Executive Summary
Decision-making is a critical component in organizations because of its influence on how organizations operate. It is also considered an important role of managers and employees although employees also have a role to play when it comes to organizational decision-making. There are several factors influencing ethical decision-making in the workplace, and one of these factors is emotion. This paper extensively examines how emotion impacts ethical decision-making in the workplace. It also examines how emotion and ethical decision-making can be incorporated into the human resource career.
Impact of Emotion on Ethical Decision-Making in the Workplace
A critical component in organizations is decision-making given its influence on organizational operations. Decision-making is also considered an important role of managers and executives although employees also take part on selected occasions. The fact that managers are tasked with organizational decision-making continues to get the attention of the public given the variability in the behavior of managers and the outcomes of decision-making processes as well as the implications that it has on organizational performance (Mohamed & Sathyamoorthy, 2014). Although decision-making is seen as a simple organizational process, it may become a huge task for organizations especially when several alternatives exist. In other words, when a manager wants to make decisions aimed at improving organizational performance and has several strategies to embrace, it may be difficult for the manager to decide on one strategy and leave others. In fact, it is recommended that organizations should make decisions after a great deal of forethought and research. At times, decisions made by managers or executives cause organizational problems. Such decisions are always made based on factors such as individual interests of the managers or employees (Peterlin, Pearse, & Dimovski, 2015). This is where ethical decision-making is essential. Ethical decision-making can help to prevent errors that can cause the downfall of a company or organization. With this knowledge, however, people ignore the fact that ethical decision-making is not easy given the influence of factors such as emotion. Thus, this paper examines the impacts of emotion on ethical decision-making in the workplace.
To understand the impact of emotion on ethical decision-making in the workplace, the focus must be on an ethical component known as ethical sensitivity. The latter is known for its role in initiating the ethical decision-making process by identifying an ethical dilemma. Ethical sensitivity is a situation where one is aware that the resolution of a particular dilemma at hand could affect the welfare of other people. Of course, the arousal component of emotion is known to have a close association with ethical sensitivity through its provision of the cognitive stimulation necessary in recognizing the existence of an ethical dilemma. A person with high arousal levels (emotional component) may have increased vigilance that is necessary when it comes to searching for information, and therefore, catalyze the initiation of an ethical decision-making process. On the other hand, a person with low arousal levels may have insufficient energy and can be unable to identify whether or not an ethical dilemma exists (Gaudine & Thorne, 2001). The fact that there is a positive association between the arousal component of emotion and a person’s likelihood or capability to identify the existence of an ethical dilemma highlights the impact of emotion on ethical decision-making in the workplace.
The feeling state, another component of emotion, also influences how a person identifies the ethical situation at hand. Scholars argue that a person’s emotional state may play a crucial role in providing a cognitive explanation to how the feeling state influences the identification of ethical dilemma, particularly in the workplace. In humans, the storage of information is often in the memory in associative networks including negative or positive emotional tag. Of course, a lot of information is always stored in the positive. This means that people who experience a positive affect tag often have more information that is readily available than their counterparts experiencing a negative tag. Notably, individuals who experience a positive tag are more creative than their counterparts and can easily identify the existence of an ethical dilemma in any organizational situation (Gaudine & Thorne, 2001). Thus, this concept that individuals who experience a positive affect easily recognize an ethical dilemma showcases how emotion impacts on ethical-decision making in the workplace.
Key components in ethical decision-making are prescriptive reasoning and prescriptive judgment. It is essential to understand what these two concepts are before delving into how they influence ethical-decision making processes. On the one hand, prescriptive reasoning refers to an individual’s assessment if what they believe ought to be done to amicably resolve an existing ethical dilemma. On the other hand, prescriptive judgment refers to the outcome or result of a prescriptive reasoning process, and in most case, it is a reflection of the factors behind the use of a given cognitive structure. The two components of emotion, arousal and feeling state, both influence the prescriptive judgment of an individual (Gaudine & Thorne, 2001). Arousal is known to increase an individual’s alertness and vigilance when it comes to searching for decisions that can help to reduce harm for parties in an ethical dilemma. Of course, the increased level of vigilance means that the individual will have unlimited access to cognitive moral structures that are crucial in solving ethical dilemmas at hand. Besides, the feeling state has a positive influence on an individual’s prescriptive judgment. In other words, a person with a positive feeling can retrieve more and important information from memory thereby acting as a catalyst to the resolution of an existing ethical dilemma. Simply put, arousal and feeling state are positively associated with how an individual formulates a prescriptive judgment critical to resolving an ethical dilemma, and this highlights the impact of emotion on ethical decision-making.
Ethical-decision making is an important component in any company or organization given its positive impacts on improved organizational productivity and performance. In essence, the human resource career is one of the several careers where incorporating ethical decision-making is almost mandatory (Mihailović, Cvijanović, & Simonović, 2015). The human resource function in organizations is known to deal with myriads of ethical challenges as it is one of the few functions dealing directly with an organization’s employed staff. It should be noted that human resource function often witnesses several pitfalls that can contribute to the downfall of an organization if not addressed early enough. The HR function is concerned with how employees in an organization are handled or treated, and this is where ethical decision-making must be incorporated. When employees the decisions targeting how employees are treated are based on ethical grounds, there is the likelihood that long-term employee loyalty and trust will be garnered (Pinnington, Macklin, & Campbell, 2007). When employees are loyal and trustworthy, they have the opportunity to gain more experience working closely with their employers to the benefit of the organization regarding performance and productivity.
To sum up, it remains undoubted that emotion has a significant impact on ethical decision-making in the workplace. First, there is a positive association between the arousal component of emotion and a person’s likelihood or capability to identify the existence of an ethical dilemma in the workplace. Second, individuals who experience a positive affect easily recognize an ethical dilemma and can solve them amicably. Third, arousal and feeling state are positively associated with how an individual formulates a prescriptive judgment critical to resolving an ethical dilemma. The human resource function is one of the several functions where ethical-decision making must be incorporated since it deals with employees and other stuff.
References
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