Ethical Approach To Emergency Management

There are a variety of ethical approaches emergency management leaders can take when handling disaster situations. Virtue ethics, ethics of justice and ethics of care are three general approaches and while many utilitarian principles apply to all three, each have their own guiding frameworks. Virtue ethics looks to a person character for guiding their decision-making process. Instead of a set of strict ethical codes, the leader bases decisions on their character or the possible outcomes of their actions. A virtuous leader is viewed an ethically sound due to a fundamental tendency to continually act in an ethically creditable and honorable way (Bauman, 2011). The primary characteristic for this type of leadership relies on the individual to have a fundamental nature for guiding decisions. This presents a challenge within emergency management as these types of leadership may not provide enough moral guidance to meet the unique and extensive challenges within the field. This approach does however offers many benefits for natural leadership and can assist greatly in a leader reaching …show more content…
This approach does not look to consider the feeling of individuals but rather seeks to base decisions on what is best for all stakeholders involved. This approach highlights “the use of absolute standards of judgement, based on impartial considerations of situations in the abstract, rather than on the responsiveness to the subjective and complex nature of relational experiences” (Bauman, 2011). This approach can be difficult to use within emergency management as a large amount of objectivity may not be useful in meeting unique challenges of various crises. Emergency managers must be flexible within their moral decision making based on a wide variety of factors and an impartial and objective process does not lend itself towards adaptability and