Management - Mosquito-Borne Virus - Assessment Answer

Management Assignment

Assignment Task

Topic 1

Managers are often faced with the need to make ethical decisions affecting their organizations and both internal and external stakeholders. Assume you are the manager of an Australian sports team participating in the biggest sporting event in the world. This major sporting event is taking place in a South American country that has been affected by a virus. This virus is spread by mosquitoes and has been linked to cause serious birth defects. Some athletes have approached you and requested that they withdraw from participating in this major sporting event as they are planning to start a family and are concerned about being infected with this mosquito-borne virus. The athletes have asked for your approval to withdraw from the games without facing any penalties. However, you just consulted the coach who advised that no athlete can withdraw from the team at this late stage and all must travel to this South American country. The coach stressed that any athlete who withdraws from the games would be breaching the terms of their signed contract and would therefore be liable to pay financial penalties. The coach requested that you uphold the terms of the contract and impose the penalties on those who fail to participate. In this unit we have discussed three ethical decision making approaches. Please discuss these three ethical decision making approaches. Choose one of the three ethical decision making models to explain why you would either support the request from some the athletes or the coach.

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Topic 2

Pick one successful and one unsuccessful organisation you are familiar with. Compare and contrast how top managers at these two organisations effectively and ineffectively utilised Fayol’s four functions in their firms.

The essay will focus on the fact that the manager of the sports team should go ahead with virtue-based ethical reasoning approach, of the three ethical decision making approaches, other two being the utilitarian approach and the negative or positive rights approach. All three ethical decision making approaches will be discussed in the essay. Along with this, it will be discussed in detail as to why the virtue-based ethical reasoning approach is considered best for the case mentioned in the question.

The essay will discuss about the three approaches in detail followed by comparison of them with each other. A manager may lack sense of variety of possibilities and moral consequences of decisions and have narrow perspective of a situation. Such a manager has a utilitarian approach (Werhane 1998). Any ethical issue involves rational and emotional component. Thus, even though cognitive skills can be affected by emotions, they do not necessarily impair decision making (Holian 2006). This is somewhat relatable to what one can find in the deontological ethics or the rule-based model which employs a negative or a positive rights approach. Virtue-based ethical reasoning approach will only make sense when different points of views put forward have some common co-ordinates (Werhane 1998), which is why it might be the best solution to the given case in question.

Surveys have not been able to detect the thought process of managers (Trevino 1986). Even if the manager knows what is wrong and what is right ethically, it is not enough for ethical decision making. He or she needs to take into account the situation with cognition to respond to an ethical dilemma (Trevino 1986). Such is the dilemma that the manager in the question faces. So a good discussion with the panel might get him to a relevant solution, that is, by employing the virtue-based approach. For example, debarring those players from participating in the next sports event who breached the contract, but at least not endangering their lives, future and happiness; imposing a financial penalty but not a very large one etc. Others will be discussed in the essay. This way, the violation of contract, disrespect of the coach and harm to the lives of the players can be prevented.

All in all, judgement, integrity, courage and humanity are four skills associated ethical decision maker. Thus a manager needs to possess the above mentioned in order to choose the best path to form his or her decision.