Business. Ethics. Inevitable Dilemmas of Multicriteria Decisions.

Abstract

Business decisions consider alternatives and make choices to further strategic business goals. Measures of business success are likely to be financial, including profit, revenue, sales, market share, cost of production, quality of products, innovative product development. Ethical decisions make choices among right and wrong outcomes or processes. Assessment of ethical choices may or may not be easily quantified, including consideration of positive and negative consequences, moral principles, and fair process. Inevitably, then, business-ethics decisions will involve multiple decision criteria. When these criteria conflict there will be dilemmas that may be difficult to resolve. Sometimes ethical business decisions will be profitable, sometimes ethical business decisions will be more costly than less ethical alternatives and therefore be less profitable. Multicriteria analysis tools are designed for such decision dilemmas, yet responsibility inheres to the people who must choose. Conclusions are drawn for algorithmic decision tools.