Buying a New Pair of Shoes You buy a new pair of shoes on sale. The…

nickii1212 Buying a New Pair of Shoes You buy a new pair of shoes on sale. The…Buying a New Pair of ShoesYou buy a new pair of shoes on sale. The printed receipt states very clearly that the shoes are not returnable. After you get them home, you wear the shoes around the house for a day and decide that they just don’t fit you correctly. So you take the shoes back to the store. You start to yell angrily about the store’s poor quality service so that people in the store start to stare. The clerk calls the store manager; after some discussion, the managers agree to give your money back. Is this ethical? Provide an explanation and justification for your decision to return the shoes, and why your tactic was necessary. (See some examples of justifications on pages 131 – 132). Explanations and JustificationsWhen a negotiator has used an ethically ambiguous tactic that may elicit a reaction—as we described earlier—the negotiator must prepare to defend the tactic’s use to himself (e.g., “I see myself as a person of integrity, and yet I have decided to do something that might be viewed as unethical”), to the victim, or to constituencies and audiences who may express their concerns. The primary purpose of these explanations and justifications is to rationalize, explain, or excuse the behavior—to verbalize some good, legitimate reason why this tactic was necessary. Some examples include:36The tactic was unavoidable. Negotiators frequently justify their actions by claiming that the situation made it necessary for them to act the way they did. The negotiator may feel that she was not in full control of her actions or had no other option; hence she should not be held responsible. Perhaps the negotiator had no intent to hurt anyone but was pressured to use the tactic by someone else.The tactic was harmless. The negotiator may say that what he did was really trivial and not very significant. People tell white lies all the time. For example, you may greet your neighbor with a cheery “Good morning, nice to see you” when, in fact, it may not be a good morning, you are in a bad mood, and you wish you hadn’t run into your neighbor because you are angry about his dog barking all night. Exaggerations, bluffs, or peeking at the other party’s private notes during negotiations can all be easily explained away as harmless actions. Note, however, that this particular justification interprets the harm from the actor’s point of view; the victim may not agree and may have experienced significant harm or costs as a result.Page 132The tactic will help to avoid negative consequences. When using this justification, negotiators are arguing that the ends justify the means. In this case, the justification is that the tactic helped to avoid greater harm. It is okay to lie to an armed robber about where you have hidden your money to avoid being robbed. Similarly, negotiators may see lying (or any other means-ends tactic) as justifiable if it protects them against even more undesirable consequences should the truth be known.The tactic will produce good consequences, or the tactic is altruistically motivated. Again, the end justifies the means, but in a positive sense. A negotiator who judges a tactic on the basis of its consequences is acting in accord with the tenets of utilitarianism—that the quality of any given action is judged by its consequences. Utilitarians may argue that certain kinds of lies or means-ends tactics are appropriate because they may provide for the larger good—for example, Robin Hood tactics in which someone robs from the rich to make the poor better off. In reality, most negotiators use deceptive tactics for their own advantage, not for the general good.”They had it coming,” or “They deserve it,” or “I’m just getting my due.” These are all variations on the theme of using lying and deception either against an individual who may have taken advantage of you in the past or against some generalized source of authority (i.e., “the system”). For many years, polls have documented an erosion of honesty in the United States—people increasingly think it appropriate to take advantage of the system in various ways, including tax evasion, petty theft, shoplifting, improper declaration of bankruptcy, journalistic excesses, and distortion in advertising, to name a few. As one writer of a book on the decline of honesty in America puts it, “Most of us lie and are lied to on a regular basis.”37″They were going to do it anyway, so I will do it first.” Sometimes a negotiator legitimizes the use of a tactic because he or she anticipates that the other intends to use similar tactics. One study found that people were most willing to use deception when negotiating with a partner who had a reputation for being unethical.38 Another study linked a person’s own inclination to deceive and judgments of the other party’s integrity. The more an individual was tempted to engage in misrepresentation, the more he or she believed that the other would also misrepresent information.39 Thus, a person’s own temptation to misrepresent creates a self-fulfilling logic in which he or she believes in the need to misrepresent because the other is likely to do it as well.”He started it.” This is a variation on the last point. In this case, the rationale is that others have already violated the rules, therefore legitimizing the negotiator’s right to violate them as well. In such cases, unethical tactics are employed in a tit-for-tat manner, to restore balance, or to give others their due.The tactic is fair or appropriate to the situation. This approach uses a kind of moral (situational) relativism as a rationale or justification. Most social situations, including negotiations, are governed by a set of generally well-understood rules of proper conduct and behavior. For example, recall the earlier arguments that business is a game and that the game has a special ethos to it that legitimizes normally unethical actions.40 Others have countered these arguments, contending that deceit in business is just as immoral as it is in other areas of life and that the game analogy of business Page 133no more legitimizes unethical conduct than other analogies.41 As a general matter, ethical relativism—the idea that moral standards shift with changing circumstances—frequently comes under fire as an unacceptable take on morality. As one writer puts it, “If all ethical systems are equally valid, then no firm moral judgments can be made about individual behavior, and we are all on our own to as we like to others, within economic limits and legal constraints.”42 We leave it to the reader to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing.As self-serving rationalizations for one’s own conduct, explanations allow the negotiator to convince others—particularly the victim—that conduct that would ordinarily be wrong in a given situation is acceptable. Rationalizations have the most impact when the victim is persuaded that the explanation is adequate or that the deception as unintentional; they have less impact when the victim sees the deception as selfishly motivated.43 Explanations and justifications help people rationalize the behavior to themselves as well. But there is a risk: We surmise that the more frequently negotiators engage in this self-serving process, the more their judgments about ethical standards and values will become biased, diminishing their ability to see the truth for what it is. The tactics involved may have been used initially to gain power in a negotiation, but negotiators who use them frequently may experience a loss of power over time. These negotiators will be seen as having low credibility or integrity, and they will be treated accordingly as people who will act exploitatively if the opportunity arises. Good reputations are easier to maintain than to restore once damaged.BusinessBusiness – Other