Ethics and Decision Making Report: Workplace Ethics Analysis

This report delves into the complexities of ethical decision-making within a workplace environment, specifically addressing a scenario involving a toxic work culture. The student, drawing from their managerial experience, identifies the root causes of the toxic environment, including conflicts of interest and unethical behaviors. The report outlines the negative impacts of this culture, such as employee dissatisfaction and demotivation. To address the issue, the student employs two key ethical frameworks: the consequentialist framework, utilizing a utilitarian approach, and the duty framework. The student evaluates several alternatives, ultimately choosing to communicate the organization's moral values to foster a positive work environment. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of ethical principles in creating a transparent and ethical workplace, referencing relevant academic sources to support its analysis.

RUNNING HEAD: ETHICS AND SUSTAINABILITY 0
Ethics and Decision Making
Student’s Details-
10/7/2019

ETHICS AND SUSTAINABILITY 1
Ethics and Decision Making
Ethics are the moral values of a company that are needed to be followed for the purpose
of maintaining a transparency and also ensuring an ethical code of conduct (Mayled , 2009).
When I was working as a manager into the organization, I had come across the toxic culture into
my organization where I had faced many issues due to the conflicts between the members of the
organization. Toxic work culture is caused by unethical behaviors of both managers and the
negative working environment of workplace. The toxic culture arose into the organization due to
the conflict of interest between the employees and the managers (Anjum, Ming, Siddiqi, &
Rasool, 2018). I had suffered from various issues since this toxic culture came into existence.
Also, I noticed due to toxic culture most of the employees were dissatisfied and demotivated.
Also, the condition became worse when most of people used manipulative or unethical means to
get the benefit which ultimately creates toxic negative environment affecting the organization
and its employees as well.
I have an ethical approach to solve the issue of toxic work culture at my workplace. I
have used two frameworks particularly Consequentialist framework and Duty framework. In
consequential framework of ethical dilemma, I have used utilitarian approach to solve the ethical
issue that I faced within the workplace. Utilitarian approach is based on the basic idea that all the
decisions must be taken to promote goodness of the greatest number of people (Heinrichs &
Stake, 2018). In the course making an ethical decision, I have gone through various alternatives
for the solving the problem. Firstly, I have chosen the alternative of developing a feedback
system wherein both the managers and employees can communicate and solve their queries and
develop a team spirit. Secondly, I have used the alternative of imposing strictness over the
indiscipline and the unethical behavior being caused within the workplace. Thirdly, I have used
the alternative of communicating the moral values of the organization among all the people into
the workplace. Amongst all the alternatives being discussed earlier, I have selected the
alternative of communicating the moral values. Moreover, the communication of moral values
particularly involves spreading the awareness of company’s moral principles and guidelines in
order to inform people about the ethical standards of the organization.

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Also, by applying the ethical framework of duty, I have undertaken an ethical decision.
Duty framework relies on the fact that it is the moral duty of every member of the organization to
act in a certain way in order to promote integrity and transparency into the workplace (Van de
Poel, 2016). Similarly, I have applied this framework onto my ethical decision. The reason
behind the selection of the decision of informing the moral values into the organization is that it
can simultaneously reduce the chances of toxicity into the workplace. Also, it can persuade them
to create a positive work space which ultimately helps in the reduction of negative working
environment.

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References
Anjum, A., Ming, X., Siddiqi, A., & Rasool, S. (2018). An empirical study analyzing job
productivity in toxic workplace environments. International journal of environmental
research and public health, 15(5), 1035.
Heinrichs, J., & Stake, M. (2018). Enhancement: Consequentialist Arguments. Zeitschrift für
Ethik und Moralphilosophie, 1(2), 321-342.
Mayled , J. (2009). Business ethics: whistle-blowing: business ethics is a relevant and interesting
topic for students today, even though it may seem quite remote from the world of
religious studies. Jon Mayled examines the concept of whistle-blowing.(OCR special).
Business Ethics.
Van de Poel, I. (2016). An ethical framework for evaluating experimental technology. Science
and engineering ethics, 22(3), 667-686.