Ethics of Decision-Making in Islamic and Western Environments

Abstract

Introduction With the advent of ultra-modern communications technology and public awareness of suspicious business practices, the question of ethics in decisionmaking has become extremely important in today’s business world, in commercial as well as government sectors. A. M. Senia (1403 AH/ 1982 AC) agrees with Dr. Mark Pastin of Arizona State University, that the key to the success of American business is to divert its attention to the study of, and implementation of ethics instead of turning to Japan for innovative ideas. Dr. Pastin concludes that the employees are more and more concerned about the worthwhileness of their work rather than their economic survival. He suggests that by giving “real world examples-if, for instance, a firm adopts its own stricter guidelines for certain governmental regulations, then it can meet the stringent governmental requirements and in the end, increase the firm’s share of market. A clear proof of increasing awareness of the ethics of decision-making is evident by the fact that the Center for Public and Private Sector Ethics has acquired great popularity since its inception in 1400 AH/1980 AC. Decision-making is an integral part of both day-to-day and long-term affairs of a single individual or a group of individuals. Factors such as decision magnitude (major versus minor), decision impact (high versus low), the decision-making body itself (a single person, a family, or a committee of persons), and decision environment (under certainty, risk, uncertainty, or competition) etc., are the determinants of whether or not a single individual or a group of individuals makes a decision. While Green and Tull (1407 AH/1987 AC) and others break down the decision process into several steps (i.e., recognition of the problem, generation of alternatives, evaluation of alternatives, and implementation of the selected alternative), the evaluation ...