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Heclo's On Thinking Institutionally

Decent Essays

Corruption happens when somebody thinks of their personal gain and misuses their power to manipulate the rules and policies of the companies. As a professional one can avoid this by think institutionally. Heclo, in his book “On Thinking Institutionally” describes about thinking about others rather than self. He illustrates this with great examples one of them being Barry and Cal. Although both of them are great players, one plays for glorifying himself and the other plays for glorifying the game itself. As a manager or a professional one should think about the entire team or organization rather than just about themselves.
Thinking institutionally is an uphill journey with a lot of resistance. Managers or professionals will have to work against …show more content…

If it is between right and wrong, it is very easy to decide. But in business world it’s not always black and white. There will be lot of grey areas and the decisions will be based on a lot of variables. As we saw the case of Enron, we know that there were lots of wrong decisions made which led to the downfall of the company and also led to public outrage. Enron management has violated many of the basic aspects of business ethics.
Badaracco offers a compelling example of this kind of decision-making dilemma when he describes a situation in which a bank employee learns that her branch will be closing, but she is committed by her particular position to withhold that information for a certain period of time. In the meantime, she is asked by colleagues if she knows whether the branch will be closing; there are single mothers and people who really need to look for other jobs if their employment suddenly disappears. The woman feels torn: on the one hand, she feels it is right to reveal the closing information to her colleagues so that they can prepare themselves and their families for a difficult period; on the other hand, she has a professional obligation to withhold the privileged information until management makes a formal …show more content…

These type of decisions are very hard to make as there is no right versus wrong. It is more like choosing between two options having equal merits. In making such a decision, managers end up doing one right thing while leaving the other right thing undone. Even though managers have their own rationale behind making this decision they still did not do justice to the other one.
Not only managers face the complex situations of making right versus right decisions, but we all are confronted with such dilemmas on a regular basis, both in our personal lives and in our professional lives. The managers need to be trained to take these kinds of situations. Unfortunately, manages are not assisted or trained in this area of decision making by most of the organizations. They are left to make their own decisions, and managers who are not good in decision making end up making the wrong decisions.
Managers who struggle with these types of decision-making can avail themselves of opportunities to learn how to make and live with their right versus right decisions by studying the subject in greater depth. Badaracco’s book is one place to start, and it is a comprehensive yet concise point of departure. In addition, there is a large and growing body of research and popular literature on the subject of business

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