Chapter 1: The Nature of Morality

Moral standards

Concern behavior that is a serious consequence to human welfare, they can profoundly injure or benefit people. e.g., lying, stealing, and killing.

Morality in the broad sense

Not just the principles of conduct we embrace but also the values, ideals, and aspirations that shape our lives. Examples: • Following a profession. • Devoting ourselves to community service. • Raising a family. etc.

Paradox of hedonism

People who are exclusively concerned with their own interests tend to have less happy and less satisfying lives than those whose desires extend beyond themselves.

Bystander apathy

The more people who are observing an event, the less likely is anyone of them to feel obliged to do something. • e.g., Kitty Genovese.

Businesspeople

Those who participate in planning, organizing, or directing the work of business.

1. Moral judgment should follow logically from their premises. 2. Our moral judgments should be logically compatible with our other moral and non-moral beliefs.

To say that moral judgements should be logical implies what 2 things?

1. No one really expects that a business person (or anyone else) would or should sacrifice their own interests for everyone else's. 2. It is impossible to take everyone into account.

What are the 2 reasons that maximizing everyone's interests is unreasonable?

1. An action can be illegal but morally right. 1. An actin that is legal can be morally wrong.

What are the 2 ways legality and morality are different things?

Argument

a group of statements, one or more of which (the premises) are claimed to provide support for, or reasons to believe, one of the others (the conclusion)

Counterexample

An example that is consistent with the premises but is inconsistent with the conclusion.

Ethics (moral philosophy)

A broad field of inquiry that addresses a fundamental query that all of us, at least from time to time, inevitably think about—namely, how should I live my life?

Organization

A group of people working together to achieve a common purpose. e.g., medical, law-enforcement, academic, etc.

Invalid argument

An argument whose premises do not entail its conclusion. e.g., If a person is a mother, the person is female. Fran is a female. Therefore, Fran is a mother.

Valid argument

An argument whose premises logically entail its conclusion. e.g., If a person is a mother, the person is a female. Fran is a mother. Therefore, Fran is female.

Self-interest

An individual's own personal gain.

Conscience

An inner feeling of the rightness or wrongness of an action. e.g., lying or being dishonest vs truth telling and kindness.

Business

Any organization whose objective is to provide goods or services for profit.

Unsound arguments

Arguments that have at least one false premise or invalid reasoning, or both. e.g., if a person is a female, she must be a mother. Fran is a female. Therefore, Fran must be a mother.

Sound arguments

Arguments that have true premises and valid reasoning. e.g., If a person is a mother, the person is a female. Fran is a mother. Therefore, Fran is female.

Moral arguments

Arguments whose conclusions are moral judgements. e.g., if an action violates the law, it is morally wrong. Affirmative action on behalf of women and minorities in personal matters violates the law. Therefore, affirmative action on behalf of women and minorities in personal matters is morally wrong.

Administrative regulations

Boards or agencies set up by legislators whose functions include issuing detailed regulations covering certain kinds of conduct. e.g., State legislatures establishing licensing boards to formulate regulations for the licensing of physicians and nurses.

Morality in the narrow sense

Concerns the principles that do or should regulate people's conduct and relations with others. e.g., John Stuart Mill's contention that society ought not to interfere with people's liberty when their actions affect only themselves.

1. It undermines any moral criticism of the practices of other societies as long as their actions conform to their own standards. 2. For the relativist there is no such thing as ethical progress. 3. From the relativist's point of view, it makes no sense for people to criticize principles or practices accepted by their own society.

Ethical relativism has some unsatisfactory implications. What are they?

Statutes

Laws enacted by legislative bodies (i.e., Congress and state legislatures). e.g., the law that defines and prohibits theft.

Ordinances

Laws enacted by local governing bodies such as city councils.

1. Logical. 2. Based on facts. 3. Based on sound or defensible moral principles.

Moral judgement should be...

Constitutional law

Refers to court rulings on the requirements of the Constitution and the constitutionality of legislation. e.g., the Supreme Court cases.

Common law

Refers to the body of judge-made law that first developed in the English-speaking world centuries ago when there were a few statutes.

Professional codes of ethics

Rules that are supposed to govern the conduct of members of a given profession. Examples: • Professors should not date their students. • Client confidentiality. • The billing of services to other professionals. • Limitations on price competition.

Divine command theory

That if something is wrong (like killing an innocent person for fun), then the only reason it is wrong is that God commands us not to do it.

Considered moral beliefs

The beliefs that are held only after we have made a conscientious effort to be conceptually clear, to acquire all relevant information, and to think rationally and impartially about them and their implications. They contrast with our gut responses, with feelings based on ignorance or prejudice, and with beliefs we just happen to hold without having any reason.

Etiquette

The norms of correct conduct and polite society or, more generally, to any special code of social behavior or courtesy. Examples: • Chewing with your mouth closed. • Saying "please" when requesting and "thank you" when receiving. • Holding a door open for someone entering immediately behind you.

Organizational norms

The shared conscious or unconscious acceptance of a company's rules by its members; includes the individual commitment to those rules in order to further the organization's goals, often at the expense of some personal freedom.

Business ethics

The study of what constitutes right and wrong, or good and bad, human conduct in a business context. Examples: • Would it be right for a store manager to break a promise to a customer and sell some hard-to-find merchandise to someone else, whose need for it is greater? • What, if anything, should a moral employee do when their superiors refuse to look into apparent wrongdoing in a branch office? • If you innocently came across secret information about a competitor, would it be permissible for you to use it for your own advantage?

Diffusion of responsibility

The tendency for individuals to feel diminished responsibility for their actions when they are surrounded by others who are acting the same way. • "It's not my fault." • "This would happen anyway, with or without me".

Groupthink

The tendency of group members to conform, resulting in a narrow view of some issue.

Ethical relativism

The theory that what is right is determined by what a culture or society says is right. Says that right and wrong are only a function of what a particular society takes to be right and wrong. e.g., abortion is condemned as immoral in Catholic Ireland but is practiced as a morally neutral form of birth control in Japan.

How demanding are these obligations? How much vigilance is enough?

This approach to extending individual responsibility for organizational wrongdoing raises what two critical questions?

1. Compliance (The need for compliance with the rules, including the laws of the land, the principles of morality, the customs and expectations of the community, the policies of the community, and such general concerns as fairness). 2. Contributions (The contributions businesses can make to society, through the value and quality of one's products or services, by way of the jobs one provides for workers and managers, through the prosperity and usefulness of one's activities to the surrounding community). 3. Consequences (The consequences of business activity, both inside and outside the company, both intended and unintended, including the reputation of one's own company and industry).

What are the 3 C's of business ethics?

1. Although the desire to avoid hell and go to heaven may prompt some of us to act morally, this is not the only reason or even the most common reason that people behave morally. 2. The moral instructions of the world's greatest religions are general and imprecise: they do not relieve us of a necessity to engage in moral reasoning ourselves. 3. Although some theologians have advocated the divine command theory, many theologians and certainly most philosophers would reject this view.

What are the 3 main reasons morality needn't rest on religion?

1. We can simply accept as a tragic fact of modern existence that organizational wrongs may be committed for which no one—neither individuals nor the organization—can rightly be held responsible. 2. We can hold the organization itself morally responsible for the wrongdoing. 3. We can hold all the individuals affiliated with the organization strictly liable. 4. We can extend standard principles of culpable ignorance to explain why individuals and organizations may be held responsible for their actions even though the knowledge conditions fail.

What are the 4 approaches that exist to the problem of "deeds without doers"?

1. Statutes. 2. Regulations. 3. Common law. 4. Constitutional law.

What are the 4 kinds of law?

1. That a decision must be made. 2. When a decision must be made. 3. Which choices are available. 4. What is needed to make a choice.

What are the 4 knowledge conditions of moral decision making?

1. Obligations of investigation. 2. Obligations of communication. 3. Obligations of protection. 4. Obligations of prevention. 5. Obligations of precaution.

What are the 5 obligations that arise from the specific risk of organizational enterprise: the risk that an individual will do or contribute to great harm without knowing it?

1. Consider other people's well-being, including the well-being of nonparticipants. 2. Think as a member of the business community and not as an isolated individual. 3. Obey, but do not depend solely on, the law. 4. Think of yourself -and your company - as part of society. 5. Obey moral rules. 6. Think objectively. 7. Ask the question "What sort of person would do such a thing?". 8. Respect the customs of others, but not at the expense of your own ethics.

What are the 8 crucial rules for ethical thinking in business?

1. When we are generally perplexed about what we are to do, we are trying to figure out what our conscience ought to be saying to us. 2. It may not always be good for us to follow our conscience.

What are the limits of conscience (2 main things)?

1. Evaluating the factual claims. 2. Challenging the moral standard. 3. Defending the moral standard. 4. Revising and modifying the argument.

What are the patterns of defense and challenge?

1. Ethical errors end careers more quickly and more definitively than any other mistake in judgment or accounting. 2. Ethics provides the broader framework within which business life must be understood. 3. Nothing is more dangerous to business—or to business in general—than a tarnished public image.

Why is ethics important in business?