The main purpose of any project is to finish it and benefit from it. Unfortunately, not all of the projects are tend to be successful. Very often a lot of danger signs appear during the projects implementation. In his book, Johnson describes several Ethical Danger Signs upon detection of which any project should be reviewed. According to Johnson, there are five main Ethical Danger Signs:
groupthink,
mismanaged agreement,
escalating commitment,
excessive control,
moral exclusion.
All of them should be fully examined in order to be ready to recognize and prevent them.
I would like to my personal example of Ethical Danger Signs. Once, my uncle and his wife decided to repair their house. My uncle and his family inherited a big and beautiful house that was also very old. My uncle wanted to maintain the basic structure of the house in order to remain its history. In this case, he started with the remodeling of the interior of the house in order to make bigger rooms with more light. While completing this task the necessity of walls and flour insulation was found out. This step became very time- and -finance-consuming but my uncle wanted to reach the goal of having a perfect house to live by all means. The next unexpected problems appeared in connection with plumbing which should be replaced as well as all the house electricity system which even represented danger for the house safety. At this point, the first danger for my uncle’s project came out. According to Johnson classification, such danger could be named Escalating Commitment – “a continuation of failed course of action” (Johnson, 2016). My uncle and his family faced with numerous obstacles on the way to their goal desire to repair the house. Those obstacles needed a lot of many and time to de destroyed. It became obvious that it would be easier, cheaper and faster just to build a new house that would meet all the tastes and expectation. Nevertheless, the family of my uncle continued to invest in the project of house repair. “Instead of cutting their losses, group redoubles their efforts, pouring in more resources” (Johnson, 2016). These Johnson words exactly illustrate what happened with my uncle’s family. The possible way out could appear if my uncle invited an independent expert who would evaluate all the costs and suggest the most rational option for solving the problem of the house repair. But my uncle preferred to rely on his own strength. Here comes another Ethical Danger Sign – Excessive Control. My uncle was a recognized leader in his family and all the members took his decision without evaluation. Every big or small operation in the house was taken only under my uncle’s total control. In this case, the group of my uncle (his family) faced with the lack of interpersonal communication and understanding. In its turn, this led to the situation when nobody was able to share his awareness and doubts about the future success of the house repair. My uncle was obsessed with the idea of old house repair and he did not want to admit the defeat. It is necessary to mention, that in the result the house was repaired and the family of my uncle moved there but the level of their satisfaction was not as high as it was expected before. The total costs for the house repair exceeded the planned amount by several times and the repair took more than a year instead of several months. My uncle had to take a loan and sacrifice family holidays. At the end, he admitted that his project “did worth a candle”.
In conclusion I would like to say that it is essential for a project success to have enough courage to review or even stop it in case any of Ethical Danger Signs appears. In my example, both Escalating Commitment and Excessive Control hinted at the unreasonableness of the project. My uncle could avoid extra costs and moral hazard if he invited a specialist to evaluate all the possible risks before starting the project.
References
Johnson, C.E. (2016). Organizational Ethics: A Practical Approach. Sage Publication Inc.
