An employee in XYZ Company that produces baby formula suspects that an error in the production process has led to contamination of a small number of the baby formula, which can lead to severe illness or even death. The employee’s supervisor has assured him that the situation is under control and warned him against blowing the whistle by going public as it would jeopardize the company from multimillion-dollar legal actions. The employee will also be fired and banned in the industry. The employee does not know what to do because he is the sole provider in his household.
Ethical decision-making model
To address the above ethical dilemma, the employee can use the seven steps of the ethical decision-making model. These steps include defining the problem, searching for relevant guidance, support and assistance, identifying and evaluating alternatives, making, implementing, and evaluating the decision.
Step 1: Defining the problem
The problem in this dilemma is that it is challenging for the employee to decide whether to protect the welfare of his career and family or to go public about the issue and save the lives of the innocent children. Both alternatives have severe moral outcomes that are not acceptable from an ethical perspective. For instance, if he decides to be loyal to the company and save his career, he will be knowingly jeopardizing the health of the innocent children. On the other hand, if he blows the whistle, he will lose his job, and the entire family that depends on him will suffer. The current situation violates all the PLUS (Policies, Legal, Universal, Self) considerations (Mintz, 2019).
Step 2: Seeking out relevant guidance, support, and assistance
After defining the problem, the employee should search out resources such as professional guidelines and people (family, friends, coworkers, mentors, or external colleagues) to assist him in making the decision. The employee will use the resources to determine parameters, clarify priorities, generate solutions, and provide support when executing the solution.
Step 3: Identifying available alternative solutions to the problem
This step will help the employee to come up with new and better alternatives rather than limiting him to apparent solutions. He will be able to consider many solutions and avoid limiting him to two opposing solutions that are either blow the whistle and jeopardize his career and family’s welfare or pledge loyalty to the company at the expense of the children’s health.
In this case, the available alternatives include, secretly informing the police to conduct investigations in the company but hide his identity, trying to convince the supervisor to forego the profit from the contaminated milk and prioritize the health and lives of the kids. The employee could also blow the whistle and look for another job or mobilize other employees to demonstrate against the unethical behaviour of the company and save the children’s lives. He could also decide to remain silent and protect the welfare of his family, which entirely depends on him (Yoder, & Denhardt, 2019).
Step 4: Evaluate the alternatives.
If the employee decides to secretly inform the police to conduct investigations in the company but conceal his identity, the company’s operations could be stopped for the investigations to take place. The inspection could reveal the contaminated products and take legal procedures hence protecting both his career and the kids from harm. There is a slight possibility that the employee could change the supervisor’s mind and convince him to forego the profit from the contaminated milk and prioritize the health of the kids as required by the company’s policy. In doing so, he will protect his career and the children’s welfare. However, it is not likely that the supervisor will cooperate.
As the employee believes that it is unfair to jeopardize the health of the children knowingly, he could blow the whistle and bear the risk of losing his job. After this, he could look for employment in another organization or create his own employment. However, this might not be possible if he is for sure banned from the industry. If the employee decides to protect the welfare of his family, which entirely depends on him, by keeping silent about the issue, he will be violating his personal ethical beliefs of what is right and wrong. Even though he will retain his job, the severe harm of endangering children’s lives is much more than losing a job.
It is possible to mobilize many employees to demonstrate against the unethical behaviour of the company as most of them are parents or have family relations with children, and they could not bear losing them. Demonstrations against unethical behaviours comply with legal considerations since they are acceptable under the applicable laws and regulations. The organization cannot fire all the employees nor ban them from the industry, and hence they will still retain their jobs. However, not all employees will agree, and some may even inform the supervisor and the top management about the intentions of the whistleblower even before the demonstration. If this happens, the employee will lose his job and be banned from the industry.
Step 5: Make the decision.
In this step, the employee should select the best alternative that has more positive outcomes and that which is likely to occur. In this case, the employee should inform the police secretly as it might protect both his employment and the welfare of the children. Although the company’s operations will be stopped, children’s lives which are more important than the company’s profits will be saved.
Step 6: Implementing the decision
Implementing the chosen alternatives is the first real, practical step in solving the moral dilemma. In this case, the employee will call the police and inform them to investigate the company’s manufactured products.
Step 7: Evaluate the decision
After implementing the decision, the employee will evaluate the effectiveness of the solution. Did it solve the problem? Did it protect the children from harmful milk formulas? The solution addresses all the PLUS considerations.
Had the model been implemented in XYZ Company, it could have significantly mitigated the ethical dilemma. The model provides numerous alternative solutions for such a dilemma instead of consuming a lot of time in deciding between two morally correct alternatives. This prevents a person from the trap of seeing “both sides of the situation” and restricting options to two opposing choices hence fastening the decision making process.
References
Mintz, S. (2019). A New Approach to Teaching Ethical Decision Making to Accounting Students. The CPA Journal, 89(9), 36-41.
The PLUS ethical decision making model (Links to an external site.)
Yoder, D. E., & Denhardt, K. G. (2019). Ethics education in public administration and affairs: Preparing graduates for workplace moral dilemmas. In Handbook of administrative ethics (pp. 85-104). Routledge.