Ethical Dilemma Essay

945 Words4 Pages

Ethical dilemma arises from ethics, and ethics are perceived differently by a layman. To some, it is to do with feelings or religion or law or even standardised social ethics. Many claim to not know about it. Five common ethical approaches have been described: Utilitarian, Rights, Justice and Fairness, Common Good and Virtue (Jennings et al., 2008). Each approach is argumentative and gives a different solution. These approaches do not constitute dilemma: dilemma is the predicament of choosing among different options, choosing despite the option appearing wrong and choosing one from all correct options. The choice to go through it or having the courage to go for it is the ethical dilemma. It is a disagreement between choice and compromise on …show more content…

Ethics are standards that are used by members of a profession or group to establish the right course of action. Ethics depend upon logical and rational criteria to arrive at a decision (Congress, 1999; Dolgoff, Loewenberg, & Harrington, 2009; Reamer, 1995; Robison & Reeser, 2002). Values depict ideas that we hold dear, that has worth to us, and that we hope to achieve. Often, values are associated with a feeling or affective component (Allen & Friedman, 2010). Morals portray a behavioural code of conduct to which we ascribe. They are used to negotiate, support and strengthen our relationship with others (Dolgoff, Loewenberg, & Harrington, …show more content…

For example, supermarket giant Tesco’s burgers were found to contain horse meat, and Tesco blamed it on unapproved suppliers (BBC news, 2013). Similarly, Nike has been accused of using sweatshops throughout the 1990s. Later, then-CEO Phil Knight admitted that Nike should have devised a more strict code of conduct with the suppliers (Nisen, 2013). Moreover, British retailer Primark blamed the factory owners for its sweatshop dilemma (Hickman, 2009) and the collapse of the factory in Bangladesh (Strydom et al, 2013). Although factory owners are at fault, brands must also bear some responsibility. The ethical dilemma regarding data privacy and transparency can be seen from US National Security Agency accessing Google and Yahoo user accounts using a programme PRISM (Washington post, 2013). Moreover, tech company Apple enabled ad-blocking apps through its new mobile operating system, which is inconvenient for publishers and web developers (Arment, 2015). Thus, the fact is that corporations are focused on minimising cost and maximisation of profits, i.e. two driving forces behind their unethical behaviour in business. As supply chain is mainly based on the interaction between people (from the producer to the customer), various ethical issues arise at several stages of the process. One of the main reasons is that perception of ethical code of conduct differs between the