Ethical, Legal, and Multicultural Challenges in a Crisis

Ethical, Legal, and Multicultural Challenges in a Crisis
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Ethical, Legal, and Multicultural Challenges in a Crisis
Crises are extreme events or calamities that in one way or another affect and disrupt the daily functioning of the society, for example, a terrorist attack. Crisis in a business situation can be regarded as a period of non-profitability and inability of the company to achieve its objectives. These crises cause loss of both human and material resources (Crandall, W, & Spillan, 2014). During disasters, various organizations such as Red Cross society respond so as to provide humanitarian assistance. However, in the process of providing this assistance, they are affected by ethical, legal and multi-cultural barriers.
The United Nations charter outlines health as a basic human right to all persons. In the majority of crises, there is need of medical assistances to the affected. Resources to provide medical assistances are always scarce, and hence some of the affected people have to wait for a longer period. Additionally, the humanitarian assistance organizations may be left in a dilemma to know who to give priority and who is to wait. By doing so, they break the law through discrimination in providing health as a basic human right. Moreover, there is no clear criterion that can be used to label a certain group of people with higher priority than others. The idea of selecting a group of people to prioritize in giving medical attention is against doctors Hippocratic Oath that aims to use the utilitarian approach in solving the situation.

Furthermore, separating the people does not ethically show an act of compassion and respect to the victims.
Humanitarian respondents and company managers are also faced with the ethical dilemma of going to places that put their lives in danger. Most of the times during emergencies the security of the rescuers is not guaranteed, and the responder may fear to work with the victims. Additionally, they risk spreading the infections to their families once they are back at home.
Disaster situations in the other hand create dilemmas on the victim’s data protections. Humanitarian organizations may feel that it is ethically right to release the data for the good of others. The releasing of the data may not go very well to other stakeholders such as the government. It also becomes challenging to collect the available data so as to be used for further investigations.
Humanitarian organizations are faced with a dilemma on how they can ration food and water among the victims if, in reality, it is not enough for all. The issue of who to be given necessities at given time is also at play. Should pregnant women be given food first so as to protect the mother and the fetus? Most importantly who should be given priority first when dealing with evacuations?
There are various cultural barriers in crisis management and response. In crisis management communication is very crucial; hence there should be an active flow of information from the victims to the rescuers. The respondents are at times affected by language barrier hence they can’t effectively communicate with the victims. The communication breakdown within an organization can have an adverse economic and humanitarian crisis. Additionally, many organizations are always not ready to learn and come up with operative policies to enhance effective interrelation communication.
Every organization has its culture, and this is what runs the day to day activities of the organizations. If the organization adopts wrong policies, finally there will be an organization culture that limits the achievement of the objectives. The protocol culture followed by most humanitarian organizations limit their ability to discharge their duties. For example in majority organizations first, help the most affected victims before narrowing down to less affected. Some societal cultures limit the ability to manage the crisis, for example, the way people live. A community that is centrally placed is simpler help during the crisis as compared to the decentralized. Various theories are used to solve ethical, legal and multicultural barriers.
Systems theory argues that what happens inside a person in a crisis interrelationship with other members of the society. Additionally, it suggests that there should be effective communication between various individuals within a given generational relationship. According to this theory, counselors can use other members of the family to help and counsel the victims. It proposes that the counselor in a crisis to look at the environment and pick an individual who can help others to solve the situation. (James, & Gilliland, 2017) System theory can be more effective in a large crisis where we have a large number of people are affected, and the number of the counselors and humanitarian assistance is few.
Adaptation theory is another concept that can be used by counselors and humanitarian assistance to solve the crisis in the society. In this theory, the victim is helped to adapt to maladaptive behaviors and negative thoughts. The theory suggests helping the victim to have positive thoughts and also creating effective defense mechanisms that will assist a person to overcome the immobility. Ecosystem theory is another method that can be used to solve ethical, cultural and legal challenges in disaster management. It involves looking at the interrelationship of the environment and the crisis. This means that the counselors are supposed to look at the crises in their total social and environmental settings and not as one person affected by the linear progress. From the environmental perspective, the counselor can come up with a proper investigation that will finally contribute to the resolution of ethical, legal and cultural challenges.
References
Crandall, W., Parnell, J. A., & Spillan, J. E. (2014). Crisis management: Leading in the new strategy landscape. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
James, R. K. & Gilliland, B.E. (2017). Crisis intervention strategies (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.