Approaches to Ethical Decision Making

The theme of the individual essay is “Approaches to Ethical Decision Making.” It aims to give you an opportunity to apply ethical theories into the real business world, in other words, to integrate ethical perspectives into decision making.

There are three major schools of ethics in the Babson Framework for Ethical Decision Making, they are:

1. Deontological Ethics (Duty)
2. Utilitarianism (Consequences)
3. Virtue Ethics (Character)

The question are

1. Identify the CSR issue(s) and business decisions to be considered (if you are local students, you are required to select a case from Hong Kong; if you are non-local students, you are expected to find a case from your home country);
2. Gather information and facts that are relevant to the decision as well as identify the affected stakeholders and determine their interests;
3. Propose alternatives based on the above three ethical schools and identify consequences of each alternative to the relevant stakeholders;
4. Evaluate all alternatives and decide which one is your final decision with justification.