Archive for the ‘Decision Making’ Category

Candour and Trust

September 6th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Decision Making, Organizational Ethics, Public Sector/Government

Trust is understood as the sin qua non  in the relationship between the political and civil service communities in Canada and according to an article appearing in the  the Ottawa Citizen there is much work to be done. The current loss of trust is costing Canada billions.

The Christian Science Monitor also considers the issue of candour and corporate behaviour .

I am beginning to think that we have not made much progress on this issue in spite of all our efforts to consider the  values and ethics dimensions of our decisions.

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How we make choices

July 26th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Decision Making

Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices – and how we feel about the choices we make. She talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions

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Are our ethics approaches facts based?Should they be?

July 18th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Decision Making

It is axiomatic that most of our ways of thinking would be enhanced if we could operate from a factual foundation.I assume that should be particularly true in the world of ethics.What to make of this article from boston.com which challenges that very notion.

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Making Decisions on Values, Not Biases

June 6th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Business Ethics, Decision Making, Leadership

“The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose” Khalil Gibran

“The sustainability of a corporation depends upon the decision-making capacity of its workers, both individually and collectively, but research shows that human judgment is generally flawed and continuously pervaded by psychological biases. Managers can address these biases and create more effective processes and teams by relying on personal and organizational values in decision-making. “

Jonathan Doochin

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The Upside of Irrationality

June 5th, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Decision Making, Leadership

Ethical decision making  models that have been developed  invariably assume  a  conscious and rationale human actor. In my June 3rd post I challenged us to think about ethical approaches to non conscious leadership.In a recent interview on NPR, Dan Ariely , the author of “The Upside of Irrationality ” ,examines how  our biases  predispose us to make unwise decisions and explores how irrationality may help human beings achieve great things .

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The Application of Ethics to Nonconscious Leadership

June 3rd, 2010 by admin | No Comments | Filed in Decision Making, Leadership

Conversations about ethical leadership, whether in academia or in applied business ethics,assume leadership to be conscious and purpose driven. Harry Spence*, of Harvard’s Kennedy School wonders how our discourse on leadership has only been marginally influenced by “the deepening realization of the impact of our nonconscious processes on our behaviour and decision making…In the absence of knowledge of our nonconscious internal dynamics, leaders regularly betray the very organizations they presume to lead.”

I believe it is time to review our current ethical approaches to assisting individuals and organizations. We should be considering what an ethical framework for Nonconscious leadership might look like.

*Read his full article at The Harvard Business Review

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