Topic > Overview of What an Ethical Dilemma is

“A student finishes a Ph.D. working on a problem that has directly patentable aspects and that solves a serious problem in the disk drive sector. His new job might be at Hitachi or Seagate or some similar company. He arrives at the new job and discovers that his student work, which is in the process of being patented, will solve the problem at his new company. If he revealed what he knows to his new employer, he would immediately be a hero, but he would compromise the patent process at his original institution. This step could have major financial implications for the original institution in the form of royalties.” There are three conditions that must be present for a situation to be considered an ethical dilemma. The first condition occurs in situations where an individual, called an “agent,” must make a decision about what the best course of action is. Situations that are uncomfortable but do not require choices are not ethical dilemmas. The second condition for the ethical dilemma is that there must be several courses of action to choose from. Third, in an ethical dilemma, whatever course of action is taken, some ethical principles are compromised. In other words, there is no perfect solution. In determining what constitutes an ethical dilemma, it is necessary to make a distinction between ethics, values, morals, laws, and policies. Ethics is a set of prepositional (standard) statements used by members of a profession or group to determine what the right course of action is in a situation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayIn the above case it is a pure ethical dilemma because two ethical standards are in conflict. The problem can be solved by looking at the Ethical Standard, which states that social workers should accept employment only on the basis of existing skills or with the intention of acquiring the necessary skills. The social worker can accept the case, discussing with the client the current limitations of his skills and respecting his obligation to seek training or supervision in this area. However, there are some complicated situations that require a decision but may also involve conflicts between values, laws and policies. Although these are not absolute ethical dilemmas, we can think of them as “approximate” dilemmas. For example, a rough dilemma occurs when a social worker in the company is legally obliged to provide a report on the value of the product on the market and the market report on the value of the product is negative, then the information released by the social worker could be a process. So, looking at the above situation when the student finishes a Ph.D. working on a problem that has directly patentable aspects and that solves a serious problem in the disk drive sector. So an experienced person who knows well the action to be taken in the required situation can come up with a good strategy to solve a problem. The social worker experiences this as a dilemma of some kind and needs to reach some sort of resolution. Identifying the ethics, morals, values, legal issues and policies involved, as well as distinguishing between personal and professional dimensions, can help in decision making in case of rough dilemmas..