2 Building Ethics at the Individual Level
• Unethical behavior as any actions that violate accepted societal norms.
• Why should companies attempt to understand individual ethics to reduce unethical
behavior?
Moral Awareness
• Moral awareness refers to the ability of an individual to understand the ethicality of a
situation or behavior.
Moral Judgment
• Moral judgment therefore refers to the process by which someone reasons about how
to deal with an ethical situation.
• To properly judge the morality of any situation, employees need to be rational and
logical. Because of our limitations, we often fall prey to biases that result in unethical
behaviors.
• Types of biases
o Implicit prejudice occurs when people rely on unconscious biases and
prejudice when people judge others.
affected because the decision-maker may benefit from the chosen.
o Obedience to authority whereby employees justify unethical behavior as
orders that came from their managers or CEO.
Moral Intention and Behaviors
• Moral intention and behaviors refer to the employees’ choices and decisions when
confronting moral situations.
• Jones’ Ethical Decision-Making Aspects
o How do individuals examine ethical situations and decide how to act?
According to Jones, people evaluate the moral intensity of any situation and
o According to Jones, the moral intensity of is dependent on six elements. These
elements include:
1. magnitude of consequences—refers to the degree of harm that the victims of
an unethical choice will have to endure;
2. social consensus—the degree to which others agree that a specific behavior is
• Moral disengagement refers to this deactivation process where, when faced with
potential behavior counter to their own personal standards, a person may choose to
deactivate the standard and still engage in the behavior.
o Moral justification occurs when individuals justify certain actions to make
them seem more morally acceptable.
o Euphemistic labeling refers to the use of morally neutral language to make
something seem less immoral.
as lacking in human qualities.
o Attribution of blame occurs when the decision-maker ascribes the blame for
the decision to the target.