Bus 160 - Chapter 1 & 2
1. Involve serious matters 2. Should be preferred to other values, including self-interest 3. Not established by authority figures 4. Felt to be universal 5. Based on impartial considerations 6. Associated with special emotions and vocab
6 characteristics of moral values
multinational corporation
A company that has operations in several nations
Rule Utilitarianism
A form of utilitarianism that limits utilitarian analysis to evaluations of moral rules
Business ethics
A specialized study of moral right and wrong that focuses on moral standards in business institutions, organizations, and activities
Stakeholder Theory
A theory that states a manager should take all stakeholder interest into account when making decisions
Descriptive study
An investigation that does not try to reach any conclusions about what things are truly good or bad or right or wrong
Loyal Agent's Argument
Argument that an employer should be served in such a way that will enhance his or her interests. So, managers have a duty to serve their employer in that way. This argument is generally used by unethical managers to justify unethical behavior.
libertarian philosophers
Believe that 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.
Conscious Moral Reasoning
Brain has no matching prototypes; consists of conscious, logical but slow processes of the brain's "C system"
Corporate Social Responsibility
Companies' acknowledged responsibility to society
Unconscious moral decisions
Comprise most of our moral decisions; are made by the brain's "X-system" using stores prototypes to automatically and unconsciously identify what the brain perceives and what it should do.
Positive Rights
Duties of other agents (it is not always clear who) to provide the holder of the right with whatever he or she needs to freely pursue his or her interests
systemic issues
Ethical questions about the social, political, legal, or economic systems within which companies operate. T/F on test = F
False
Ethical study is the only way to study ethics
False
Failing to study, raised by concrete situation can result in a conf...
Corporate issues...
False
Non-economic goods
Goods such as life, love, freedom and equality whose value is such that it cannot be measured in economic terms
Social Contract Theory
Hypernorms should apply to people in all societies. Microsocial norms apply only in specific societies and differ from one society to another.
Rights
Individual entitlements to people's freedom of choice and well-being
Efficiency
Operating in such a way that one produces a desired output with the lowest resource input
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
Ethical Relativism
The theory that there are no ethical standards that are absolutely true
Globalization
The way nations have become more connected so that goods, services, capital, knowledge and cultural artifacts move across national borders at an increasing rate
1. Understanding our moral standards 2. Evidence of a particular person, policy or institution having those same moral standards 3. Conclusion or moral judgement that the person, policy or institution is right or wrong, etc.
Three components of moral reasoning
Name the four aspects that determine if something is ethical or not
Utilitarian, Rights, Justice, and Caring
cost-benefit analysis
a study that compares the costs and benefits to society of providing a public good
Moral virtue
an acquired disposition that is valued as part of the character of a morally good human being and that is exhibited in the person's habitual behavior
ethic of virtue
an ethic based on evaluations of the moral character of persons or groups
Ethic of care
an ethic that requires caring for the concrete well being of those particular persons with whom we have valuable close relationships, particularly those dependent on us
Communitarian ethic
an ethic that sees concrete communities and communal relationships as having a fundamental value that should be preserved and maintained
normative study
an investigation that attempts to reach conclusions about what things are good or bad or about what actions are right or wrong
Justice
distributing benefits and burdens fairly among people
Negative rights
duties others have to not interfere in certain activities of the person who holds the right
Retributive Justice
fairness when blaming or punishing persons for doing wrong
Compensatory Justice
fairness when restoring to a person what the person lost when he or she was wronged by someone else
preconventional morality
first level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development in which the child's behavior is governed by the consequences of the behavior
Utilitarianism
idea that actions and policies should be evaluated on the basis of benefits and costs they produce for everyone in a society who is affected by those actions and policies
moral/human rights
rights that all human beings everywhere possess to an equal extent simply by virtue of being a human being.
Norms
rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members
conventional morality
second level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development that involves interpersonal concordance; law and order
contractual rights
the rights of individuals to enter into agreements with others regarding the use of their property providing recourse through the legal system in the event of noncompliance
Virtue Theory
the theory that the aim of the moral life is to develop those general dispositions called moral virtues, and to exercise and exhibit them in the many situations that human life sets before us
postconventional morality
third level of Kohlberg's stages of moral development in which the person's behavior is governed by moral principles that have been decided on by the individual; social contract and universal principles
Hypernorms
values that are fundamental across culture and theory