PR PRACTITIONERS AS ETHICAL DECISION-MAKERS

THE RESEARCHER TOLD US SO

You may have made some observations yourself over the years about the difference in the way women and men see certain situations and that they might even come up with different solutions to dilemmas. Whereas you may not be comfortable with attributing this to the gender issue, research has actually shown us that this is true.

In Chapter 7 we discussed the issue of moral development: that we are not born moral or immoral, rather that as we grow and develop our abilities to think, our abilities to make moral decisions evolve . We used the work of the late Harvard psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg as the basis for our discussion. He studied adolescent boys and their responses to ethical dilemmas and developed his theory of moral development based on the notion that whereas we begin our lives very self-centred, our moral abilities develop to include an ever-widening concern for others until we reach a point where we are able to use universal principles as a basis for our decisions. At that point we begin to consider the good of even those with whom we never come in contact ”or at least some of us get to that point. In truth, few of us ever do, according to Kohlberg.

There was a lot to think about in this theory. It explains why some people make ethical decisions based only on what's in it for them, whereas others seem to be able to take themselves out of a situation and consider the right thing to do on its own. This just indicates a difference in levels of development. His theory was, however, based on the notion that rules and justice are what are most important in making ethical decisions.

Then along came a graduate student named Carol Gilligan who became Kohlberg's research assistant in 1970. She would go on to develop her own theory of moral development, spurred largely by her criticism of his. She was concerned that he had gathered his data from privileged, white adolescent males and that the theory failed to consider the different ways that men and women perceive the world. Indeed, her own theory, described in detail in her book In a Different Voice: Psychological theory and women's development , suggests that we go through stages that are similar to those that men seem to navigate, but that women's orientation is different. Rather than being mainly concerned about rules and justice, women seem to base their moral decisions on a framework of relationships and caring.

It appears that males approach morality with the belief that individuals have certain basic rights, and that you have to respect the rights of others. Thus, morality imposes restrictions on what you can do and this provides the parameters for ethical decision-making. By contrast, the female approach to morality is that people have responsibilities towards others. So morality is an imperative to care for others. Using this as the basis for ethical decisions results in quite different ones from those suggested by males.

So, what does this mean to us in the business world of the 21st century? In these days of what appears to be institutionalized immorality in decisions affecting everything from the environment to investor relations, and where the highest levels of most businesses are dominated by men, the question is germane.

A study of the ethical decision-making patterns of public relations practitioners , done by a graduate student at Louisiana State University in 1998, also found that gender played a part in the decisions and that women scored higher in the questions related to ˜integrity. ^{[ 7]} This might sound immediately as if women are more ethical than are men. But the truth is they are just different.

The ethics research finds that men are factual and logical, where women tend towards more emotional decisions. Is this good or bad? Where men are rule-based, women are more compassionate. Where men are focused on what's going on in the here and now, women tend to be more focused on the future. Where men see things in black and white, women see them in shades of grey. Where men take a commanding role, women sometimes shy away from decision-making (the research with children showed that when boys are playing and have a conflict, they work to resolve it, while the girls stopped playing).

So, who is ˜better at ethics? It should be clear that there are advantages and disadvantages to each orientation. And we need to note as well that there are other factors that are involved in making ethical decisions; gender just happens to be one of them.

We make decisions every day in public relations practice and in our personal lives; some are conscious while others are automatic. Ethical decision-making is a skill that can be learnt, but it needs to be a conscious process at all times. The more conscious moral decisions you make, the better your judgement becomes.

In summary, we might consider Willem Landman's (the Director of the Ethics Institute of South Africa) suggestions about making ethical decisions:

• Choose values-driven actions.

• Choose right over wrong.

• Choose good over bad.

• Choose fair over unfair. ^{[ 8]}