04-014 Ch01 pp5

3/10/04

4:53 PM

Page 68

selecting between right and wrong alternatives or

between good and bad choices. Most of these choices
are between right and right or between one good and
another. Individuals who effectively manage these
kinds of ethical trade-offs are those who have a clear
sense of their own values and who have developed a
principled level of moral maturity. They have articulated and clarified their own internal set of universal,
comprehensive, and consistent principles on which to
base their decisions. It is seldom the case that a manager could choose economic performance goals every
time or that he or she could choose social performance
goals every time. Trade-offs are inevitable.
It is not a simple matter to generate a personal
set of universal, comprehensive, and consistent principles that can guide decision making. According to
Kohlbergs research, most adults have neither constructed, nor do they follow, a well-developed set of
principles in making decisions. One reason is that
they have no model or example of what such principles might be. We offer some standards against which
to test your own principles for making moral or ethical choices. These standards are neither comprehensive nor absolute, nor are they independent of one
another. They simply serve as reference against
which to test the principles that you include in your
personal values statement.

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Front page test Would I be embarrassed if

my decision became a headline in the local
newspaper? Would I feel comfortable
describing my actions or decision to a customer or stockholder?
Golden rule test Would I be willing to be
treated in the same manner?
Dignity and liberty test Are the dignity and liberty of others preserved by this decision? Is the
basic humanity of the affected parties
enhanced? Are their opportunities expanded or
curtailed?
Equal treatment test Are the rights, welfare,
and betterment of minorities and lower-status
people given full consideration? Does this
decision benefit those with privilege but without merit?
Personal gain test Is an opportunity for personal gain clouding my judgment? Would I
make the same decision if the outcome did not
benefit me in any way?
Congruence test Is this decision or action consistent with my espoused personal principles?

Does it violate the spirit of any organizational

policies or laws?
Procedural justice test Can the procedures
used to make this decision stand up to scrutiny
by those affected?
Cost-benefit test Does a benefit for some cause
unacceptable harm to others? How critical is the
benefit? Can the harmful effects be mitigated?
Good nights sleep test Whether or not anyone else knows about my action, will it produce a good nights sleep?

In the Skill Application section of this chapter,

you may want to consider these alternatives when
constructing your own set of comprehensive, consistent, and universalistic principles. You should be
aware, however, that your set of personal principles
will also be influenced by your orientation for acquiring and responding to the information you receive.
This orientation is called learning style.

LEARNING STYLE
We are constantly exposed to an overwhelming
amount of information, but only part of it can be
given attention and acted on at any given time. Right
now you have information entering your brain relating to the functioning of your physical body, the
attributes of the room in which you are sitting, the
words on this page, the ideas and memories that
spring to mind as you read about self-awareness,
long-held beliefs, and recollections of recent events.
Not all of this information is conscious, otherwise
your brain would become overloaded and you would
go insane. Over time, we all develop strategies for
suppressing some kinds of information and paying
attention to other kinds. These strategies become
habitual and ingrained, and they result in our own
kind of learning style.
Learning style refers to the inclination each of us
has to perceive, interpret, and respond to information
in a certain way. Learning style is based on two key
dimensions: (1) the manner in which you gather information and (2) the way in which you evaluate and act
on information. An abundance of instruments exist to
measure different dimensions of cognitive and learning
styles (see Eckstrom, French, & Harmon, 1979;
Sternberg & Zhang, 2000), but we are focusing here on
the most fundamental dimensions of learning. We use
the most widely employed assessment instrument to
measure learning style. This instrument has been used

CHAPTER 1 DEVELOPING SELF-AWARENESS

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