Mixed Motives and Ethical Decision Making in Company

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Egoism vs. Altruism
Multiple Motives Model
Motivation Dynamic
Ethical Management
Conclusion

Introduction

Decision making is a rather important branch of every company. It goes without saying that a business company must pay special attention to the ways in which decisions are made and to the motivation of these decisions in this company. Decision making predetermines the general image of the company, and what is more important, the effectiveness of its work. That is why decision making should be developed and studied by the managerial staff of every company. Due to the same fact, decision making and its motivations are widely studied by various scholars. This paper is going to present major theories as to the motivations of ethical decision making in business companies and discuss them with the proper attention. Special attention will be paid to the ethics and deliberative opportunities for making decisions in business companies.

Egoism vs. Altruism

The most widely spread and traditional concept that is developed to explain the motivations of decisions in business companies is the dichotomy of egoism and altruism. The essence of the dichotomy lies in the fact that decisions and their desired effects are motivated by personal benefit, i. e. egoistic interest, of the person who makes this or that decision, or on the contrary the altruistic dedication to work when the benefit of the company is set before the personal benefit. But such a theory is rather biased and does not reflect the actual, or desired, state of things in ambitious companies. Every company that aims at developing and being successful must have the deliberative process as the basis of its work. Thus, the egoism or altruism model is not sufficient here. And to explain the relations of decision making in this or that company another model was created – multiple motives model that support deliberation and consideration of the overall company’s interests.

Multiple Motives Model

The essence of this very model lies in the fact that it presupposes the existence of deliberative activities in a company that allow making proper and well-motivated decisions. Besides, this model presupposes that the decisions made are motivated by multiple interests and benefits and satisfy the requirements of each member of this company. For example, a decision in a business company that touches upon the cutting of staff can not be considered ethical if it is made without deliberative procedures with the staff. If it is made by managers or executive officers of the company, than the multiple motivation is absent and company’s code of ethics needs considerable improvements. If such a decision is a result of deliberative meeting of all the employees and managers than the ethics is kept to and this is the decision making by means of multiple motives model that includes interests of managerial staff, ordinary employees and company’s customers who may also be affected by such step.

Motivation Dynamic

Deliberative process that takes place under implementation of multiple motives model has to subsequent steps that follow as given below:

Step one is presented by the “because” reasons, i. e. actual reasons that motivate this or that decision. Thus, for example, short supply of money can be a “because” reason that will motivate the decision of cutting the staff of a company.
Step two is the motivation of a decision by its expected outcome with the help of “in-order-to” goals. For instance, an “in-order-to” goal in the mentioned example with the staff cutting can be possible recovery of the company’s financial state and increase of competitiveness. These two steps are impossible to implement without the moral side of the issue which also consists of two aspects. Firstly, it is the moral assessment of the motivation for a certain decision, and secondly, the evaluation of the effectiveness of this motivation in the form of decision’s outcomes.

Ethical Management

For the management of a company it is important to learn the moral motivations and principles so that to be able to interpret the decisions of chiefs and bring them to the staff of the company. It is accepted to consider that moral and economic motives can not exist together, but actually they can. The only thing needed for it is the awareness of ethical managers of the moral norms and standards of decision making and decision motivation. For this purpose, moral learning is a necessary activity in any company. This activity will result in the ability of all the participants of the deliberative process in the company to express their ideas, disagreements with the positions of other and making respective amendments to the decisions of the company. Moreover, this activity will enable ethical managers to monitor the effectiveness of the decision made by the company and examine their moral and ethical sides in the context of economic benefit.

Conclusion

In this report we managed to consider the basic models of ethical decision making in business companies. We found out that neither egoist nor altruist model reflect the necessity of deliberative process in companies before decision making. Multiple motives model is the one that allows carrying out the deliberative process and takes into consideration the interests of all the employees and owners of the company. This model can be implemented if opportunities for moral learning and ethical management are provided.

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Mixed Motives and Ethical Decision Making in Company

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