FREE ESSAY ON ETHICAL MANAGEMENT PROCEDURES MANAGE

ETHICAL MANAGEMENT PROCEDURES MANAGE

Ethical Management Procedures 
Manage There are so many instances in life where ethics play a major role in decisions
that we, as humans, make. Ethical decision making processes take place mostly when
conclusions are reached that directly effect people, but what are ethics? The Random
House-Webster's Dictionary of Modern English defines ethics as: The branch of philosophy
dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and
wrongness of actions and the goodness and badness of motives and ends. This paints a
pretty clear picture of what it means to make ethical decisions. This sounds like if you
just follow your conscience then it would be fairly easy to come up with the right
verdict. There is only one flaw in respect to this hypothesis; it doesn't always work. A
prime example of this is the space shuttle Challenger accident that took place on 28
January 1986. This accident, That affected many lives beyond those of the crew, was a
direct result of managerial breakdown. The text offers two paths which managers can take
when formatting decisions. The first of these are programmed decisions which are routine,
repetitive, well structured situations through the use of predetermined decision rules.
If we clearly analyze the Challenger Case we can
see that this set of principles doesn't apply. There was no standard operating procedure
here for unreliable O-rings. This was not an assembly line where one flaw will shut down
an entire days work. This was a space craft with people in it and the only profit to be
made here was the advancement of science. As stated in the text when we begin to get into
Nonprogrammed decisions we can see that as situations become random and illstructured
they seek the advise of upper levels of management. This was a very random problem that
occurred with the defective O-rings, therefore it would have worked its way up to the
higher managerial departments for approval. The Rational model tells us that when
managers make these decisions, no matter how random they may be, that they have all the
information fully and most importantly that they
understand it properly. In a role where others peoples lives are in your hands this
becomes essential to success. When reading the material about the challenger case it
becomes clear that the upper levels of management that were responsible did not possess
all of the information. This is their fault, they should have made sure that they
completely understood all vital information. I Know this first hand, being a
noncommissioned officer in the Army I needed to actively seek out all information to make
sure that my subordinates knew more than I did. You can delegate tasks but you can never
delegate responsibility. This sounds stupid but it makes sense. Another aspect that
plagues the ethical decision making is that of biases. This is a large factor in the
decision to launch. There was a tremendous amount of governmental heat coming down to get
this shuttle of the ground. When this kind of pressure is inflicted it is very easy for
the pros to outweigh the cons which in turn creates biases in decision making processes.
The main element that led to the biases in this tragedy was anchoring and adjustment and
overconfidence, The management team settled for the decision to launch and justified it
as a please all tactic. The had pressure to launch and
therefore put to much faith in equipment on its reputation alone when they knew it was
not 100% goof-roofed. It is easy to see that there were many factors that disrupted
ethical thinking in this cse. Every manager is going to misjudge their actions from time
to time. However, in this business there was no margin for error, and human lives were
lost. This is sad but the real tragedy lies in the fact that all managers new this
outcome was very possible.