Ethics in Organizational Decision-Making

Ethics are moral principles that govern and guide an individual's behavior or organization's way of conducting its activities. Ethical decisions are choices made with diligent observation of procedures and given guidelines that adhere to given code of conduct. Choosing and evaluating alternatives is a normal and regular practice in any multinational business organization. In business, there are international standards set to guide business owners and managers in any decision made, this moral practices and values are known as global ethics on leadership decision making. The decision-making process needs to observe fundamental codes of conduct that are globally acceptable and adhere to a given international culture. Various organizations come across many challenges in the decision-making process and leaders are compelled to borrow from international leadership ethics (Bazerman & Moore, 2013). The concept of ethics and decision-making applies heavily to large multinational organizations, which operate in a global marketplace. These organizations conduct their business across the globe and outsource labor from different countries. Therefore, ethics in decision making in this organizations is meant to give guidelines and protect rights of employees, at the same time present moral obligations. On this concept, several issues in business decision-making are referred as ethical dilemmas, which are unethical practices that might tarnish the organization's reputation on the global market. Ethics guide the behavior of people in their daily undertakings and more so decision-making (Brown & Trevino, 2016). Observing ethics in decision-making boost employee morale encourages loyalty and fosters brand reputation and other factors essential for the growth of the business. Among the ethics in decision making discussed in this paper will be based on commitment, consciousness and competency. It is true to say that any good decision should be effective and ethical in a sense that it observes the moral and accepted culture.

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Today's global marketplace offers many challenges in decision making due to the dynamism and day to day changes in the business environment. Other emerging issues that have created much variance in the business world include cultural, political, economic and issues that peg on human right aspects (Brown & Trevino, 2005). Value, integrity and good morals in business are important factors that need global attention and regulations to create uniformity and correspondence especially at the age of globalization. Apart from making profits, an organization ought to consider the affairs and well-being of its employees. In coming up with decisions, organizational leaders have many considerations to make, which include morals and ethics. Many multinational organizations, especially from the Middle East countries, are confronted by many ethical dilemmas when coming up with organizational related decisions. Many of the issues emerge from the fact that the cultural and environmental factors differ from some of the international ethics and values (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).

Many internationally acclaimed organizations from the Middle East have a problem in adapting to the global ethics and code of conduct and many times, these values have been violated (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016). A good example is the SABIC Company, a multinational organization and among the leading companies in the Middle East. SABIC is situated in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and is a global leader in diversified chemicals. The company manufactures on an international scale and trades in America, Asia, Europe and other parts of the Middle East. SABIC has employed more than 35,000 people from Saudi Arabia and others outsourced from other countries across the world. The company strictly observes the Saudi Arabian culture and work values, whereby the Islamic religion and its teachings play an important role in management and decision making of the company. Religion affects the relationship between managers and subordinate staffs, which reflect on the Saudi nationals believe on the consultative style of leadership that borrows from the Quran. It is also clear that the company does not consider women in its decision-making process due to the fact that the religion does not regard women as equal members of society (Glover et al., 2012). Additionally, most of the top management consists of men and much of the company's privileges are men oriented, which raises a question on the adherence to global ethics and other decision-making policies on the leadership of the company.

The religious beliefs and other cultural practices pose a global dilemma for SABIC Company especially now that it operates on a global level. It is evident that some of the practices might be irrelevant in global markets and some may be found extremely adverse and unethical. A good example is the Islamic laws or Sharia that are neither practicable nor applicable in Europe or America where SABIC has subsidiaries and intends to open more branches. The major ethical issues in decision making that would face the company is the fact that SABIC is headquartered in Saudi Arabia where all top decisions have to be made based on the Islamic laws and cultural practices (Davis et al., 2005). On the other hand, these decisions have to affect all company's subsidiaries across the world irrespective of their location, environment and cultural setting. Therefore, this gives the management a hard task in customizing decisions to suit each of the company's branch in line with its environment. Making different decisions for each of the company's subsidiaries creates lack of uniformity and alters the larger organization's objectives and goals attainment.

The ethics and values of a given organization greatly influence its decision-making process and dictate the adherence to given cultures and ethics (Hanges et al. 2016). As earlier outlined ethical standards are values acceptable to most people or practices that are believed to be good. For an organization to be ethically successful, it is important that the management understands and respects on how values influence the social environment. How the company operates and how its management and employees regard each other within the work environment is important on how the institution sets its rules, and how the rules will relate to ethical behavior and practices. SABIC company is guided by the Islamic religious beliefs and values. Therefore any decision made by the company has to reflect on the same beliefs irrespective of whether they adhere to global ethics and principles. Many of these values might achieve local ethical issues such as observing the Sharia law in Saudi Arabia is ethically correct. However, this might fail to reach the standards of international acknowledgment. In various occasions, many Middle East countries are faced with the dilemma of the conflicting local ethics and global ethical practices, which has created a fragment of issues in the international business world. Although these issues have not been addressed yet, nothing much can be done so far because religion and culture are pertinent issues in a given society and cannot be altered.

When faced with such situations in an organization, there are various approaches that a leader would consider taking. Some of the ethical challenges the company could be likely to face are non-conformity to global values and ethical practices such as employee oppression, poor working standards, lack of employee involvement in decision-making and poor treatment to female employees. If I were a leader in such organization, I would react by trying to strike a balance between the religious values that affect major decision-making process and global ethical practices. The plan would involve engaging the relevant stakeholders who include other leaders, employees, religious leaders and other business leaders across the globe on how to come up with a win-win situation for both parties. Among the points subject for debate would include looking for a way to create a separate business culture from religious one in order to adopt business policies and values that are globally acceptable. Additionally, I would formulate policies in the organization with an objective of enhancing common universal practices that can be used in subsidiaries that are in foreign countries, which do not practice Islamic values. The reason behind this is the fact that some values and ethics that are locally acceptable do not get the same reception on a global scale. Lastly, I would try to ensure that all decisions made observe common global ethical practices by first ensuring I influence other top leaders to adapt to the business cultures that apply in today's global marketplace. Getting leaders to understand the differences in ethical and cultural practices when making decisions is very vital in ensuring the decisions reached meet global ethics (Gottleb & Sanzgiri, 2016). Addressing the challenges might be an uphill task especially in culturally distinctive areas in the Middle East, but gradual ethical practices will eventually yield.

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