APPLYING COOPER'S ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING MODEL
Case #1 -- a Questionable Hire
On the main issue of the ethical propriety of the group's decision to forego hiring Anne, Cooper's model and other objective ethical analyses would suggest that the group's decision was unethical. On the second issue of Felicia's choice to violate the strict rule about maintaining the confidentiality about the decision, Cooper's model would likely have permitted certain kinds of rule violations but not others. In principle, Felicia's decision to violate confidentiality was ethical under the circumstances but Cooper's model would have required closer attention to the phase pertaining to projecting the probable consequences of the decision on Felicia's part to fully satisfy her respective ethical obligations.
With respect to the main issue of the group's decision-making process, the most important element of Cooper's model would have been the phase of defining the ethical issue or dilemma. Felicia would have considered that the intended course of action of the group was both unethical and expressly illegal in the United States as a fundamental violation of the Civil Rights Act and of related legislation that absolutely prohibit the denial of a position on the basis of racial identity. Cooper's model does not specifically address the issue of what happens when one rule trumps another rule about the same subject matter and when adhering to one necessarily violates the other. Felicia would have been right to make the decision to uphold the more authoritative federal law about civil rights in hiring decisions over agency regulations requiring absolute confidentiality.
Cooper's model would also have led to this conclusion on the basis of the phase involving projecting probable consequences: In that regard, Felecia could have weighed the probable consequences of allowing blatant racism in hiring within a government agency against the probable consequences of violating agency policy to address such violations. Either way, Cooper's model would have justified Felicia's decision to report the situation to appropriate authorities for investigation just the same as if the group had simply made the same decision out of overt racial animus because applicable federal law does not allow employers any excuse for violating civil rights in hiring decisions.
Felicia would also have been ethically justified in seeking out confidential advice such as from her priest or from a lawyer, because their formal obligations with respect to confidentiality preserve the same interests as those of agency policy. However, had Felicia better employed the projection-of-probable-consequences phase of Cooper's model, she would have considered the consequences of violations on the part of the priest and she would have sought guidance on the identical issue without divulging any identifying information about her agency or the individuals involved.
Case #2 -- Taking a Leave of Taking a Leave
This case reveals a potential weakness of Cooper's model in that it does not provide a reliable means of weighing the importance of violating objective ethical principles (such as honesty and good faith) or of violating formal rules against the relative benefits to all parties of permitting those violations of objective principle. In this case, the most likely best outcome for all parties involved would have been to allow the violation of formal rules and the execution of a legally-binding agreement that was meaningless in practical terms. If the parties involved followed Cooper's model, they could have chosen arbitrarily to emphasize the importance of ethical values (i.e. honesty and good faith) over probable consequences or, in the alternative, to emphasize the importance of probable consequences instead.
If the individuals value principle over consequences, they would not allow Milo to enter into a contractual agreement with prior knowledge that he fully intended to violate it on the principles of honesty and good faith. However, on at least two levels, the decision to allow precisely that would have been preferable, even from Cooper's point-of-view: First, the agreement itself was so poorly crafted from a...
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