Although organizations keep implementing advanced systems of safety and risk prevention, the incidence of adverse events and man-made disasters in organizations and beyond is at all times high. As companies keep struggling to adopt robust approaches to safety management and emergency prevention, ethical decision making is gradually moving to the forefront of the safety promotion agenda. Ethics becomes relevant at times of emergency evacuation when tough decisions must be made to preserve the lives of as many people as possible. Ethics is equally relevant in the context of emergency reporting, prevention, and mitigation.
The extent to which members of corporate bodies are ready to act ethically in emergency situations depends on the presence and consistency of the organizations’ safety culture. The latter grows from a broader societal understanding of risk assessment, risk sensitivity, and readiness to act ethically in the face of emergencies. Today’s organizations desperately need to establish and maintain an effective culture of safety, where employees will display more sensitivity to various types of risks and not be afraid to act ethically when the lives and wellbeing of their co-workers are at stake.
The issue of ethics in emergency prevention and organizational safety has many facets. On the one hand, it is the way the organization manages evacuation processes. Evacuation has a lot to do with ethics, because it requires making tough personal and organizational decisions affecting the lives and wellbeing of others. The recent tragedy with Costa Concordia raised new questions of ethics in emergency evacuation. “There were reports today that during the evacuation of the Costa Concordia women and children had to fight with men for places in the lifeboats” (Curtis, 2016). Although every organization establishes explicit guidelines for managing emergency evacuation processes, these rules are either intentionally violated or ignored in emergency situations.
Fairly speaking, ethical decision making in evacuation and emergency situations requires a solid decision making capacity: the case of Captain Sullenberger who was able to land the plane full of passengers in the Hudson River in New York says it all. Only 208 seconds passed between the moment when engines failed and the moment when the airplane landed in the water (Lin, 2012). However, it was enough for the Captain to make a decision that saved the lives of dozens and once again reaffirmed the validity of ethical arguments in emergency decision making. Had the situation been different, had the organizational culture been different, or had the risk-sensing capacity of the crew been different, the consequences of the emergency situation would also have been different (Lin, 2012). The case illustrates how the situational, cultural, and ethical variables come together to shape an environment that is conducive of ethical decision making in emergency situations. In a culture bound on safety, employees are more likely to have higher levels of moral awareness, display enhanced sensitivity to risks and opportunities, define an optimal course of ethical action, and use ethical intent to act in the best interests of the majority (Petitta, Probst, & Barbaranelli, 2017).
On the other hand, emergency situations reveal the unethical controversies surrounding organizational and business decisions made during pre-disaster times. More than once large organizations such as BP or the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, Japan, used manipulative strategies either to create a false image of safety and wellbeing or to conceal the facts of emergency and its devastating impacts on people and nature (Korsen, 2017). The ethics of public campaigns that spread a misleading belief in the unquestionable safety of nuclear power plants has yet to be explored (Kastenberg, 2015). These controversies reflect the difficulties associated with creating and maintaining a culture of safety, but it is a culture of safety that contemporary businesses desperately need to accomplish their strategic objectives in an ethical manner.
“Creating a culture of safety” has become a buzzword in organizational research and practice. Everyone understands its importance, but few know how to make it real. According to Whittingham (2008), a safety culture is not something that can be easily created according to a predetermined pattern, standard, or principle. It is not enough to communicate and reinforce the values of safety in the workplace. Besides, too many standards will contribute to the bureaucratization of safety culture, leaving little room for engagement, decision making, autonomy, and justice (Dekker, 2014).
A safety-first corporate culture is that which brings together transparency, openness to innovation, best practices in safety, ethics, and pride in being able to detect and prevent emergency risks (Lin, 2012). Such risks are complex. They are numerous and diverse. However, in a safety-first corporate culture, everyone displays high levels of moral awareness and sensitivity to obvious and hidden risks (Petitta et al., 2017). This culture has dramatic effects on how employees behave in emergency situations. The levels of incident reporting also vary, depending on the nature and complexity of the safety practices adopted by businesses (Petitta et al., 2017). Despite the growing body of recommendations, every organization will need to pass a different way to create a culture that motivates employees to act ethically when the lives of their colleagues are at stake.
In conclusion, ethical decision making has profound implications for the development of sustainable safety-first corporate culture. The relationship between ethics and emergency evacuation gains considerable attention in organizational literature. Equally problematic is the way companies manage their emergency risks and accident reporting procedures. Risk sensitivity, moral awareness, moral engagement, and readiness to act are some of the critical behavioral characteristics of safety-conscious employees. Apart from establishing clear standards of safety and incident reporting, organizations must cultivate ethical behaviors and promote the development of better decision making capacity in workers.
