With the Futility of grand principles , Sleep-test ethics and Law, morality and business ,

the problems of right-versus-right situations still sparked in me. The main idea is why grand
principles sometimes cannot be the guidance for right-versus-right situations.
Grand principles are generally viewed as clear, straight forward methods to deal with ethical
issues. They can help managers separate right actions from wrong ones. However, when dealing
with right-versus-right problems, grand principles provide little help since when applied to those
situations, those principles may show that one right action can contradict to other right ones. The
reason is that such principles such as mission statements or legal standards are too general to
help managers choose a right action. This vagueness problem might come from the effort of
trying to convey complex things into simplier ones although basic human values cannot be
defined so generally. With grand principles, problems are clarified by showing the ethical tradeoff, which seems meaningless in helping managers deal with right-versus-right situations. For
instance, if your daughter and your son are both in danger and need your help while you just can
help one of them, what should you do? Obviously, there is a trade-off here since every choice
seems right but you cannot do both and no principles can help you with this.
On another hand, some people argue that they can use their intuitions and instincts to make rightversus-right choices. These sleep-test ethics, in fact, seems not good approaches to ethical
problems since those intuitions can be distorted by that individuals needs or pressure of the
organization. Moreover, managers cannot make decisions only by trusting their intuitions since
they have to explain why they choose to do that due to the responsibility of a manager. An ethical
problem must be analyzed carefully and measured between pros and cons of each option instead
of relying on instincts or emotions. For example, if you are a citizen voting for an election of

your countrys minister, what you should do is to consider who is the best among the candidates
on basis of their abilities rather than their appearances.
Over all, although grand principles or sleep-test ethics seem good approach to ethical problems,
they still have some weaknesses that we cannot ignore. What we should do is to pay a serious
attention to the problem before trusting our intuitions.

Works Cited
Joseph L. Badaracco, J. (1997). The Futility of Grand Principles. In Defining moments (pp. 2553). Harvard Business Press.
Kissick, W. (2012). Law ,Morality and Business. In W. Kissick, Business ethics (pp. 91-104).
Toronto: Emond Publications.