Blog Assignment #7

MSMC Blog Assignment #7
Organizational Behavior MGT 505.0-D1 Chapter 13:Ethical Dilemma: Would You Work Here?
Professor Cynthia L. Krom By May Lee
10/22/07


“Ethical Leadership or Would You Work Here?”



Would you accept a senior leadership position at a major tobacco company like Philip Morris or R.J Reynolds? What companies, if any, wouldn’t you be willing to work for and hold a leadership position in because you find their products or services to be unsavory or unethical?

People do things in their youth that they would never do in their adulthood. We are not born fully formed, and neither are our ethics and values. Ethics is a question of conduct. Did I conduct myself differently 20 years ago then I do now? Absolutely! Twenty years ago I was smoking a pack a day. I absolutely would have worked for Phillip Morris or R.J. Reynolds for $75,000 a year, let alone $300,000 a year. But would I do so today? As an enlightened citizen of the world, I still might. I might consider my own self interest, the value of the pay to my family, and reconcile my conflicting feelings by donating a portion of it to Cancer Research. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term describing the uncomfortable tension that may result from having two conflicting thoughts at the same time, or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs, or from experiencing apparently conflicting phenomena (Robbins & Judge, 2007).

In 1994, China began the construction of the Three Gorges Project (TGP) on the Yangtze River, the largest dam project in human history. The completion of the project, however, requires the resettlement of at least 1.3 million people from hundreds of villages in twenty counties and many cities in Hubei Province and Chongqing Municipality. Previous studies found that although the designated migrants in China’s Three Gorges region showed strong support for the project, they also expressed concerns about the project’s likely negative impact on their family life. A psychological explanation is proposed to reconcile these apparent contradictory findings. Facing the undesirable relocation that is imposed on them, however, these designated migrants rationalize personal sacrifices by affirming the positive macro-impact of the project. The authors see the latter as a psychological coping strategy used by the designated migrants to resolve the cognitive dissonance of having to act on something despite its undesirable consequences (Xi, Hwang, Feng, Qiao, Cao, 2007).

There are very few entirely “green” companies out there that somebody somewhere doesn’t have an objection to. Ethics are personal and comes in every shade of grey. I take a healthy dose of rationalization every day. When I drive my Lexus that only takes hi-test I am not really supporting the oil companies, I am just getting to my job. When I drop in on McDonalds for a quick lunch I am not really supporting the number one promoter of “fat” and “unhealthy diet” in the world, I am using my time efficiently. When I buy a pack of underwear for $5.99 at Walmart I am not promoting child labor in China, I am merely extending my family’s disposable income further. We all have to sleep at night, somehow.


References
1 Robbins, S.P., & Judge, T.A. (2007). Organizational Behavior ,Upper Saddle River, NJ : Prentice Hall
2 Xi, J., Hwang, S.S., Feng, X., Qiao, X, Cao, Y. (2007) Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 50, Issue 2, pp. 323–337, ISSN 0731-1214