Business Management and ethical dilemmas - Theoretical Background and research

JozefÍna Hvasová

• Publisher: EDUCatt
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9788893351713
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The motivation to write on the subject of moral values and business issues was an ongoing discussion on moral principles in business practices. The approach in this book will be that of integration between the commercial world and the ethical perspective with a greater emphasis on moral aspects but with concrete consequences for business day to day work. Today such integration of these two subjects – business and ethics is always being more and more developed in published literature. There is a notable explosion of research in this area and people working in business are often very interested in studying and investigating what ethics and morals says to them. However, one has to make careful distinctions, because authors of published literature usually tend to assume a kind of general position with regard to ethical and social views and they are inclined not to differentiate between specific problems and situations. Thus, the concept of ethics and morals in business may become quite vague. The whole paper regards the problem of interaction between business motives and activities and the ethical perspective of an individual approach to life. The aim of this book is to delineate the relation between the active drive to profit from business activities and the person's sense of ethical and moral decision making. Although the majority of materials used to write this paper come from international scientific research, I will try to reflect the cultural and sociological context of Europe, especially in business life in Slovakia where I live and I work.
The book conducts research in the area of Sustainable development of higher education in the fields of management in the frame of VEGA project No 1/0708/14.

Chapter 5

Research realization, results, and discussion

In this chapter some specific outcomes of the realized research study will be presented. First, there will be some types of managers identified among the students of the research sample. Using descriptive models, means comparing, and correlational methods there will be some results derived. Then, three scenarios will be analysed. In the first case the problem of manipulation of prices as compensation for loss will be confronted. The second case deals with empathy and efficiency which are very often opposite in the business world. In the third case the bribery is presented. It provokes participants because it is connected to the act of charity and thus it creates an ethical dilemma. Finally, the overall approach of the participants will be evaluated while taking into account the average value of justice scale, relativism scale, utilitarianism scale, and egocentricity scale.

5.1 Research Design

The plan to realize the research on the ethical perspectives in business decision making presupposes three steps. First, it is the detailed measuring instrument. Second, the decision about the right size and the type of research sample has to be made. Third, the method of deriving results from obtained information has to be chosen. All of these three steps are described in the following parts.

5.1.1 Three scenarios of ethical dilemmas

The problem is how to adapt the measuring methods, particularly the scenarios in ethical decision making, to actual circumstances in Slovakia. In order to reflect the reality in business in Slovakia, three topics were chosen. The first of them focuses on the problem of minority...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Moral Perspectives inthe Business Field
• The Importance of Business Ethicsand Its Norming
• Ethical Dilemmas in the Business
• Existing Research andSuggested Research Design
• Research realization, results, and discussion
• Conclusion
• Bibliography