Introduction
This review will assess different viewpoints which are advanced in the article and how they relate to the issue of moral and ethical reasoning in business organizations. This paper will analyze the extent to which moral and ethical dilemmas affect the way managers make decisions in different organizations they work for. The article discusses the usefulness of Kohlberg’s method of measuring moral judgment when used in business environments. It uses results obtained from a study carried out in various organizations to find out how managers react to different ethical dilemmas. It looks at strengths and weaknesses of Kohlberg’s method in evaluating how ethical decisions are made in different environments. The article modifies Kohlberg’s method to make it more suitable for assessing managers’ reactions whenever they are confronted with various ethical and moral dilemmas.
Weber’s ‘Adapting Kohlberg to enhance the assessment of managers’ moral reasoning’ article analyses the extent to which a manager is able to use moral reasoning to resolve various ethical conflicts at work. The article modifies standards that underpin Kohlberg’s method of measuring ethical and moral reasoning in managers. The article looks at familiar dilemmas in business organizations that influence how managers make various decisions. It also looks at the effectiveness of assessments done through oral or written interviews. The article relies on a scoring system to tally results gathered from different managers through oral and written methods. The article argues about moral reasoning from a business perspective. It looks at various personality traits that affect how managers make different moral decisions.
Background Information
In the article, Weber assesses how managers use ethical reasoning to resolve various ethical and moral conflicts they face in their organizations. The paper uses studies conducted on managers in different organizations to find out whether Kohlberg’s method is relevant. It analyses results gathered in different locations to find out specific influences that make managers to make various decisions. The modification done on Kohlberg’s method needs to be analyzed to find out if they enable researchers to attain accurate results.
Summary
Kohlberg’s method was modified because it takes too long because the whole process is tedious and long. Weber’s modified method guarantees results within a shorter period of time. The business context approach his study uses helps uncover various dilemmas that managers experience in their working environments whenever they are required to make important decisions. The ethical and moral reasoning study conducted showed that managers were not able to resolve familiar ethical dilemmas in their places of work. In the article, results revealed that some managers are influenced by organizational values in their workstations before they make ethical decisions. The article reveals that many managers need to improve their understanding about various ethical issues that occur in their places of work. This will make them well prepared to predict various behavioral issues in their organizations that affect how they perform their responsibilities.
Evaluation
The article advances a strong argument about the modified Kohlberg’s method because it helps the article to focus on ethical business issues that influence managers’ actions. The moral dilemmas which managers face are related to the level of familiarity they are exposed to in their working environments. The article reveals that managers are likely to tap into their ethical reasoning abilities whenever they face complex ethical dilemmas. However, they rarely use ethical reasoning to resolve simple moral dilemmas they face in their working environments. The article looks at specific stages of moral reasoning which make Kohlberg’s Moral Judgment Interview effective in analyzing managers’ choices in different situations. The study also reveals the extent to which organizational values influence managers’ actions and behavior.
One of the article’s main strengths is that it shortens the duration in which moral reasoning studies are done. The article also uses the familiarity concept to categorize different dilemmas and how they affect managers’ moral reasoning in different business environments. However, the moral judgment interview is not an effective method that can be used to analyze managers’ intentions and actions in different business settings. Some managers can be manipulative and evasive in interviews and they may not provide accurate responses. Other managers are likely to give dishonest or exaggerated facts about instances when they applied moral reasoning in their organizations. In my opinion, there are some situations when a person does not need to use ethical reasoning to make some decisions.
Conclusion
The article shows the importance of ethical decision making in different situations. However, the modification did not address some of the shortcomings which are conspicuous in Kohlberg’s method. The scoring system used is faulty because it does not accurately present the unit of analysis used to predict how managers are likely to act whenever they face different ethical and moral dilemmas. Future studies need to use reliable analysis and scoring methods to gather more accurate results with fewer inconsistencies. This will make them produce reliable data which reveals more information about the concept of moral reasoning and how it occurs in different environments.