Cherry Picking

Note: This is a very difficult area of business ethics to discern right and wrong behavior. If the person doing the ethical analysis is a philosopher sitting in a university office detached from the business world, might seem cherry picking is a form discrimination without justification is all its forms, However, an ethicist who is a business person might see it entirely different light. It would be a mistake to think this is a perfect example of ethical relativism, but this could not be farther from the truth. To take the matter any farther would require an in depth discussion of "the evolution of ethical systems” which is beyond the scope of this writing.

In order for a business to survive and flourish it is sometimes prudent to avoid situations that in the past have proven unprofitable.

Cherry picking means selecting some clients to serve and rejecting others. There reasons for this common practice are many. People get abused when business people only think of the money and not the prospective client. The public feels the effects of discrimination when they are not wealthy but want access to businesses that cater to wealthy clients. As hurtful as discrimination is there are situations involving sole proprietors that sometimes forces them to carefully pick and choose their clients. It is "risk" that drives certain proprietors to discourage taking on certain clients. A sole proprietor has finite emotional energy to work with. There are only some many hours in the day thus problem clients can affect their morale and ability to stay afloat financially. Clients that have repeatedly made a nuisance of themselves can wear a person down. As such, it is not unheard of for business people to reject some people, ostensibly because they are too busy to discourage them. For instance, a business person offering a high quality service can find it annoying for customers to try to deal the price down. A lot of work goes into proving a quality service and it is annoying and distracting to put up with the games people play to lower the price. Such clients are known as bargain hunters. The minute a savvy person sees this tendency to deal the price down they counter move to make the customer go elsewhere. The bottom line is that often in business "what it is in the beginning, is likely to be ten times worse in the end." Therefore, business people are ever vigilant for small clues revealing the character of their prospective client.

The size of the business makes a difference in determining the ethically of cherry picking. The very survival of a sole proprietor can be greatly affected by the behavior of one customer. A business of say five people is in a better position to deal with problem clients.

In an abstract sense it could be said that business done well is a dance that derives a nectar of high civilization. The protocols and decorum's of business guide relationships in very positive ways. In this light it should be understandable that when choices must be made between prospective clients’s reasonable people might choose business relationships on the basis of protocol & decorum. In this setting a business person will put themselves at risk for their clients in ways they will not do for the general public. The business dance is a very efficient mechanism to ferret out treachery, exploitation, annoyance. In this light an electrician might tell one person he or she does not do work without permits and in another instance go ahead and do work without a permit. The dance serve as a communication in a very subtle way of the terms of business that are to be upheld. Thus, when protocols are acknowledged flawlessly the electrician would not expect their client to turn on them and demand their money back because the work was not done with a permit.

A very vivid example of discriminating thinking when choosing clients is doing business with LLP and LLC corporations. These corporations have an overwhelming advantage to be irresponsible and simply walk away from paying debts of any kind. These terms stand for Limited Liability Partnership and Limited Liability Corporations. These terms literally means limited liability. For further details look into congressional mandates that make bankruptcy claims difficult to collect. If a client or company a sole proprietor is dealing with has a very unfair advantage then choosing to pass them by becomes more of a possibility without bringing up the idea of discrimination.

• Issues of Risk
• Personal Sandbox
• Flow
• Tit For Tat Decision Making