Ethics Journal Essay

It’s interesting, we are all accustomed to call something wrong or right. From the early childhood, humans always hear “don’t do that” or “try to be like this”. In other words, the segregation is inherent to people with their nature. Curiously, but at the same time we reflect pretty different ideas about wrong and right, about proper and improper values (Donaldson). In addition, not many of us are interested – How was the line between good and bad found? In what way the system of values is structured? Is there complete and common list of values? Should all people correspond the same standards of right thinking, behavior etc.? What is the differences between ethics, morality and law? How are they interconnected to each other? Obviously, it is impossible to find out the only correct answers to mentioned questions, as they belong to philosophic domain. However, the attempts to answer them give us the option to see the structure of contemporary social organization. To get pretty deep and enthralling philosophic research, assigned readings gave me large portion of useful information to learn and think about. Here is the brief summary of them.
“Ethical Theory and business”.
The value of this work hardly can be over esteemed. I’m not going to say that it contains some kind of outstanding info that hardly can be found anywhere else. The value of this work is determined by its fundamental study. In other words, it gives readers pretty clear and understandable view to all important institutions that lay inside ethics domain and that seem to be important for comprehensive knowledge at appropriate part. The author begins with the definition of morality, which is determined as principles or rules of moral conduct that people use to decide what is right or wrong (Beauchamp). Next, the main interconnections of morality are outlined.
Morality and Ethics
Morality is concerned with the social practices defining right and wrong.
Ethical theory and moral philosophies provide guidelines for justification of right or wrong actions when settling human conflict.
No one moral philosophy is accepted by everyone!

Morality and prudence

Rules of prudence promote self-interest, doing what is prudent for oneself.
Rules of morality promote the interest of other people.
Morality and prudence should generally work hand-in-hand if a business is to succeed.
Morality and law
Transfer morality into protected by the force mandatory rules.
Morality and ethics begin where the law is unclear or not defined!
Law is defined in book as public’s agency for translating morality into explicit social guidelines and practices and for stipulating punishments for offenses.
One more important point here is the rule of conscience.
Consciences:
Vary from person to person and time to time.
Are altered by circumstance, religious belief, life experiences, and training.
Are not consistent from day to day.
Moral justification must then be based on a source external to conscience itself.
Approaches to study of morality.
Descriptive approach – provides a factual description and explanation of moral behavior and beliefs, as performed by anthropologists, sociologists, and historians. Referred to as the scientific study of ethics.
Conceptual approach – analyzes meanings of central terms in ethics such as right, obligation, justice, good, virtue, and responsibility.
Prescriptive approach – attempts to formulate and defend basic moral norms or standards by determining what ought to be done versus what is being done. Referred to as normative ethics.
Talking about morality and ethics domain, relativism as an ethical theory that claims right and wrong is subjectively determined by each culture takes important place to. The study of relativism brings us next messages: 1) What is good is socially accepted and what is bad is socially unacceptable in a given culture; 2)There is no such thing as universal truth in ethics, there are only the various cultural codes and nothing more; 3)An argument against relativism: There are some basic moral principles that all societies will have in common, because those rules are necessary for society to exist.
Methods to easing moral disagreements
Obtaining objective information
Definitional clarity
Example-counterexample
Analysis of arguments and positions
Dealing with ethics, the issue of egoism is not less relevant from all mentioned above. Curiously, “Ethical theory and business” contains pretty interesting ideas about its division according to psychological and ethical nature. Egoism is a moral theory that contends all choices either involve or should involve self-promotion as their sole objective.
Psychological egoism
Everyone is always motivated to act in his or her own perceived self-interest.
A main argument against psychological egoism is that there may be no purely altruistic moral motivation to help other people unless there is personal gain.
Ethical egoism
The only valid standard of conduct is the obligation to promote one’s own well-being above everyone else’s.
Ethical egoists believe that people should not be their brother’s keeper, because people do not completely understand the true needs of others.
It’s every man for himself in this world!
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is about understanding your business’ impact on the wider world and considering how you can use this impact in a positive way. CSR can also be good for your bottom line. It means taking a responsible attitude, going beyond the minimum legal requirements and following straightforward principles that apply whatever the size of your business (Lachman).
Social and economic justice
Historical inequities insofar as they affect current injustices should be corrected until the actual inequities no longer exist or have been perceptively “negated”.
The redistribution of wealth, power and status for the individual, community and societal good.
It is government’s (or those who hold significant power) responsibility to ensure a basic quality of life for all its citizens (Markovitz).
“Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making”
This article by Manuel Velasquez deals with methods concerning resolving of ethical issue. In order to resolve the moral problem, the author suggests two main steps – Get the fact and appeal to values. If the first one is always the same, values may vary considering different ethical studies and approaches. Manuel Velasquez outlines five main approaches to moral values that used to be widely accepted and the most popular.
The Utilitarian Approach – ethical actions are those that provide the greatest balance of good over evil. Utilitarian decision-making relies on tools such as cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment to determine the greatest utility.
Main argument against utilitarianism: the question whether units of happiness or some other utilitarian value can be measured and compared in order to determine the best action among alternatives.
The rights approach (Kantian ethics)- who focused on the individual’s right to choose for herself or himself. According to these philosophers, what makes human beings different from mere things is that people have dignity based on their ability to choose freely what they will do with their lives, and they have a fundamental moral right to have these choices respected.
To add this theory, philosopher Kant noticed that basic right of individual is also accompanied by the list of other important one:
• The right to the truth: We have a right to be told the truth and to be informed about matters that significantly affect our choices.
• The right of privacy: We have the right to do, believe, and say whatever we choose in our personal lives so long as we do not violate the rights of others.
• The right not to be injured: We have the right not to be harmed or injured unless we freely and knowingly do something to deserve punishment or we freely and knowingly choose to risk such injuries.
• The right to what is agreed: We have a right to what has been promised by those with whom we have freely entered into a contract or agreement.
Argument against theory: it is inadequate to handle all the types of ethical dilemmas properly.
Fairness or justice approach – equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally (Aristotle). This theory denies discrimination and favoritism as the main premises problems. Dealing with this theory, the main moral guidelines are next questions – How fair is an action? Does it treat everyone in the same way, or does it show favoritism and discrimination?
The Common-Good Approach – based on the assumption that a society comprising individuals whose own good is inextricably linked to the good of the community. Community members are bound by the pursuit of common values and goals. This study seeks beneficial to all policies, systems, environments and institutions. This school urge to see ourselves not like individuals, but like the members of the same community with only one goal to make it perfect. This ethical approach is rooted to Ancient Greece philosophy – Plato, Aristotle.
Virtue approach – it states that certain ideals toward which we should strive, which provide for the full development of our humanity. Virtues are attitudes or character traits that enable us to be and to act in ways that develop our highest potential. They enable us to pursue the ideals we have adopted. As the rule, next are characteristics are considered to be virtues: integrity, honesty, truthfulness, courage, loyalty, courteousness, and conscientiousness. However, it is hard to say that they are commonly adapted among people de facto. This is the main problem about this theory actually, people have varying definitions of what traits are considered virtuous.
My critical views.
Talking about my critical ideas about summed works, I have rather ambiguous feelings and impressions. On the one hand, both “Ethical Theories and business” and “Thinking Ethically: A Framework for Moral Decision Making” address the comprehensive list of issues that determine the meaning of ethics domain generally and business morality particularly. At last, I really see interconnections between all ethical institutions and able to understand their origins. On the other hand, I’m pretty doubted with the practical value of read texts. The point here is serious contradictory between ethical principles and core business values that are always gathered around high numbers, such as Shareholder Wealth, Profit Maximization, Basics of Investment, Consumers relations etc. (Badekar; Fieser; Hooker; Johannsen). Frankly, business intended to correspond the only goal of big money making and this idea is often naturally strange to ethical values. The words of Kip Goldhammer are extremely to the place here “No matter how hard the management of a business tries to set and maintain high standards of professional ethics, these conflicts do surface at some point of time or the other. One does not have to dig deep to find the reasons for these conflicts either, as they are inherent in the very nature of business. Any person joining a job wishes to be paid as highly as possible. In contrast, cost minimization is always high on the priority list of the employer(s). An employee wishes to have the minimum work hours whereas the management is always striving to reach the peak of productivity. When it comes to the customers, they want to have the best possible products on the least possible prices. At the same time, the manufacturer tries to produce an item at the lowest possible cost and put as high a price as possible” (Goldhammer). There is no need to look for some particular cases as the meaning is always the same. As I understand, ethics is mostly hostile to the main idea of business. In its turn, business as the kind of activity cannot be carried out without goal. Thereby, the irreplaceable part is significantly predominant to ethical principles, which easily can be left unnoticed (Shukla).
However, I also would like to say that conflict between business and ethics origins does not exclude the possibility of unethical behavior minimization. This part largely depends on methods of easing moral disagreements and Manuel Velasquez assumptions about proper moral decision making. The second one seems to be more relevant in the aspect of my critical view. To my mind, author’s approach to pattern of moral problems resolving is pretty doubtful and can be strongly argued. However, it is just my opinion. As it was noted above in this paper, Manuel Velasquez outlined five main philosophic approaches to ethical problem resolving. Each of them is based on different concepts and values consequently. At the end of his work, the author suggests to appeal to the list of questions that is the symbiosis of all five approaches with every moral problem resolving.
• What benefits and what harms will each course of action produce, and which alternative will lead to the best overall consequences?
• What moral rights do the affected parties have, and which course of action best respects those rights?
• Which course of action treats everyone the same, except where there is a morally justifiable reason not to, and does not show favoritism or discrimination?
• Which course of action advances the common good?
• Which course of action develops moral virtues? (Velasquez)
At the same time, he does not consider that some of five approaches are extremely opposing to each other. For example, let’s take rights (Kantian) and common good approach, which are totally opposing to each other with the value of individuality. In this order, the author just complicates the process of ethical decisions making. In addition, it looks like the real moral problem resolving in nowadays reality cannot consider all noted questions equally.
Now, let’s try to combine my critical ideas into one general conclusion. Dealing with organizational ethics, I assume that moral decisions making should be based on utilitarian study mostly. Let’s remind, it states that ethical actions are those that provide the greatest balance of good over evil. My opinion is based on the significant controversies between business and ethics which was addressed at the beginning of critical views. Being sure that moral values will never be prevailing on ethical principles, the only way out is harm minimization. In this order, the utilitarian approach seems to be the most convenient and only one with real practical meaning. Obviously, large amount of questions arise about its implementation. However, it is all about consciousness and internal business organization. The main point here that utilitarian approach does not bring harm to natural business egoism and its standard values. Its proper interpretation allows to act inside the borders of contemporary competition standards and benefit other without tangible losses.