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 ...