Essay On Ethical Decision Making

Ethics at the workplace is paramount in maintaining a healthy and sound relationship between the employer and the employees as well as among the staff and team members. It is essential to consider ethical issues in any decision making process to determine the effects it has on the parties involved. Lack of this consideration brings about problems at the workplace and as a result, all decisions are met with severe opposition. In the case of Kellogg, the stalemate between the company and the union representing the workers was as a result of lack of ethical considerations in the introduction of a two tier system. This paper is a discussion of ways of avoiding such conflicts.
Kellogg’s management could have avoided the problems by simply informing the employee’s of the position of the company and involve them in charting the way forward. This would have made them aware of the main reason behind the changes at the company. It would have also given them the assurance of job security and satisfaction. The conflict arose because the employees saw the move to hire more temporary staff as a plan to replace them or push them towards accepting lower wages. This could have been handled amicably through the passing of information. Lastly, the company should have used other methods of reducing the wage bill such as encouraging older employees to take early retirement.
Some of the models that the management can use in this case include the Character-Based Decision-Making Model whose underlying principle is mainly the interests of all the parties involved as well as the Plus model which gives the six important steps of ethical decision making process that leads to acceptance by all stakeholders. The two models could play a vital role in preventing such a stalemate at Kellogg.

References

Nelson, B. (2013). Law and Ethics in Global Business: How to Integrate Law and Ethics into Corporate Governance around the World. New York: Routledge.