Business Ethics

MIDTERM #2 READINGS

JUSTICE THEORIES

• Justice theories state that whatever’s fair is right.

• But what is fair?

• Egalitarianism – everyone gets an equal portion if whatever and that is it.
• Desert – everyone gets what he or she deserves.

• How do you determine what people deserve?

=> Aristotle

• Divided justice into three kinds:

1. Distributive justice – how the goods are divided up.

• Treat cases alike – one has to identify relevant similarities and differences in order to determine whether or not cases are alike.

1. Retributive justice – punishing the transgressors.
2. Compensatory justice – compensating those transgressed.

• Distinguished between just procedures and just outcomes.
• Never stated what X (the outcome) or Y (the contribution) should be.
• Only identified the procedures to be used – it’s all form and no content.

=> Utilitarian

• Simply whatever provides the greatest utility is the most just – so it does not matter who gets how much of what, as long as the final total is as high as possible.
• Mills states that:

• Justice involves respect for rights, especially the right to equal treatment, unless utility says otherwise.
• It may also be that distribution among individuals that is perceived to be unfair causes unhappiness within the society, thus decreasing the overall utility.

=> John Rawls – contemporary thinker, author of A Theory of Justice

• Take a procedural justice approach – if the procedure is fair, the result of the procedure will be fair.
• The decision-making procedure best ensures social justice and fairness through an experiment:

• A group under the veil of ignorance – group of self-interested and rational people whose responsibility is to divide up the social goods and they don’t now their race, sex, socio-economic status, abilities would establish two principles:

1. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:

1. To the greatest benefits of the least advantages, and
2. Attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions o fair equality opportunity.

• In order words, equal shares unless in a certain arrangement of unequal shares, even the worst off is better off than in another engagement.

• Believes that this approach makes sure that certain biases do not taint the decision-making process.
• Argues that the rational person will always choose to divide up goods in a good way that always benefits the least advantaged.
• Criticisms for Rawl’s theory:

• He doesn’t rank the basic liberties – so what happens if they come into conflict?
• Even with the veil of ignorance, rational people would not necessarily choose the two principles he says they would – Rawl seems to have in mind people who aren’t great risk takers.

=> Robert Nozick – contemporary thinker, author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia

• Presents a view of justice that incorporates very strongly a right to liberty.
• Also incorporates an entitlement theory – things are just if what we have is what we’re entitled to, and we’re entitled to whatever is ours by history – by transfer, purchase, gift, as long as each step in the history is fair.

RELIGIONISM

• Some people connect religion with morality so much that atheists (people who do not believe in gods) are automatically considered immoral.

• However, one can have morality without a religion.
• Where are those values and principles based on?

• One can say honesty is good because God says so (the divine command theory).
• On can say honesty is good because that makes for a happy society (utilitarianism).
• One can say honesty is good because it shows respect for others (Kantian ethics).

=> Divine Command Theory

• Honesty is good because God said so.
• There are two versions of this:

• One argues that God, being the all loving and benevolent being that he is will command us to do only that which is good and right.
• One argues that whatever God says to do is what’s right – his command defines right.

• It’s an appeal to authority – the authority of God.
• There are two problems with appealing to God as an authority on moral matters:

1. One needs to establish that he does exist.

• There are a considerable number of very good arguments against his existence.

1. Even if we did have proof of his existence, we would need to establish his moral authority.

• For example: Noah’s Ark – the Judeo-Christian God killed almost everyone on earth and condones animal torture.

• There are three problems with appeal of God’s words:

1. The matter of validity – one would need to be sure the Bible is indeed God’s word.
2. The matter of reliability – which version is the authoritative one? Translation and editing errors?
3. The matter of adequacy – many moral issues are not dealt with in the Bible.

• Islamic ethics is an instance of the theory, while in Hindu ethics, “right” is defined as that which fulfills your particular role.

EGOISM

• There are two versions of ethical egoism.

• Individual egoism – X is morally right if it’s in my own interests.
• Universal egoism – Everyone should consider morally right those things that are in their own interests.

• Egoism is a consequentialist theory – it determines what is right and wrong according to the consequences, and according to what happens.

=> Thomas Hobbes – 17th century thinker, author of Leviathan

• Argues that our natural condition leads us to a morality of self-interest.
• “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.”
• There is no right and wrong, morality itself doesn’t come to be until we become civilized.

=> Ayn Rand 

• Altruism – Any action taken for the benefits of others is good, and any action taken for one’s own benefit is evil.
• The beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value.

=> Adam Smith – 18th century thinker, author of Wealth of Nations

• Used egoism as a starting point for what has become modern economic theory – he believed that individuals free to pursue their own interests would be led, as if by an “invisible hand”, to achieve the common good.

VIRTUE ETHICS

• What is the right kind of person to be? A virtuous person.

=> Aristotle – 350 BCE thinker, author of The Nicomachean Ethics, virtue ethicist

• List of virtues includes the standard four of the ancient Greeks.

• Justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom.
• These are qualities that enables us experience eudemonia.

• The Golden Mean - all virtues are at the midpoint between two extremes – the extreme of deficiency, and the extreme of excess.

=> William David Ross – 20th century thinker, author of The Right and the Good