Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Business ethics
Is centrally concerned with conduct. Ethical questions are essential questions about
whether we ought or ought not to perform certain kinds of actions; about whether
those actions are good or bad, right or wrong, virtuous or vicious, worthy of praise or
blame, reward or punishment, and so on.
Corporate social responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a business approach that contributes to
sustainable development by delivering economic, social and environmental benefits
for all stakeholders. CSR is a very broad concept that addresses many and various
topics such as human rights, corporate governance, health and safety,
environmental effects, working conditions and contribution to economic
development.
Example of CSR
Ben and Jerry's, for instance, uses only fair trade ingredients and has developed a
dairy farm sustainability program in its home state of Vermont. Starbucks has
created its C.A.F.E. Practices guidelines, which are designed to ensure the company
sources sustainably grown and processed coffee by evaluating the economic, social
and environmental aspects of coffee production. Tom's Shoes, another notable
example of a company with CSR at its core, donates one pair of shoes to a child in
need for every pair a customer purchases.
Attract customers to the firms products, which means boosting sales and
profits
Make employees want to stay with the business, reduce labour turnover and
therefore increase productivity
Attract more employees wanting to work for the business, reduce recruitment
costs and enable the company to get the most talented employees
Attract investors and keep the companys share price high, thereby protecting
the business from takeover.
If other stakeholders are put before shareholders, this may reduce share values
and may bring less willingness to invest
Stakeholder v stockholder
1. Can I rationally will that everyone acts as I propose to act? If the answer is no, then
we must not perform the action.
2. Does my action respect the goals of human beings rather than merely using them for
my own purposes? Again, if the answer is no, then we must not perform the action.
3. Kant makes very certain that everyone on Earth should be treated as an ends and
never as a means. It means you always want to treat someone else as a person who
has dignity and intrinsic worth. Always treat others as if they were as much of a
man/woman as you are.
4. Categorical Imperatives unconditional commands. For example, if I were to say
Lying is wrong, then under no circumstances is it all right to lie.
Criticism of Kantianism
Only acts driven by the categorical imperative are ethical what about outcomes?
Assumption that we are all autonomous rational beings prepared to reason at this
level
How should conflicting duties be resolved?
No account taken of personal relationships
No account of temporal or cultural differences
Virtue theory
Virtue Ethics (Virtue Theory) is an approach to Ethics that emphasizes an
individual's character as the key element of ethical thinking, rather than rules about
the acts themselves (Deontology) or their consequences.
Three main strands of Virtue Ethics: Eudaimonism, Ethics of care, Agent based
theories
Eudaimonism: It holds that the proper goal of human life is Eudaimoniameans "happiness", "well-being" or the "good life", and that this goal can be
achieved by a lifetime of practising "arte" (the virtues) in one's everyday
activities, subject to the exercise of (practical wisdom) to resolve
any conflicts or dilemmas which
might
arise.
A virtue is a habit or quality that allows individuals to succeed at their purpose.
Therefore, Virtue Ethics is only intelligible if it includes an account of the purpose
or meaning of human life), a matter of some contention among philosophers
since the beginning of time.
Ethics of Care was developed by Feminist writers which says that the idea that
men think in masculine terms such as justice and autonomy, whereas woman
think in feminine terms such as caring. It calls for a change in how we view
morality and the virtues, shifting towards virtues exemplified by women, such
as taking care of others, patience, the ability to nurture, self-sacrifice, etc, which
have been disregarded because society has not adequately valued the
contributions of women. It emphasizes on the importance of
solidarity, community and relationships rather than universal standards and
The lowest level of moral development means "preconventional" level. At this level, the individual evaluates ethical
issues in a hope to avoid punishment or seek personal reward/selfinterest. This level of moral development is usually associated with
small children or adolescents.
Issue-related factors
Research by Thomas Jones (1990) suggest that ethical issues in business
must have a certain level of "moral intensity" before they will start ethical
decision-making processes.
Moral intensity is the degree that people see an issue as an ethical one.
Influences on moral intensity include degree of consequences, social
consequence, concentration of effect, temporal immediacy and proximity..
Certain characteristics of issues determine their moral intensity. In general, the
research suggests that issues with more serious consequences are more likely to
reach the threshold level of intensity. Likewise, issues that are deemed by a societal
consensus to be ethical or unethical are more likely to trigger ethical decision-making
processes.
Moral framing - How is that issue actually presented within the
organization?
How an issue is framed or described in organisational language will
impact how it is perceived and acted upon morally; business only
wants to use business language.
Context-related factors
Context-related factors that influence ethics include:
Systems of reward
Authority
o direct instructions to subordinates
o setting subordinates targets so challenging
o Bureaucracy
o Suppression of moral autonomy overridden by the rules
o Instrumental morality morality seen in terms of following rules
o Distancing
o Denial of moral status
Work roles
Organizational culture
Codes of ethics
Managing stakeholder relations
CSR can make you more competitive and reduces the risk of sudden
damage to your reputation (and sales). Investors recognise this and are
more willing to finance you.
Corporate accountability
Corporate accountability refers to whether a corporation is answerable in some way
for the consequences of its actions. (Crane and Matten, 2004, p55)
Corporate accountability is the performance of a publicly traded company in nonfinancial areas such as social responsibility, sustainability and environmental
performance. Corporate accountability claims that financial performance should not be a
company's only important goal and that shareholders are not the only people a company
must be responsible to; stakeholders such as employees and community members also
require accountability.
Codes of ethics
Reporting/advice channels
Ethics consultants
Reverse discrimination
0 In some cases, people suffer reverse discrimination because AA (Affirmative
action (AA) programmes) policies prefer certain minorities
0 Justification for reverse discrimination
0 Retributive justice: past injustices have to be paid for
0 Distributive justice: rewards such as job and pay should be allocated
fairly among all groups (Beauchamp 1997)
0 Stronger forms of reverse discrimination tend to be illegal in many European
countries
Employee privacy
Four different types of privacy we may want to protect (Simms 1994)
0 Physical privacy
0 Social privacy
0 Informational privacy
0 Psychological privacy