Business Ethics Flashcards
corporate ethical issues
ethical questions about a particular corporation and its policies, culture, impact, or actions
individual ethical issues
ethical questions about a particular individual’s decisions, behavior, or character
Can ethical qualities be attributed to corporations?
1: corporations, like people, act intentionally and have moral rights and obligations, and are morally responsible
2: it makes no sense to attribute ethical qualities to corporations since they are not like people but more like machines; only humans can have ethical qualities
3: humans carry out the corporation’s actions so they are morally responsible for what they do and ethical qualities apply in a primary sense to them; corporations have ethical qualities only in a derivative sense
arguments against business ethics
- in a free market economy, the pursuit of profit will ensure maximum social benefit, so business ethics is not needed
- a manager’s most important obligation is loyalty to the company regardless of ethics
- so long as companies obey the law they will do all that ethics requires
arguments supporting business ethics
- ethics applies to all human activities
- business cannot service without ethics
- ethics is consistent with profit seeking
- customers, employees, and people in general care about ethics
- studies suggest ethics does not detract from profits and seems to contribute to profits
corporate social responsibility
- a corporation’s responsibilities or obligations towards society
- business ethics is both a part of corporate social responsibility and part of the justification for corporate social responsibility
new issues in business ethics
- advances in technology often create new issues for business ethics
- currently, advances in information technology are creating new issues in business ethics
- increasing connections between the economic and social system of different nations, known as “globalization,” has also created new issues in business ethics
moral relativism
the theory that there are no ethical standards that are absolutely true and that apply or should be applied to the companies and people of all societies
objections to moral relativism
- some moral standards are found in all societies
- moral differences do not logically imply relativism
- relativism has incoherent consequences
- relativism privileges whatever moral standards are widely accepted in a society
What are the two kinds of moral standards to the Social Contracts Theory (SCT)?
- hypernorms- those moral standards that should be applied to people in all societies
- microsocial norms- those norms that differ from one community to another and that should be applied to people only if their community accepts those particular norms
systemic ethical issues
ethical questions about the social, political, legal, or economic systems within which companies operate
Kohlberg’s Three Levels of Moral Development
1st: Pre-conventional stage: Stage one- punishment and obedience orientation, stage two- instrumental and relative orientation
2nd: Conventional stages: Stage one- interpersonal and concordance orientation, stage two- law and order orientation
3rd: Post-conventionalstages: Stage one- social contract orientation, stage two- universal principles orientation
utilitarianism
actions and policies should be evaluated on the basis of the benefits and costs they will impose on society; the only morally right action in any situation is that whose utility is greatest by comparison to the utility of all the other alternatives
How to apply utilitarian principles
- Determine available alternative actions or policies
- Estimate direct and indirect benefits and costs that the action will produce for those affected
- Subtract the costs from the benefits
- The action that produces the greatest sum total of utility is the most ethically appropriate
Critics of utilitarianism
- Not all values can be measure (some say they can)
- Utilitarianism fails with rights and justice (rule-utilitarianism can deal with rights and justice)
right
an individual’s entitlement to something
legal right
an entitlement that derives from a legal system that permits or empowers a person to act in a specified way or that requires others to act in certain ways toward that person
moral (or human) rights
rights that all human beings everywhere possess to an equal extent simply by virtue of being human beings
What is the difference in the extent of legal and moral rights?
Legal is contingent on legal system, while moral rights apply to all
moral reasoning
the reasoning process by which human behaviors, institutions, or policies are judged to be in accordance with or in violation of moral standards; involves the moral standards by which we evaluate things, information about what is being evaluated, and a moral judgement about what is being evaluated
Four Steps that lead to ethical behavior
- Recognizing a situation is an ethical one
- requires framing as one that requires ethical reasoning - Judging the ethical course of action
- must apply and interpret moral standards and information - Deciding to do the ethical course of action
- can be influenced by organization culture and moral seduction - Carrying out the ethical decision
- factors: will, belief about control of one’s actions
three components of moral responsibility
- person caused or helped cause the injury, or failed to prevent it when he or she could have (casualty)
- person did so knowing what he or she was doing (knowledge)
- person did so of his or her own free will (freedom)
factors that mitigate moral responsibility
minimal contribution, uncertainty, and difficulty
What are characteristics of moral rights?
- can be violated when no one is hurt
- are correlated with duties others have toward the person with the right
- provide individuals with autonomy and equality in the free pursuit of their interests
- provide a basis for justifying one’s actions and for invoking the protection or aid of others
- focus on securing interests of the individual unlike utilitarian standards which focus on securing the aggregate utility of everyone in society
Kant and moral rights
- individuals generally must be left equally free to pursue their interests
- moral rights identify the specific interests individuals should be entitled to freely pursue
An interest is important enough to raise to be a right if…
- we would not be willing to have everyone deprived of the freedom to pursue that interest
- the freedom to pursue that interest is needed to live as free and rational beings
What is Kant’s Categorical Imperative First Version?
- We must act only on reasons we would be willing to have anyone in a similar situation act on
- Requires universalizability and reversibility
What is Kant’s Categorical Imperative Second Version?
- Never use people only as a means to your ends, but always treat them as they freely and rationally consent to be treated and help them pursue their freely and rationally chosen ends
- Based on the idea that humans have a dignity that makes them different from more objects
- It is equivalent to the first formulation
Criticisms of Kant
- Both versions of the categorical imperative are unclear
- Rights and conflicts and Kant’s theory cannot resolve such conflicts
- Kant’s theory implies moral judgements that are mistaken
libertarian philosophy
freedom from human constraint is necessarily good and that all constraints imposed by others are necessarily evil except when needed to prevent the imposition of greater human constraints
Robert Nozick’s Libertarian Philosophy
- the only moral right is the negative right of freedom
- the right to freedom requires private property, freedom of contract, free markets, and the elimination of taxes to pay for social welfare programs
distributive justice
requires the just distribution of benefits and burdens
retributive justice
requires the just imposition of punishments and penalties; fairness when blaming or punishing persons for doing wrong
compensatory justice
requires just compensation for wrongs or injuries; fairness when restoring to a person what the person lost when he or she was wronged by someone else
principals of distributive justice
fundamental- distribute benefits and burdens equally to equals and unequally to unequals
egalitarian- distribute equally to everyone
capitalist- distribute according to contribution
socialist- distribute according to need and ability
libertarian- distribute by free choice
rawls- distribute by equal liberty, equal opportunity, and needs of disadvantaged
ethic of care
- ethics need not be impartial
- emphasizes preserving and nurturing concrete valuable relationships
- we should care for those dependent on and related to us
- because the self requires caring relationships with others, those relationships are valuable and should be nurtured
objections to care approach in ethics
- an ethic of care can degenerate into favoritism (conflicting moral demands are an inherent characteristic of moral choices)
- an ethic of care can lead to “burnout” (adequate understanding of ethic of care will acknowledge the need of the caregiver to care for him or herself)
Aristotle theory of moral virtue
virtues are habits that enable a person to live according to reason by habitually choosing the mean between extremes in actions and emotions
Aquinas’ theory of moral virtue
virtues are habits that enable a person to live reasonably in this world and be united with God in next
MacIntyre’s theory of moral virtue
virtues are dispositions that enable a person to achieve the good at which human “practices” aim
Pincoffs’ theory of moral virtue
virtues are dispositions we use when choosing between persons or potential future selves (theories of moral virtues not on exam)
objections to virtue theories
it is inconsistent with psychology which showed that behavior is determined by the external situation, not moral character (moral character determines behavior in a person’s familiar environment; recent psychology shows behavior is determined by one’s moral identity which includes one’s virtues and vices)
