ABSTRACT
Many businesses are more focussed than ever before on proactively doing the right thing for all of their stakeholders. In order to make ethically good and sound decisions, they often make use of ethical decision-making models in their deliberations about planned corporate business activities. In order to support decision-makers with this process, i.e. reflection on the nature of an ethical dilemma, a brief outline of the theoretical constituents of ethical decision-making, and a ‘toolkit’ consisting of frameworks and models for ethical screening and decision-making have been offered in this chapter. A dilemma always comprises a choice that has to be made between options for good ethical behaviour, and ethical decision-making presupposes the use of moral reasoning and the taking of all factors that could influence the decision-making process into account, including the relationship of the anticipated activities to the law. The ‘toolkit’ contains four frameworks for ethical triage, or screening, which could be helpful when trying to make a quick assessment of the ethical quality of an activity, and ten models for ethical decision-making, which cover a wide range of models – ranging from less complex, to more so – which decision-makers could use at their own discretion when encountering an ethical dilemma or problem.
