Define your unit of ethical and moral analysis of the market phenomenon: for instance, is it a given

action, a given actor, a given action + actor, or, is it the entire system of inputs + processes + outputs +
a given environment? And why do you choose this unit of analysis?
The market phenomenon that we have chosen for our analysis is Indian Premier League (referred as IPL
hereafter). Before discussing the unit of ethical and moral analysis let us revisit the explanations of both
ethics and morals. According to communication-ethics scholar Vernon Jensen, ethics refers to
theory related to abstract universal principles and their sources and morals implies practicing those
principles of applied ethics, our culture-bound modes of conduct. More specifically we can say that,
ethics means the rules of conduct which are recognized with respect to a particular class of human actions,
a particular group or a culture. Whereas, morals refer to Principles or habits with respect to right or wrong
conduct. Though driven by external factors like social system and other external factors, morality is
ultimately a personal compass of right and wrong.
Now that we have defined ethics and morality, let us try to understand what a unit of analysis is. Simple
definition of a unit of analysis is that, it is the major entity or characteristic that is being analyzed in a
study. Determining the unit of analysis is based on answers to the basic questions like what is being
studied? or who is being studied?
Considering everything discussed on IPL till now, we believe that the appropriate unit of analysis would
be actions and the associated actor(s). IPL in its past 9 years of existence has been through a lot
including ostentatious and extravagant ceremonies, catchy commercials, massive fanfare, spot-fixing
scandals, bid-rigging, illegal betting and money laundering. Occurrence of all these events led to massive
criticism and first Chairman and Commissioner of IPL, Lalit Modi was suspended from BCCI after being
accused of misconduct, indiscipline and financial irregularities. In our research we came across many more
people who were responsible for one or the other incident leading to the discussion whether cricket in
todays India is still a secular religion as it used to be or has it been transformed into a great money making
industry. Our unit of analysis was determined after discussing basic questions amongst ourselves like,
what is IPLs public perception after so much of uproar, what are the major events that shaped important
consequences, who was responsible, what motivated the people/person involved to do what they did.
Most of the answers to our questions pointed towards the fact that, firstly it was the individual and
secondly the individuals action(s) which have to be the unit of analysis. Rather than taking the whole
system of IPL as our unit of analysis, we decided to target the individuals (actors) and their activities
(actions) because of our belief that any system is as good or bad as the individuals who form the system.
Isolating the organization from its constituent elements (responsible individuals in case of IPL) gave the
impression of fairness in this case.