Value Ethics—A
Practitioner’s Method for
Making Ethical Decisions
B y R i c h a r d Tr ev i s a n
Every contracts professional will be confronted with a variety
of ethical dilemmas during his or her career, many of which
will be peculiar to the contracts field. A professional in the
contracting community needs to be cognizant of the need for
making proper ethical decisions and for knowing how to deal
with ethical dilemmas when they are presented to anyone in
the organization.
Fortunately, NCMA has done a wonderful service to the
contracts community by hosting a number of ethics training
events, and publishing the Contracts Management Magazine
and the Journal of Contract Management covering ethics
awareness from a compliance perspective. These initiatives
have been extremely helpful. For example, when I was a
young and inexperienced contracts administrator working for
a small organization, it was NCMA’s training that helped me
understand the details of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,
and that making any sort of illegal payment would put the
organization and myself at risk of fines and, possibly for
myself, a jail sentence.
Most large organizations also have codes of ethics which they
publish as their commitment to practicing proper ethical
behavior on the part of their employees, and these are very
helpful when employees are confronted with issues related to
ethics. Codes of ethics (or credos) are an important way for
corporations to achieve alignment with ethical behavior in their
workplace. Organizations often create a compliance type credo
for employees to educate themselves with and base their
decisions upon. These can be either positive “do this” or
negative “don’t do this” statements that the employee must
understand and follow. For example, Johnson and Johnson had
a 60 year old one page credo when the company was faced with
a life threatening problem. This credo was all the direction that
the CEO of J&J needed in 1982 to remove 31 million bottles of
Tylenol from store shelves worldwide, when it was discovered
that someone had laced seven bottles of Tylenol tablets with
cyanide, killing seven people. This recall was at a cost of $50M
after taxes. Because of the fast and the determined action, the
public never lost faith in J&J (Shaw 172).
Many companies today use a very detailed credo for employees
to follow. For example, Oracle Corporation has a Code of
Ethics and Business Compliance document that is 33 pages
long. New hires in the company are trained in this code and are
expected to comply with the code (Oracle and/or its affiliates
2009). This comprehensive code provides a very broad number
of issues that may arise in the organization, giving clear
direction for dealing with those potential problems.
The current organizational codes used by many companies
provide the base line of behavior on the part of its employees
and provide the organization some amount of mitigation,
should someone in the organization breach this code. The
organizations with credos can claim some relief if they come
forward to the government, admit the breach and provide
effort to self-expose the root cause of the wrong doing, and
correct the breach.
About the Author
RICHARD TREVISAN, MS. Procurement and Contract
Management, CPM, CPCM, NCMA Fellow, is an adjunct Professor
of Practice on the faculty of the Leavey School of Business,
Management Department. After a 30+ years career in aerospace
and commercial industry, Mr. Trevisan has taught business
ethics and other management courses at St. Mary’s College
of California and Santa Clara University. Mr. Trevisan wishes to
extend a special thanks to Dr. Manuel G. Velasquez of Santa
Clara University for his review and meaningful input to this article.
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VALUE E THICS — A PR ACTITIONER’S ME THOD FOR MAKING E THICAL DECISIONS
Compliance-based ethics codes usually suggest the remedy of
“Just don’t do it” for illegal actions and this has its place in
organizations to reduce ethical problems. These codes are
often times very clear and meant to be a useful method of
identifying questionable business actions with a description of
how to deal with the issue. The code, therefore, will be the
first source an employee should turn to when faced with an
ethical issue.
But, what happens if there is no code or other written clear
direction (as is possible in a start-up organization or some of
the mid-size organizations)? Or what if the contracts practitioner has a code of ethics that lacks clarity, or that doesn’t
cover the problem he or she is facing? Or what if he or she just
wishes to gain a better understanding of the foundation for a
good business decision the ethical basis of his or her company’s code of ethics?
This article is intended to provide fellow contracts professionals
another way of looking at making right decisions, in other
words, how to make the right decision without just searching
for the problem in a compliance checklist. It is the intent of this
paper to explore a values approach to making ethical decisions,
separate from the legal approach that contracts professionals
can use when they are confronted with an ethical dilemma.
So, what are the signs that a person is facing an ethical
problem? How do we recognize that an issue has ethical
dimensions?
The following are some indicators that will help: a.) Ethical
issues generally involve an injury of some sort that is being
inflicted on one or more persons; when you see someone is
being injured by your actions or someone else’s, that is an
indication that ethical considerations may be present. b.) When
confronted with such a situation, a person may feel uneasy; this
is another indication that the situation has ethical overtones. c.)
You would be embarrassed if others found out or knew about
your involvement in the situation, is also an indication that
your situation is one that raises ethical questions.
For example, you are part of a commercial organization
proposal team that is charged with contracting with a firm or
government in a foreign country where bribery is part of the
culture, and you experience some of the uneasiness described
above. Is there an ethical issue?
• Do research about the country, its history, government,
business culture and recent events.
116 Fall 2015 / Journal of Contract Management
• What are the requirements of the Request for Proposal
from your customer that can present ethical issues?
• Have you scrutinized subcontract cost estimates to look
for any suspicious expenditure?
• Have there been any communications with the potential
client or supplier that raise any ethical questions?
• Does something “feel strange”?
So, when a purchasing or contracts professional is confronted
with an ethical issue, how do you deal with what appears to
be an ethical situation?
First, as suggested earlier, you should review your company’s
code of ethics. But perhaps your organization has not developed one yet. Or perhaps your organization has a code of ethics
and you still have questions. In such cases, the following ethical
reasoning model will help you analyze the problem.
Taking ownership
When faced with a situation that seems to involved ethical
issues, a good starting point is to determine responsibility for
the situation that is creating the ethical issue. Aristotle held
that a person or agent is responsible for any action or event if
it has its origin in the agent and the agent is aware he or she is
bringing it about. In other words, a person is responsible for
any action that started with the agent, that was not compelled
by some factor outside the agent, but that the agent did freely,
and that the agent did knowing what he or she was doing.
(Aristotle on Nicomachean Ethics III.1-5, “Moral
Responsibility” quoted in Stanford encyclopedia of
Philosophy).
There are some important benefits for taking ownership:
1. Moral responsibility helps the agent focus.
2. Creates a mandate for a solution.
3. Makes it personal.
4. Helps ensure a sense of urgency.
Often times, an ethical question will not get the proper
attention in an organization for a variety of reasons, e.g., lack
of awareness, pressures from day-to-day work, or fear. It is
important that someone take ownership of an ethical
dilemma that arises in an organization so that it can be
identified and dealt with. The following incident will
VALUE E THICS — A PR ACTITIONER’S ME THOD FOR MAKING E THICAL DECISIONS
demonstrate why ownership is important, and what happened
in a case where apparently no one took ownership.
In 1964, Kitty Genovese, a young woman, was brutalized and
murdered in Queens, New York. It appears that 38 people
witnessed the 35 minute crime and apparently did nothing to
help. Although the community has questioned the allegation
that people witnessed it and did nothing, there still is much
evidence which showed the community was not blameless
(Krajicek 2011).
After this terrible tragedy, social psychologists, John Darley
and Bibb Latane, did a series of experiments to try and
understand why people take or do not take responsibility.
One of their experiments exposed subjects to the threat of
smoke in an enclosed room.
In one experiment, the researchers used one naïve person in a
room by himself to fill out a questionnaire. Another part of
the experiment was to put one naïve person in a room to fill
out a questionnaire with a number of other persons (who were
actors). In the first condition, the room was fed smoke under
the door by the researcher while the lone person was filling
out the questionnaire. In this experiment, 75% of subjects
who were naïve participants, and who were left alone in the
smoke filled room, departed the room to report the smoke. In
other words, the naïve participant calmly noticed the smoke
and took action. But when the naïve participant was in a
smoked filled room with other participants (who were actually
actors), only 10% of the naïve participants left the room to
report the smoke. This suggests that when a person is alone to
ponder the troubling condition, the lone person took action.
Conversely, when in a crowd, there is a tendency to not take
immediate action.
A series of other experiments showed people responded with
more apathy when many individuals (rather than a lone
subject) were aware of a potential problem and did nothing.
(Latane, B., & Darley, J. 1969). This lack of a response when
people are in a crowd is sometimes referred to as a diffusion of
responsibility, or passing the buck.
These series of experiments suggest that a person faced with
an ethical dilemma should not expect others to confront the
dilemma but may have to deal with it forthrightly themselves.
So, faced with an ethical dilemma, for which one is taking
responsibility, how should a person respond?
The following reasoning model was developed at the Santa
Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. The
model can be used as a general checklist to think through the
problem of deciding what the ethical response should be to an
ethical issue one faces.
An Ethical Reasoning Model
1. Make Sure You have the Facts Right.
What facts make it an ethical issue? What is the actual
or potential harm to an individual or group? Are there
human needs which are denied or threatened? Does
someone seem to be treated unfairly. Are someone’s
rights being violated? Are these “facts,” real or are they
assumptions? These facts may be augmented once the
ethical issues have been clearly defined.
2. Define what the Ethical Issue is.
What kind of an issue is it? Does it involve an individual, is it a problem with the company or its policies, or
is it a problem that is created by the larger society
outside the company? Knowing this will help to clearly
identify who is affected and who will have to make the
ultimate decision, society as a whole, corporate decision
makers, or the individual.
What is the specific ethical issue(s) that needs to be
addressed?
a. Is the situation one where great costs or harms are
being imposed on the individual, a group or society
as a whole, without compensating benefits?
b. Is an individual being denied his or her rights? Are
people being treated in ways that do not respect
their dignity?
c. Is an individual or group being treated unfairly or
prevented just compensation?
3. What Can Be done about the Situation? What Courses
of Action is Open to You?
This will be very much like brainstorming of all
possible alternative solutions before selecting the most
logical and defendable alternative. At this stage, don’t
try to select them, just list them for later evaluation.
4. Who are the “Stakeholders”?
Who is affected, directly and indirectly by the ethical
decision that you make? Such individuals are called
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“stakeholders.” Are they people, organizations or
governments? For instance, is it the organization, its
shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, the
community, and possibly others? Undoubtedly, some
stakeholders are more important than others. Have
they been fairly weighed against each other? Reviewing
the amount of contribution by each stakeholder will
help you decide how much weight to give to each.
5. Which course(s) of action is ethically right?
To get started on the analysis one must define the
standards upon which the analysis will be based. The
age of enlightenment provided us with two time tested
standards: utilitarian and rights. Added to these are
two more suggested standards: justice and care.
Looking at the ethical alternatives through the four
different prisms will help a person decide on the
adequacy of the alternatives.
The Utilitarian Standard
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) philosopher) stated that what
mattered most was making a decision that brought the
greatest good to the greatest number of people. Bentham
thought that people are ruled by two determining motivations: The pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. So the
utilitarian approach is to analyze situations by looking at the
direct and indirect, short and long term cost vs. direct and
indirect, short and long term gain.
This type of reasoning is commonly used in political,
economic and business systems in the United States
(Velasquez 82-83).
The Rights Standard
In general, a right is an individual’s entitlement to something
(McCloskey cited in Velasquez Business Ethics 93). If it is
derived from a legal system it is called a legal right.
If it is derived from a system of moral standards (independent
of any particular legal system) they are referred as moral
rights or human rights. There are three moral rights:
• Negative rights requiring others to leave us alone.
• Positive rights which require others to help us.
• Contractual or special rights which require other people
to keep their agreements (Velasquez Business Ethics 93
& 96).
118 Fall 2015 / Journal of Contract Management
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a German philosopher,
provided a well-known non-consequentialist approach to
ethics which has greatly influenced our general moral culture.
Reason by itself, he thought, can reveal the basic principles of
morality (Shaw 56).
• Categorical Imperative—We should always act in such a
way that we can will the maxim of our actions to become
a universal law.
• First reformulation: What makes an act right is that the
agent would be willing to be so treated were the positions
reversed.
• Second reformulation: What makes an action right is
that the agent treats human beings as ends in themselves
(Shaw 57-68).
The Justice Standard
Cavanagh tells us that “Justice requires that all persons be
guided by fairness, equity, and impartiality” and that
standards of justice are more important than the utilitarian
consideration of consequences” (90-91).
Three types of justice exist:
• Distributive justice—just distribution of societies’
benefits and burdens, fairly.
• Retributive justice—requires fairness when blaming or
punishing persons for doing wrong, i.e., just imposition
of punishments and penalties.
• Compensatory justice—just compensation for wrongs
and injuries. This requires restoring to a person what the
person lost when he or she was wronged by someone
(Velasquez Business Ethics 107).
The Caring Standard
Carol Gilligan held that women’s moral development differs
from men in that men tend to judge good and evil on the
basis of reasoning and principle which are abstract and
impartial (Gilligan cited in Cavanagh 53).
Gilligan stated that because we live in a web of relationships,
these relationships influence our ethical obligations. Some key
qualities of the norm:
• The obligation to care is proportional to one’s relationship.
• One’s roles and obligations influence the responsibility
to care.
VALUE E THICS — A PR ACTITIONER’S ME THOD FOR MAKING E THICAL DECISIONS
• One cannot be obligated to provide care if one is
incapable of providing the care. (Liedtka cited in
Cavanagh 93).
“Gilligan’s research on identity and moral development led
to the identification of the ethics of care as a ‘different
voice’—a voice that joined self with relationship and
reason with emotion. By reorienting pre-existing frameworks, it shifted the paradigm of psychological and moral
theory. The ethics of care originates from the premise that
as humans we are inherently relational, responsive beings
and the human condition is one of connectedness or
interdependence” (Ethics in PR on Carol Gilligan).
So, when the reviewing the ethical question, these are four
suggested prisms through which you can view the problem.
6. What are the Practical Constraints that might get in
the way of doing what is right?
Each alternative solution has to be viewed in light of the
possible constraints for utilizing that solution. Some
constraints may be cost, organizational, employee
limitations, etc. Or, there might be ethical constraints.
This may require the evaluator to return to the
previous steps as constraints become clearer to see if
other solutions should be considered. In that case,
process must also be applied to this ethical alternative.
7. What Actions Should You Take?
Reviewing the application of the normative theories
and the alternatives along with their practical or ethical
constraints, the superior alternative should reveal itself.
You will find that this becomes an iterative process,
e.g., when doing a list of stakeholders, don’t assume
that the steps must be done sequentially. As you build
the model, it is common to go back and revisit a
previous category.
An Example of using the Ethical
Reasoning Model
How should a manager answer a question from an employee
that is of an ethical nature? The following example is scenario
describes the offering of an expensive gratuity to a buyer of a
high tech company, to show how a discernment model can be
used to evaluate the ethical dimensions of accepting a gift
from a supplier.
Although this describes how to deal with the offering of a
bribe, the Seven Step Reasoning Model can be used for other
ethical dilemmas, e.g., payment to the buyer of another
company to secure a contract, insider trading, subcontracting
with a supplier that the buyer knows the subcontractor is
using illegal labor practices, etc.
The Offer of a Subtle Bribe
Suppose you are a purchasing manager of a small or mid-sized
government contractor firm (without an ethics compliance
code) and your less experienced purchasing specialist (buyer)
is offered a set of box tickets to a championship San Francisco
49er game in a distant city. This was suggested as a “thank
you” for the previous business given to the supplier’s company,
adding that this form of thanks is only given to important
purchasing specialists. This sales representative is one with
whom the buyer has done business with for a couple years,
and with whom she has a good working relationship, almost a
friendship. The offer includes the game, which would
otherwise require a significant cost on the part of the buyer
with her husband. In addition to the game, it would include
plane trip, a hotel stay for the night in the city where the game
would take place, as well as a night out on the town with her
husband, the sales person, and his wife. Everything would be
hosted by the sales representative’s company. Because this is
the first time she has received such an offer, she asks if
accepting the offer would be an acceptable business practice.
Your immediate (off the top of the head) value of the plan trip
and a night on the town cost to the supplier would be
approximately $4,000 to $5,000.
One point that must be made before answering this question
is that you are in a mentor position as her immediate
manager. You will be viewed as a leader to be emulated in
the answering of this question. James Kouses and Barry
Posner (14-15, 368-369) inform us that one of the key
characteristics of leadership is modeling the way. Leaders
behaving ethically themselves is one way of communicating
the necessary manner of dealing in the company’s business.
The employee will undoubtedly receive your answer within
that context. So, the purchasing manager should view this as
a means of providing a method from which the buyer can
make future decisions.
The following is offered as an application of the Seven Step
Reasoning model to evaluate the offer of the gratuity to
the buyer.
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VALUE E THICS — A PR ACTITIONER’S ME THOD FOR MAKING E THICAL DECISIONS
1. The Facts?
What facts make it an ethical issue? Jane is a valued employee
who has worked herself up from working in the stock room,
taking business courses at night. She progressed to an
associate buyer’s position within the company. She had a series
of above average to excellent performance reviews during her
10 year tenure with the company.
One must ask if there is actual or potential harm done to the
employee, company, or supplier by accepting the gratuity.
• To the employee—not much obvious harm is done to the
employee, except of course, reputation, once it becomes
known that she accepts gratuities.
• To the buyer’s company—possible harm done if the
employee, by the action, is persuaded to make unfair
decisions on future purchases.
• To the supplier—a $4,000–$5,000 cost for the evening,
but possibly a way to obtain favoritism during a competitive bidding process. In addition, the supplier gets the
reputation of being a bribing company.
The above provides details to Jane’s situation. But when
approaching a similar situation, the manager should ask
herself or himself:
• Is there actual or potential harm to an individual
or group?
• Are there human needs which are denied or threatened?
• Do they involve justice or rights considerations?
• Are the facts, real or are they assumptions? These facts
may be augmented once the ethical issues have been
clearly defined.
2. The Ethical Issue
At what level does the ethical issue reside? Is it an ethical issue
that just involves particular individuals? Is it one that involves
the company or its policies? Does it involve the broader social
system outside the company? One can easily view this as an
individual issue, i.e., the buyer is the only one involved in this
situation. How will this influence the buyer’s future purchase
evaluation? What about the other (non-purchasing employees)
in the company? Or perhaps, is this a practice that is regular
behavior in the industry outside the company? In terms of the
ethical issues, when viewing the question’s costs and benefits,
is the employee really using a utilitarian view when just
considering herself, or should consideration cover a broader
set of stake holders?
120 Fall 2015 / Journal of Contract Management
In this case, the ethical issue could well be understood as a
person in a responsible purchasing position receiving a form
of a bribe, creating a conflict of interest for the buyer.
3. The Possible Alternatives
The possible alternatives include:
• Refuse the offer. The dilemma goes away. The supplier’s
sales person is informed that, while the offer is tempting,
the buyer feels there would be a conflict of interest to
accept the tickets. This establishes the buyer’s belief in
the proper way of dealing with the situation, and informs
the sales representative of the buyer’s stance on this form
of offer.
• Accept the offer for an opportunity to see the game and
enjoy a night out on the town in a distant city. Perhaps
viewed by the buyer as payment for the past hard work
and unpaid overtime work. This would then require the
purchasing manager to review the Seven Step criteria.
4. The Stakeholders
There are many stakeholders:
• The employee—because the buyer’s acceptance or
non-acceptance will demonstrate that employee’s
behavior to her peers and the company.
• The employee’s family—because any result of a decision
will have an effect on her family.
• The employee’s company—because the reputation of the
buyer’s company will be affected.
• The other company employees—because they will look
at the behavior of the buyer as an indicator of acceptable
behavior for other employees.
• The supplier representative—because the representative
will look at the behavior as an indicator of favoritism that
may be provided to his company.
• The supplier’s company—because the company may be
in the process of attempting to entice their customer base
as a business practice to gain unfair business advantage.
• The buyer’s company’s shareholders—because the
shareholders look to the company employees to achieve
the maximum profit in an ethical manner. The cost of
the trip will undoubtedly be reflected in future supplier
prices. And, the buyer may be tempted to avoid
competitive practices for future purchases to solely
benefit the supplier.
VALUE E THICS — A PR ACTITIONER’S ME THOD FOR MAKING E THICAL DECISIONS
5. The Ethics of the Alternatives
Utilitarian
The Benefits of accepting the supplier’s offer will result short
term in a mini-vacation attending a football game which
includes her favorite team. It also allows her and her husband
to be treated to a pleasant short airline trip, a stay in a nice
hotel with their favorite food and drink, and attendance at a
champio nship football game. Long term, this might result in
other week-end similar treats with the supplier.
The Costs of accepting the supplier’s offer in the short term:
• Her being away from her purchasing work possibly
results in inefficiency in her buying duties.
• Other employees and colleagues will look at her as
someone that is accepting a gratuity (bribe) and her
reputation suffers.
• With the buyer’s efficiency down because of her absence,
the shareholders profit is unfavorably impacted.
• Should the buyer continue to accept this type of gratuity,
the profit of the company will continue to be impacted
because future purchases of the materials will not be
done on a competitive basis.
• Will accepting a gratuity of this size be contrary to one of
the rules of open competition: “The costs and benefits of
producing or using the goods being exchanged are borne
entirely by those buying or selling the goods and not by
any other external parties” (Velasquez 200)? Is the
$5,000 really something that the shareholder of the
buyer’s company rather be in the profit line rather than
enjoyed individually by the buyer and her husband?
Rights
In the case of the offered gratuity, is the seller treating the
buyer as a means to an end, or is he treating her as an end
unto herself? Does he expect certain performance on her part
for the buyer’s pleasure of a night out on the town with her
husband? What about the other company employees? If the
buyer asserts that she has a right to accept the gratuity, do the
other company employees have an obligation not to interfere
with her right to accept the gratuity?
What if, by the buyer accepting the gratuity, the buyer feels
compelled to only do the major part of that component
business with that firm? Bribery, if this is what the situation
is, creates a monopoly because the buyer is compelled to do
business primarily with the company that provides the bribe
(Velasquez Business Ethics 222).
Of course, conflicts in rights may happen. In those cases, we
need to evaluate the basic rights of each individual involved.
How will the proposed action affect the well-being of each
person? Rights then, play a key role in ethical analysis and
behavior.
Justice
If “Justice requires that all persons be guided by fairness, equity,
and impartiality,” how might this definition apply to the buyer’s
question to the purchasing manager (Cavanagh 90-91)?
Distributive justice requires that society’s benefits and
burdens be just. In the case of the offered gratuity, the benefit
seems to only be offered to the buyer; shouldn’t the same
gratuity be given to the other employees of the firm?
On a broader scale, what happens to the system of competition when a significant gift is given to a purchasing professional and the buyer is tempted or acts on the temptation to
not purchase the materials or services on a competitive basis,
rather on a single-source basis? Velasquez tells us that
capitalistic justice is achieved with perfectly competitive
markets (Business Ethics 208). Since our country’s system is
based on a free market, one can see that the giving of a gift to
a buyer could thwart the competitive market (providing
future business as to a monopoly supplier).
David Hilzenrath, tells us that bribery, on the other hand
“short-circuits the marketplace by directing business to those
companies too inefficient to compete in terms of price, quality
or service, or too lazy to engage in honest salesmanship, or too
intent upon unloading marginal products,” a House report on
the FCPA legislation said. The report went on to say that
bribery “puts pressure on ethical enterprises to lower their
standards or risk losing business” (1).
Care
Carol Gilligan reminds us that using the ethic of Care,
“…we have an obligation to exercise special care toward
those particular persons, with whom we have valuable
close relationships, particularly relations of dependency…”
(Business Ethics Velasquez 121).
With this in mind, the buyer’s request for clarity would beg
the questions for the purchasing manager:
• Does the buyer’s organization or department fit the
description of a network of close relationships?
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VALUE E THICS — A PR ACTITIONER’S ME THOD FOR MAKING E THICAL DECISIONS
• Does the purchasing manager’s position put him in the
position of having a person (the buyer) dependent on him
for an ethical answer?
• How is her relationship with her fellow employees
affected by a decision to accept a gratuity of this size
from the supplier?
6. Actions to Take
So, after all of the above considerations, what should be
the decision?
If you are more persuaded by the arguments for accepting
the gratuity, you most likely are being persuaded by the
benefits to the buyer personally, than you are by the costs
to the other stakeholders.
From a rights point of view, are you considering that the buyer
is to be treated with dignity, and that others have an obligation
not to interfere with her right to accept the gratuity? Or
perhaps you will weigh more heavily how the proposed action
affects the well-being of each person involved.
If you are persuaded by the personal justice for the buyer, you
may be more apt to accept the gratuity, rather than if you
took into considering the rights of the other stakeholders, i.e.,
“all persons be guided by fairness, equity, and impartiality”
(Cavanagh 90-91).
Lastly, looking through the prism of Care, we may weigh
heavily on the side of the network of individuals that we
operate in. We might be more apt to look at it from the aspect
of stakeholders, other than the buyer herself.
Once the evaluation is completed, the alternatives explored,
and a decision has been made as to the direction to take, a
person just cannot assume that an action can be taken
without an effect on others in the firm. Most of the time,
others will have to understand the existence of the problem
and what has to be done to minimize risk to the other
stakeholders and the company itself. So, this will require
informing others in the organization and soliciting their
support for your decision.
122 Fall 2015 / Journal of Contract Management
7. How do you get the organization behind
your decision?
Considerations to get agreement within your organization on
your course of action will, in a sense, require you to act as a
trainer, and to be convincing. This will require some planning
on your part, not unlike preparing for a negotiation. The
following are some guidelines to consider.
Have you created a clear and succinct statement of the ethical
problem(s)? Who are the stakeholders, e.g., your organization,
your direct manager, the executives in your organization, your
customers, your suppliers, or even your family?
Have you considered whether your organization has a code of
ethics that will support your solution? Do your organization’s
vision and mission statements support your solution? Have
you defined and analyzed possible alternative solutions,
considering all constraints for each alternative solution? Have
you defined the ethical standard (or law) with which the
stated ethical problem conflicts?
When you create a presentation to gain consensus on how to
deal with the ethical problem, decide on what would be the
best strategy in achieving consensus. Should you present your
case to a number of colleagues at one time, or approach each
colleague individually.
Finally, prepare for potential resistance. Ethical dilemmas
often times, create fear of the unknown or fear of change,
and with fear, come resistance to change or action. Kotter &
Schlesinger (652) informs us that there are a number of ways
to achieve success when agreement is stymied.
• For lack of information, or the existence of inaccurate
information, use education and support.
• For adjustment problems, use facilitation and support.
• For addressing a powerful individual or group that
will clearly lose out in a change, use negotiation
and agreement.
What to do with the information will be determined by the
structure of the organization, and whether a code of ethics
is in existence with instructions for handling an ethical
dilemma. Regardless of the next steps, one needs to be
prepared to educate others in the organization, because
any course of action will have possible impact on other
stakeholders and on the company.
VALUE E THICS — A PR ACTITIONER’S ME THOD FOR MAKING E THICAL DECISIONS
Conclusion
Managers of purchasing and contracts organizations are in a
unique position of leadership to help the buyer or contracts
administrator understand how to properly evaluate potential
ethical problems and arrive at a defendable ethical decision.
Because these ethical questions can sometimes be difficult to
address, a framework like the ethical reasoning model can be
very helpful in instructing the buyer or contracts administrator in how to evaluate each of the important considerations to
arrive at the right decision. JCM
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Journal of Contract Management / Fall 2015 123