Decision Making within College Life - Term Paper Example

? Decision Making Within College Life Number: Introduction That there are several factors that shape decision making in college life and work life is a matter that is beyond gainsay. This is because the factors that underpin decision making are complex, with some factors stemming from historical factors, environmental and others, intrapersonal persuasions. This is consistent with my campus experience which has not yet been long enough since I am still a college junior, but has been dynamic enough to inculcate great gems concerning decision making. Experiences in Class One of the most expensive experiences I have derived from the classroom situation is the learning encounter. By learning and participating in the college curriculum, I have been able to draw gems of knowledge which are key to effective decision making. Particularly, creative thinking featured in the college curriculum and inculcated within me, awareness on the inevitable need to incorporate proper perspectives, analogies and skills. Factoring analogies in decision making helps an individual make proper comparison among the options available, in respect to the consequences that come with each option. Proper perspective entails the maintenance of objective thinking during the course of decision making. This involves weighing the options present and their consequences, without letting personal biases, feelings and personal or partisan opinion to affect the thought process or the final decision which will have been arrived at. While doing this thinking, it is important that impartiality is maintained concerning the matter at hand (West-Burnham and Jones, 2008). Experiences in Campus There are also several meaningful experiences which I have drawn from the college experience. Particularly, this remained a strong case when it comes to scholarly integrity, especially during exam situations. I specifically through college experience learned that not only is academic cheating and intellectual theft rife among college students, but that the allure of these vices is very strong. Several situations such as carrying small hand-held notes into exam rooms, conversing with friends during exams and lifting ideas from a fellow student’s ideas from his term paper, are some of the manifestations of academic cheating and intellectual dishonesty which I witnessed among college peers. In light of this development, it is fitting to observe that ethical decision making criteria came in handy in helping me make personal decisions which would foster intellectual and academic integrity, and not just in determining organizational and management behavior. It is against this above backdrop that I adopted justice as a form of ethical decision making criteria, in lieu of other options such as utilitarianism, deontology, consequantialism and fundamental rights. Utilitarianism failed to qualify the occasion since by saying that an act is ethically and morally right provided it gives the greatest good and pleasure to the greatest number (of people). Herein, I noticed that utilitarianism may easily be misconstrued as abetting cheating in exam rooms since it extends the greatest good and pleasure to the greatest number. For instance, the cheating student will have obtained good grades and the mean grade of class made to rank higher, and thereby vindicating the lecturer as competent. The fact that utilitarianism did not provide proper explanations against academic or intellectual dishonesty is a matter that drew a wedge between utilitarianism and me. In about the same wavelength, deontology failed to suffice as a possible bulwark against the allure of cheating in exams since it only emphasized the need to do things out of duty. The emphasis that things are done out of duty assumes that humans are programmed like robots and that what entails duty is a simplistic one-way directive. However, humans are rational beings with different in-depths in personal convictions, and duties are characterized by ethical issues which are dynamic and may therefore precipitate unforeseen and unqualified ethical dilemma. In this case, an individual is left with an insufficient ethical guideline which requires him to decide on a moral dilemma purely out of duty. Even in the instance of academic cheating, the student is not morally compelled out of the dishonest act, since he merely told to do the things out of duty, and his duty is to pass exams. The means by which that student passes these exams are not qualified (Tomlinson, 2004). Conversely, consequantialism failed to suit this occasion since it assumes that an act is ethical or morally wrong if it warrants negative consequences. If an act heralds positive consequences, then it is morally or ethically right. Nevertheless, the fact that the copying students may not be caught and punished (negative consequence) but may instead pass their exams and increase the class’ mean grade and strengthen the lecturer’s profile (positive consequences) does not sanitize cheating in exams. Although using fundamental rights and privileges as the criterion for determining the ethical quality or morality of an act, yet it fails to capture the problem of cheating in exam rooms. By maintaining that the rights and liberties for all have to be respected and protected, fundamental rights and privileges serve best as a source of protection for the whistleblower (the person reporting the act of academic cheating), but does not offer the cheating students a solution to their problem, on one hand (Bayne-Jardine and Holly, 2004). On the other hand, justice serves as the best deterrent and the best solution to the problem of cheating. This is because justice uses socialization and acculturation to qualify actions as being ethically or morally wrong or right. Justice then prescribes punishment or rewards for an action that is ethically wrong or right, respectively. The concept of justice is pervasive enough to suffuse into an individual’s sphere of personal decision and responsible action since justice is seen to be fully concomitant with the principle of cause and effect. One negative action such as cheating in the exam room leads to negative consequences later on, because such an action is inherently wrong. In this case, the consequences must catch up with the perpetrator (the cheating students in the exam hall); whether they caught in the act or not, notwithstanding. Experiences in Work Situations There are also valuable experiences which I drew from my previous work situation which I had ventured into before I reported for college education. One of these experiences was instances in which short and strict deadlines compelled the rank and file of our organization to engage in teamwork. To meet performance target, every group was assigned a supervisor it reported to, and the group has to work together as a team. The supervisor and the human resources management (HRM) department had also to work together to determine whether the performance target has been met or not. Team work also applied in the efforts that were applied in sealing the performance gap, if it was sustained. This is because the arrangement and execution of workshop drives and training programs remained successful because of the team spirit which prevailed within the organization’s rank and file. The converse of this is that the absence of team spirit would have left employees scheduled for workshop drives and training programs feeling victimized or belittled. In a separate vein, my experiences in the work situation helped me to appreciate the value of reward systems and performance evaluation systems, as a way of not only managing organizational behavior, but individual behavior also. The reward system specifies the choices that are to be made by payoffs. Performance evaluation on the other hand involves making evaluation on the gap between performance goal and performance gap. If the performance goal previously set is not met, the organization is said to have incurred a performance gap. Conversely, a successful organization is said to have met its performance target. In this respect, it is important that employees who meet performance target are to be rewarded, in order to motivate them. The use of reward system also plays a two-fold role, in that it apart from inspiring employees who met performance target to maintain their standard of performance, it also inspires and challenges the rest of the employees to work harder to meet their performance target. The rewards may come in form of increased remunerations, perks, extension of grants and scholarships and exaction of acts of recognition. The extolling of the culture of teamwork in the organization I had my short stint with is also underscored by the manner in which it expended its resources and commitment to have steady flow of communication within the organization. This is because, the organization rightly established the fact that effective communication is to organizational success, just as blood is to the body. It is by this virtue that the organization ensures a strong presence of avenues of communication such as telephones, mails, telegrams, facsimile, round table and open door policies, at the intra-organizational level. While round table meetings encourage a free exchange of ideas at both inter and intra-departmental levels of an organization, the open door policy allows any employee to walk into any top manager’s or the CEO’s office to talk about a pressing issue, without booking an appointment at the secretary’s desk. From this experience, I came to respect the importance of teamwork, in achieving both personal and organizational goals. Reflection The different lines of experience I have had at work, in my classroom situation, campus and former work situation, I have come to conclude that the very ingredients for organizational success are the very blueprints of individual success. Just as teamwork is indispensible in organizational undertakings, so is a student’s academic burden made lighter when he participates in group discussions and presentations. After all, group work promotes socialization and the exercising of interpersonal skills, which are part of intellectual wellbeing. Again, just as Blandford (2000) proposes, parents and school administrations are better off encouraging dexterity in learning by extending incentives and rewards to students with sound academic performance. Students who do not meet the desired goal or pass mark are to be graced with remedial classes, to help them catch up. Likewise, ethical values must not be separated from academics, if the concept of ethics is to be fully upheld as the solution to dishonest practices such as intellectual dishonesty. References Bayne-Jardine, C. & Holly, P. (2004). Developing Quality Schools. London/ Bristol: The Falmer Press. Blandford, S. (2000). Managing Professional development in Schools. New York: Routledge. Tomlinson, H. (2004). Educational Leadership: Personal Growth for Professional Development. New York: SAGE Publications. West-Burnham, J. & Jones, H. V. (2008). Spiritual and Moral Development in Schools. London: Bloomsbury. Read More