The Good, the Bad, and Your Business - Essay Example

The pressure to make the correct business decisions is often unbearable to many managers. Indecision, anxiety, or a misstep can bring the company to its knees in today's highly competitive economy. While ethical dilemmas remain unsolved, employee morale can plummet, productivity can drop off, business competitors can take a large proportion of your profits, and dissatisfied customers can free (Seglin, 1999). This is bad news for business managers. It is on this premise that Jeffrey L. Seglin wrote the book, The Good, the Bad, and Your Business to give business managers some useful insights on how to conduct their businesses more efficiently and navigate through their everyday moral business dilemmas.

Business mistakes can put a decent professional in serious ethical troubles. This essay attempts to answer some ethical considerations and questions using the above named book. The four point's test, otherwise called the CEO test is credited to Norman Augustine, a former Chief Executive Officer of Lockheed Martin (Maslanka, 2008). In his contribution, Augustine asked business managers to reckon four questions whenever they were faced with an ethical dilemma. First, a manager should ask if the ethical dilemma is legal to avoid getting engaged in illegal activities that could further dent the image of the company.

Secondly, the manager should spend time pondering about the fairness of the ethical dilemma if it was personally meted on him or her instead of the employees. If the ethical dilemma was splashed in the front page of the local newspaper, would the manager feel contented Finally, the manager should ask himself if he would feel satisfied if her mother saw him implement the ethical dilemma. If the manager answers to the affirmative in all the above questions, then the decisions he makes on the dilemma are ethical (Seglin, 2007).

Q2: Comparing and contrasting the Four-point e test with the twelve-point test.The twelve-point test offers a more pragmatic framework for most mangers in dealing with ethical issues and dilemmas. First, a manager must ask himself if he has defined the problem accurately. Secondly, the manager must ask himself how he would have viewed the dilemma if he was an employee. Further, the manager must dig into how the problem occurred in the first place and who was involved in the situation in the first place.

After evaluating the above, the manager should then stop to ponder what his intentions are in making the decision that he wants to make and how will the intentions compare with likely results. Afterwards, the manager must evaluate the consequences of his decisions. The eighth question, which is the most crucial question, is whether the manager can engage the affected party in discussing the problem before making a final judgment. Afterwards, the manager should stop to ponder about the longevity of the decision he makes.

Will it appear valid over a long period of time as it appears now Another crucial question for the manager is whether he could disclose the decisions that he has made to his boss, CEO, board of directors, the society, and family members without any misgivings. The manager should also consider the symbolic potential of the action he is about to take. Finally, the mana