ethical decision-making. Journal of
Business Ethics, 137(3), pp.449-474.
Pohling, R., Bzdok, D., Eigenstetter, M., Stumpf, S. and Strobel, A., 2016.
What is ethical competence? The role of empathy, personal values, and the
five-factor model of personality in ethical decision-making. Journal of
Business Ethics, 137(3), pp.449-474.
Reed, G.S., Petty, M.D., Jones, N.J., Morris, A.W., Ballenger, J.P. and
Delugach, H.S., 2016. A principles-based model of ethical considerations in
military decision making. The Journal of Defense Modeling and
Simulation, 13(2), pp.195-211.
Scalia, P. and Elwyn, G., 2018. Shared decision making is an ethical
imperative, but implementation challenges persist: A rejoinder to ‘Concepts of
health, ethics, and communication in shared decision making’by Lauris
Kaldjian. Communication & Medicine, 14(3), pp.284-286.
Schwartz, M.S., 2016. Ethical decision-making theory: An integrated
approach. Journal of Business Ethics, 139(4), pp.755-776.
Tuffley D. 2016. The Ethical Technologist
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Professional Issues Assignment Discussion
Úriz, M.J., Idareta, F., Viscarret, J.J. and Ballestero, A., 2017. Methodologies
for ethical decision making in social work. Ljetopis socijalnog rada, 24(1),
pp.33-54.
Valentine, S. and Godkin, L., 2019. Moral intensity, ethical decision making,
and whistleblowing intention. Journal of Business Research, 98, pp.277-288.
Valentine, S.R., Hollingworth, D. and Schultz, P., 2018. Data-based ethical
decision making, lateral relations, and organizational commitment: Building
positive workplace connections through ethical operations. Employee
Relations, 40(6), pp.946-963.
Wang, Z., Xu, H. and Liu, Y., 2018. How does ethical leadership trickle down?
Test of an integrative dual-process model. Journal of Business Ethics, 153(3),
pp.691-705.
Wittmer, D.P., 2016. Developing a behavioral model for ethical decision
making in organizations: Conceptual and empirical research. In Ethics in
public management (pp. 57-77). Routledge.
Yacout, O.M. and Vitell, S., 2018. Ethical consumer decision‐making: The role
of need for cognition and affective responses. Business Ethics: A European
Review, 27(2), pp.178-194.
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