These competing considerations favor different alternatives. While developing creative alternatives can help reduce the conflict, some tension almost always remains. Others simplify by over-emphasizing the social responsibility of organizations and their managers. I believe we need to struggle with the dilemmas and the more difficult task of balancing the competing goals and considerations. Our ethical framework is founded on the values we hold and believe to be important.
Ethical decisions are almost always complex, for several reasons.
Further, ethical decisions often involve many stakeholders and constituencies, with varied and often-opposing goals and interests. All of us make judgments and decisions from some kind of ethical framework or system, although these are usually tacit, rarely are examined explicitly, and often are applied inconsistently. Making our values and implicit ethical systems explicit to ourselves can help us use them for disciplined and informed ethical decision making. The following table gives brief summaries of eight different ethical systems, including what I see as some of the limitations of each. The first five systems are classical ones, while the last three are examples of many other systems that have received more limited exposure.