WEEK 4

(image from: http://www.fcpablog.com/blog/2012/7/24/when-good-cultures-go-bad.html)

       For the fourth week, we had a discussion about good vs. bad acts. What I learned was, there are some good people who engage in bad acts. People would tend to choose something beneficial but is unethical. Sometimes, people with good intention do not choose ethically. I also learned that not everything that is legal is ethical. 

       There are ethical frameworks that serve as a guide and would help us make the best decision. There were five ethical frameworks presented. First would be utilitarian, wherein decisions are made based on the consequences of the act. Second is rights, these are an individual's entitlement to something.  Third would be justice and fairness where there is a comparative treatment given to members of a group. Fourth is the ethics of care wherein people tend to care or favor those closer to them. Last would be virtue ethics which directs us to consider moral character of people and how these character and traits affect decisions or situations. 

       There was a discussion and comparison between utilitarian and deontology, which are the two major ethics theories that attempt to specify and justify moral rules and principle. Deontology states that the morality of our action depends on the intrinsic nature of the action.  While utilitarianism implies that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences.

          When we make decisions, there are always consequences whether good or bad. From the discussion, one of the things that I values doesn't look at consequences of the action. One of the examples we had was the dam in China. There are different factors that need to be considered whether it would be good or beneficial to build the dam. Some of the pros would be hydroelectric power, flood control purposes, provides reservoirs for water supply, provides recreation opportunities. However, there are also a lot of cons. Some things would be negatively affected like the people living in the area and their source of income. There are also lands that would be destroyed and there would be a harmful effect to the natural environment. Dams are usually built to benefit a lot of people but at the expense if the environment and a smaller and less influential group of people.

          This week we also had a related discussion in PERSEF2 class. The topic was about ethics and etiquette. During our PERSEF2 class, I was able to apply the things I learned from our CSRGOVE discussion. We were given certain situations wherein the class needed to identify whether it would be ethics or etiquette. The class was also assigned to do a skit showing ethics in workplace. For my group, we did a situation in the advertising agency. The situation was, sales are deckling and the company needs new promotional ideas for the product which was chips. A colleague suggests that the company makes a bigger packing but with the same content. Another person agrees to the idea. However, another colleague doesn't approve of the idea and suggests that the company should not do this because it seems that the company is cheating its customers. Based on the situation,  the head of the company thinks of a new way of promoting the product. 

sources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23276267

http://prezi.com/grqb80nkbqdw/copy-of-ethical-decision-making-personal-and-professional-contexts/