Business Ethics chapter 1 and 2

What are the 7 keys to making a good choice?

Identify, homework, creativity, weighing your options, prioritize, seek advice, informed choices & assessments

Is there one direct approach to addressing ethical issues in business?

No--not generally anyway. Rather, when we address ethical issues in business, we often appeal to several distinct moral principles. Many of these principles provide specific approaches to ethics in business

Depending on how seriously wrong a person's action was, the person's moral responsibility for it can be mitigated if:

the person's contribution to the action was minimal, if the person was uncertain about what he or she was doing, or if the person was subject to forces that made it extremely difficult not to act.

unconscious reasoning

seem to proceed by using "prototypes" of learned past behaviors that are "matched" with the situations in which we find ourselves. In this way, we respond to the moral decisions we face automatically and without thinking

What is business ethics?

set of moral rules that govern how businesses operate, how business decisions are made and how people are treated

( rights approach ) Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics provides...

strong support for the claim that people have human rights. Kant's theory provides two versions of the basic principle he calls the "categorical imperative."

Carol Gilligan's studies

suggested that people, particularly women, might also move through a similar sequence of development, focused on becoming better at caring and being responsible for others and oneself.

These unconscious and automatic decisions are not irrational, however

they are based on past conscious reasoning, on cultural influences, and in some cases on intuitions that seem to be "hard-wired" into our minds.

We seem to have two ways of making moral decisions:

though conscious reasoning and through unconscious mental processes.

Conscious reasoning

uses the kinds of principles we have discussed in this chapter

Of these various approaches, four are key because we employ them in almost all the moral debates that arise in our business lives. They are the....

utilitarian, rights, justice, and care approaches to ethical decision-making.

To make a fully informed moral decision, therefore, we should try to bring all the approaches to bear on our moral decisions. We can do this by asking four questions:

(1) Which action will maximize benefits and minimize harms for everyone? (2) Which action best respects the moral rights of all those involved? (3) Which action will lead to the most just distribution of benefits and burdens among those involved? (4) Which action cares appropriately for the well-being of those who are closely related to or dependent on us?

What must one do to behave ethically?

(1) recognize when a situation requires moral reasoning, something that moral disengagement can influence; (2) make a judgment about what the ethical course of action is, which can be influenced by biased views about the world, others, and oneself; (3) decide to do what is ethical, which can be influenced by moral seduction and an organization's culture (4) carry out one's decision, which can be influenced by weakness of will and one's belief about the locus of control of one's actions.

Unlike the previous three approaches, which emphasize impartiality, the care approach holds that we can and should be partial toward those with whom we have valuable relationships. Accordingly, an ethic of care holds that

(1) we should preserve and nurture our valuable relationships, and (2) we should care for those to whom 122 Chapter 2 we are related by attending to their particular needs, values, desires, and concrete well-being as seen from their own perspective.

Together these two versions of Kant's categorical imperative imply that we have a right to pursue a certain interest (such as an interest in worshiping as we choose) if

(1) we would not be willing to have everyone be deprived of the freedom to pursue that interest, and (2) the freedom to pursue that interest is needed to live as rational beings who can choose and pursue our own ends.

Whether a person is morally responsible or culpable for a wrongful act or injury depends on three factors:

(1) whether the person caused or helped to cause the act/injury or failed to prevent it when he or she could and should have; (2) whether the person knew what he or she was doing; and (3) whether the person acted according to his or her own free will.

Will studying as an adult improve our moral standards?

- Some have noted that since people acquire their moral standards as children and carry these into adulthood, studying ethics as an adult will do nothing to improve our moral standards. - However, many studies show that people's moral views keep developing into adulthood.

Moreover, there are many legitimate reasons to think that ethics should be brought into business.

- ethics applies to all human activities; business needs ethics to survive; - ethics is consistent with profit-seeking; customers, employees, and people in general care about ethics in business; studies show that ethics does not lower profits but seems to enhance them. Furthermore, several factors have created new ethical questions for business people; for Ethics and Business 53 example, new information technologies create risk, threaten privacy, and introduce new forms of property; developments in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and genetic engineering create new risks to human health; and the rise of globalization has brought both large benefits and large threats to nations around the world.

Why bother learning business ethics?

Business ethics enhances the law by outlining acceptable behaviors beyond government control. corporations establish business ethics to promote integrity among their employees and gain trust from key stakeholders, such as investors and consumers.

What is Business Ethics?

Business ethics is a particular kind of ethics: it is the study of the moral standards that should guide business activities, and it aims to develop standards that are reasonable to apply in business.

Should ethics be part of a business degree curriculum? Why/why not?

Business ethics is vital for success in the modern world, and so is a fundamental requirement for any business school program. Without ethics and trust, there is no foundation to build a successful career. Accordingly, business schools have a duty to instill such values in their students.

What is the theory of ethical relativism? (def & example)

Ethical relativism is the theory that there are no ethical standards that are absolutely true and that apply or should be applied to people of all societies. - ex. Instead, ethical relativism holds, each society has its own distinct ethical standards, and the members of any society should follow whatever standards their own society happens to hold.

What is Ethics?

Ethics is the study of the moral standards that we and others hold, and it aims at developing standards that are reasonable and can be justified.

When do human beings begin to understand morality?

From the age of three, we seem to be able to distinguish moral from nonmoral standards.

why study moral reasoning in a business curriculum?

Moral reasoning consists of the mental reasoning processes through which we determine what our moral standards are, and judge whether our behaviors, institutions, or policies accord with or violate our standards.

What are moral standards?

Moral standards are standards that involve serious wrongs or benefits; should be preferred to other standards and to self interest; are not established by authority figures; are felt to be universal; are based on impartial considerations; and are associated with special emotions (such as guilt and remorse) and vocabulary (such as obligation, rights, justice).

Do ethics belong in business?

Some argue that ethics does not belong in business because - free markets automatically produce ethical behavior, - managers have an obligation to serve their companies regardless of ethics, - as long as managers follow the law they will behave ethically. (All of these arguments, however, are based on false assumptions.)

Can ethics be learned?

Yes, ethics can be taught and learned. Ethics is simply defined as a set of knowledge in terms of moral principles. It is the moral values that guide an individual's behavior or the conduct of a certain activity.

Virtue ethics is an

alternative to the four approaches described above. Unlike those four approaches, which focus on what the right moral action is, the virtue approach focuses on the virtues of the good, moral person

rights approach

asks whether our actions respect the moral or human rights of those whom they affect

care approach

claims that human relationships have a moral value that justifies exercising special care toward those particular persons with whom we have valuable close relationships, particularly relations of dependency.

( justice approach ) most important of these is....

distributive justice

justice approach

encompasses distributive, retributive, and compensatory justice.

Is ethical relativism a flawed theory? Why? (def & example)

ethical relativism appears to be a flawed theory. - First, some moral standards are found in all societies, namely those that are required for any society to function. - Second, even if societies do differ in their moral views, this does not logically show that none of these views should be held by all people everywhere. - Third, relativism implies that we must each accept the standards of our own society; but why should we conform to whatever our society (or a majority) believes?

How does ethics differ from mortality? ( law )

ethics are a set of moral values an individual establishes for one's self and your own personal behavior. laws are structured rules utilized to govern all of society.

( distributive justice ) It is based on the....

fundamental principle that people who are similar in all respects relevant to the kind of treatment in question should be given similar benefits and burdens, while people who are dissimilar in a relevant respect ought to be treated dissimilarly, in proportion to their dissimilarity.

utilitarian approach

holds that an act is morally right if the utility produced by that act is greater than the utility produced by any other act the agent could perform in its place. While this approach has been widely adopted, critics point out that trying to measure utility leads to many difficult problems. Moreover, utilitarianism seems to lead to unethical outcomes when decisions involve questions of justice or of moral rights.

What is ethics?

moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity

How does ethics differ from mortality?

morals deal with what is right or wrong. ethics deals with what is good or evil

Lawrence Kohlberg's studies

provided evidence that people's moral abilities move from a preconventional, to a conventional, and on to a postconventional level of development.