Ethics of Decision-Making in Islamic and Western Environments

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