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The Potter Box is a model for making ethical decisions, developed by Ralph B. Potter, Jr., professor of social ethics emeritus at Harvard Divinity School. [1] It is commonly used by communication ethics scholars. According to this model, moral thinking should be a systematic process and how we come to decisions must be based in some reasoning.
In business ethics, Ethical decision-making is the study of the process of making decisions that engender trust, and thus indicate responsibility, fairness and caring to an individual. To be ethical, one has to demonstrate respect, and responsibility. [ 1 ]
Business ethics operates on the premise, for example, that the ethical operation of a private business is possible—those who dispute that premise, such as libertarian socialists (who contend that "business ethics" is an oxymoron) do so by definition outside of the domain of business ethics proper. [citation needed]
Principlism is an applied ethics approach to the examination of moral dilemmas centering the application of certain ethical principles. This approach to ethical decision-making has been prevalently adopted in various professional fields, largely because it sidesteps complex debates in moral philosophy at the theoretical level.
In philosophy, an ethical dilemma, also called an ethical paradox or moral dilemma, is a situation in which two or more conflicting moral imperatives, none of which overrides the other, confront an agent. A closely related definition characterizes an ethical dilemma as a situation in which every available choice is wrong.
By following Cooper's model of ethical decision-making, a public administrator is able to create a more concrete process by which to assess individual steps that were taken in reaching a decision. This ensures that at each point, an effort was made by the administrator to uphold ethical principles and that fairness and equality were the standard.
As a result, there is growing acceptance of the plausibility of making decisions based on the context, [16] and the particular situation being considered, rather than by reference to principles. This move away from grand theory confirms earlier views of Adam Smith, [ 17 ] who held that moral theories derived from moral actions rather than ...
Situational ethics can also be classed under the ethical theory genre of "proportionalism" which says that "It is never right to go against a principle unless there is a proportionate reason which would justify it." [6] J. A. T. Robinson, a situational ethicist, considered the approach to be a form of ethical relativism. [citation needed]