Business Ethics Flashcards
Test 1
What does Philosophy mean?
Love of Wisdom
What are the three main branches of philosophy?
Metaphysic: the fundamental nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between possibility and actuality.
Epistemology: understanding; knowledge
Ethics: behavior
What are the “three C’s”?
Compliance: with the rules, including the law, the principles of morality, the customs and expectations of the community, the policies of the company, and general concerns such as fairness
Contributions: that are made to society and through the usefulness of the activity to the surrounding community.
Consequences: of the activity both inside and outside the company, both intended and unintended, including the reputation of the company and the reputation of the industry or profession.
What are Normative ethics?
How people ought to act (evaluating normality)
What are Descriptive (scientific) ethics?
Study of why people act the way they do
What are the four types of morality?
Norm: normal which means the usual; acceptable.
Nonmoral: have no moral hinges; manners. (out of the realm society)
Ex: car able to go 160mph
Immoral: not acceptable to society
Amoral: lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something. (people typically have no regret or remorse)
How do we define normal? Where do we obtain our morality?
Make a judgement and compare it to something abnormal.
Parents, school/teachers. Peers, environment, law/gov, social media, religion, culture. Your morals come from your surrounding environment.
Define Business
Group of people working together for a purpose for a profit.
Is all business self-seeking?
Self promoting, see professional codes
Professional code of ethics
Rules that are supposed to govern the conduct of a members of a given profession; another place where we develop a sense of morality.
Ex: malpractices in the medical field, lawyers hiding evidence, accountants lying. (librarians: not require to report about a book taken out on how to build a bomb)
Define Organization
Group of people working together for a purpose.
Ex: Salvation Army, Red cross, Churches, Homeless Shelters
What are the 4 types of laws?
Statutes
Regulations
Common law
Constitutional law
What are statutes?
Laws enacted by legislative bodies- congress and state legislatures enact statutes.
Ex: the law that defines and prohibits reckless driving on the highway is a statute.
What are regulations?
(rules) made by authority and maintained by authority.
What is common law?
Refers to the body of judge-made law that first developed in the english-speaking world centuries ago when there were few statutes.
What is constitutional law?
Refers to court rulings on the requirements of the constitution and the constitutionality of legislation.
Describe Religion in Morality
You don’t have to be religious to be moral. Morality can be shaped through whatever religion you are in.
What are conduct ethics?
When an action takes place I evaluate that action as moral. Moral reasoning, thinking through something before acting.
Ex: look at conduct and evaluate conduct
What are virtue ethics?
Operate off of virtues.
Ex: patience, truthfulness, good heartedness, trustworthiness
Describe cost-benefit analysis
Weighing good and bad
widely utilized in both corporate and public policy decision making
A public policy context generally presupposes utilitarian ethical principles
What is a teleological theory? (consequentialists theories)
Action X is moral/good/right/acceptable if Action X creates a good result.
What are the 3 teleological theories?
Egoism
Utilitarianism
Hedonism
What is egoism?
Action X is good/moral if it produces the best results for me or my group.
Ex: saving a person for their own benefit.
drowning person- save them for the headlines or to actually save someone
Pro: benefits you and your group and gets things done quick and efficiently.
Con: Allows for Immoral actions; creates chaos and jealousy; doesn’t acknowledge other people‘s rights.
Psychological egoism: born to be egotistical and benefit ourselves naturally.
What is utilitarianism?
(most loving thing to do- Fletcher)
greatest units of happiness for greatest number of people. (Fork in road, kill four people instead of one)
Pro: brings happiness and good for testing policies in business
Con: Hard to define what happiness is and some actions are wrong even if they do produce happiness.
Any action is moral- lying, cheating, murder.. If it benefits the greatest number of happiness
Who are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill?
FATHERS OF UTILITARIANISM
Hedonistic Utilitarians
Creates most amount of joy as opposed to pain
Quantitative hedonist (Jeremy Bentham) quality of things that make it better than quantity.
What is Ruled Utilitarianism?
(past tells us what to do) in the past, some kind of action/experience that I’ve been involved in that I have found out that this action worked and created the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people.
It worked in the past, why would it not work now?
What would Jesus do?
What is Act Utilitarianism?
Liver analogy; who would get it- mother of children or 80 year old?
Famous person gets new liver even if alcoholic.
What is Hedonism?
(hedonistic utilitarianisms)
Most amount of happiness
Instead of units of happiness, they believe in what creates the greatest number of content, joy, satisfaction, pleasure over pain, suffering
What are the 5 Deontological Theories?
Cultural/Ethical Relativism (Carr) Kantianism Ross Social Contract Theory (Ross, Plato, Hobbes) Divine Command Theory(God)
What is Cultural/Ethical Relativism?
Theory that what is right is determined by what a culture or society says is right. What is right in one place may be wrong in another, because the only criterion for distinguishing right from wrong—and so the only ethical standard for judging an action—is the moral system of the society in which the act occurs.
Creates conflict and issues trying to do business
Pro: keeps culture strong, each society knows what’s right and wrong
Con: Minority has no voices; eliminates possibility from change.. Just because majority rules doesn’t mean majority is right.
What is Kantianism?
Train analogy; can’t answer because regardless it’s not ethical to kill someone.
Kantian; Immanuel Kant
Every action that is taken must be taken out of a sense of your good will; out of a sense of duty
Examine motives, motives are behind my actions
What is Ross’s theory?
W.B. Ross was a Kantian
If two universal norms conflict, one is more important than the other.
Prima Facie: based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise.
What is Carr’s ideology?
Business is like “poker”
Trying to hide your bluff; to deceive competitors
Every business has its own standards of ethical relativism; culture
Ex: car business
What is Social Contract Theory?
X is necessary to secure the basic common goods of persons, limit on self interest and agree to follow the rules of mutually advantageous concepts in all the concept of looking at how you would react to a certain situation.. John Ross
X is right if it doesn’t violate basic human rights
What is Divine Command Theory?
X is morally right because God commands it
What is Kant’s Categorical Imperative?
Look at everything categorically, look at imperatives/rules are set and universally accepted as universal norms… Kant is saying “universal norm”
Pro: takes strong person to act out of good will.
Con: not given answers when issues conflict.
What is Robert Nozick’s theory? (right side)
Right to property.
Individual has a right to what an individual has or was given as long as the property was given in a fair way.
No coercing, be free to acquire property and exchange it how they wish in the free market.
Government involvement small, strong military to protect people.
Against minimum wage, favors low taxes. (Triangle- 1% can have everything, everyone else can have nothing)
Would not be into distribution; violates human rights.
Absurd to require some type of redistribution.
What is “Libertarian Theory”?
Least amount of government (rejects utilitarian view)
Nozick
What is “Entitlement Theory”?
Entitled to holdings if they are require lawfully/fairly. *Luck of birth
(Nozick)
What is John Rawl’s theory? (left side)
(egalitarian, rejects utilitarian)
Pretend that we come together in what he calls the original position.
Insist on freedom, necessary to pursue their interest. One person’s freedom is not less or more than another person’s freedom.
Ex: hoping lowest test grade isn’t that low.
2 Principles:
Everyone has opportunity to achieve on their own merit.
People at the top should help the people at the bottom.
Equal opportunity for everyone, not OK with luck of birth. (SAT scores, people who can afford it and people who can’t; help the poor).
What is John Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance?
Don’t let economic status interfere with your well-being.
Make the bottom as high as possible.
What is John Stuart Mill’s theory? (middle)
Wants a large middle class.
Protection of land, labor; labor legislation was needed.
Need for unions to fight owners; way of breaking down these barriers.
Most happiness happens in middle class; satisfaction with life, most freedom.
Biggest economic population in middle class.
Not OK with luck of birth, trade should be open and free, people should be happy, little government.
What is Monetary Loss?
Things lose value over time.
Ex: Expensive car loses value over time. (Mill)
What is Marginal increase of pleasure?
Car story; the more you have, the less meaning meeting your essential needs. (Mill)
Utilitarianism embraces what two principles?
Principle of equality: one should give equal consideration to the well-being of all affected parties in deciding what to do
Principle of utility: one should seek to maximize well-being
What is a Deontological Theory?
Action X is moral/good/right/acceptable not by Action X creating a good result/consequences, but by some other factor.
(not about result, it’s about action)
Ex: could be laws
What is the name of the book and who are the authors of the book we read in class?
Moral Issues in Business, 13th Edition
William H. Shaw
Vincent Barry
