Enhance the Assessment of Managers Moral Reasoning - Book Report/Review Example

Enhance the Assessment of Manager’s Moral Reasoning The article titled, “Adapting Kohlberg to Enhance the Assessment of Manager’s moral Reasoning” by James Weber assesses the significance of understanding manager’s response to moral and ethical dilemmas they face during the course of business. The author deplores the absence of a proper method to evaluate the phenomenon. He describes that available method presented by Lawrence Kohlberg sought to identify a person’s moral development under which people’s reasoning and standard issues are measured. However, Kohlberg method cannot be applied for the assessment of manager’s moral reasoning as it comprises information that would seem needless for the particular assignment. James Weber suggests that the instrument should be modified to enable it capable for judging manager’s reasoning. The author proposes four modifications in Kohlberg’s method to make it effective (Weber 295). In this review, efforts have been made to study all proposals presented by James Weber while focusing on their practicality. It is very important to set criteria to review any piece of writing as without this it is near to impossible to reach at a sane opinion. As far as the article of James Weber is concerned, the criteria include the following: a. Has the author presented sound arguments? b. Has the author devised a theoretical framework? c. Has the author presented historical facts? d. Has the author presented pragmatic approach? Kohlberg presents three level of moral development and each level has two stages. Their detail is as under: PRECONVENTIONAL LEVEL Stage 1 — Punishment and Obedience Orientation Stage 2 — Instrumental Relativist Orientation CONVENTIONAL LEVEL Stage 3 — "Good Boy - Nice Girl" Orientation Stage 4 — Law and Order Orientation POSTCONVENTIONAL LEVEL Stage 5 — Social-Contract Legalistic Orientation Stage 6 — Universal Ethical Principle Orientation Basically, the above mentioned stages point out the differences in reasoning of people while they are making ethical judgments. In this connection, James Webber proposes an instrument and scoring method under following four adaptations: i. Adaptation 1: Moral Dilemmas, ii. Adaptation 2: Probe Questions, iii. Adaptation 3: Written Interviews, iv. Adaptation 4: Abbreviated Scoring Guide. At first, the article of James Webber points out major components of all stages which were presented by Lawrence Kohlberg in his theory. Later, he justifies the adoption of moral interview for assessing the morality level of management. The formulation of questions for morality interview demand high level of competency and skill so that they can be comprehended by people of all ages and also has worldwide application. Moreover, questionnaire must have the potential to measure the highest stage of moral reasoning. The author points out that these conditions are not merely relevant to managers but this adaptation has the potential to measure the “managers’ actual form of moral reasoning, rather than his or her highest form”. James Webber also proposes an abbreviated scoring guide that would be utilized in alleviating the difficulties of scoring process. The scoring guide eradicates the complicated process of previous methods and enables researchers to measure managers’ reasoning within stipulated development stages. The major goal of the author was the elimination of unnecessary details during the course of measuring managers’ reasoning, which he succeeded to achieve with the help of various adaptations. These adaptations have been introduced in different stages of the process. The author points out other factors that influence the decisions of mangers when they face moral dilemmas. At this stage a lacuna has been surfaced as author has failed to present the alternatives in the interview section. He has noted, “Managers do not have time to conduct long interviews and so they prefer the written interviews (Weber 299). No doubt, it is a shortcoming but it has become irrelevant in modern era because the environment of the work has been changed and management has relegated interview process to different panels and other people in the section. Moreover, some kinds of interviews are also not relevant in the present era. Gender, age and type of work are other factors which are weighed during the ethical and moral decision making process. Besides the guiding principles of Kohlberg and James Weber, managers of every profession have specific guidelines to tackle ethical dilemmas that are evolved through experiences. These guidelines help mangers in ethical decision making in very efficient and perfect manners. Earlier theorists focus only on the importance of ‘reasoning’ in moral decision making but modern experts have different point of view in this regard. They give importance to emotions also besides focusing on the reasoning alone and consider them a major determinant in ethical decision making. In this connection, intuitionist theory of Jonathan Haidt cannot be ignored which prioritizes emotions and declare them as the foundation of the moral decision making. He, however, notes that type of business entity also contributes a lot in ethical decision making. In this connection, Jonathan Haidt presented a model which has following four stages: a. Perception of events, b. Affect/intuition, c. Judgment and d. Reasoning. Haidt presents a very important point related with the human psychology that people make ethical decisions which are based on the emotions of that particular time and later try to find reasons and justifications for their decisions. Knowledge does not surface at once or suddenly. It always evolves through natural process. Many of the arguments or reasoning of Aristotle and Plato have been rejected by the modern scientists but still they have unique status as they were the initiators. Likewise, Lawrence Kohlberg’s model to measure ethical reasoning has certain limitations but still it is a milestone in the history of ethics and morality. Although James Weber has presented worthy modifications or amendments in Kohlberg model but still they are not sufficient because working environment in the modern era has been changed altogether and he also ignore the psyche of the man which was pointed out by Jonathan Haidt. In my personal opinion, emotions and mood of a manger during a particular time when a mangers takes decision should be considered important as ‘reason’ follows emotion but not vice versa. Work Cited Weber, James. “Adapting Kohlberg to Enhance the Assessment of Managers’ Moral Reasoning.” Business Ethics Quarterly 1991: 293-318. Print. Read More