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WHAT IS ETHICS?

Ethics
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Translated from ancient Greek: theory of living How should we live? Consideration of ethics: Thinking what is right and wrong Ethical deliberation is a process of consciously

reasoning about what is right and wrong and giving defensible reasons for actions that reach far beyond ones initial moral intuition.

Ethics
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Ethics is about how one should live as an individual

as well as how to live with others (who may be significantly different) Ethics assumes that people are accountable for their actions

Ethics and Law

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ETHICS

GREY AREA LAW

Ethics and Morality

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Ethics has a variety of different meanings.

"the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group. "the study of morality."

Morality is concerned with the norms, values, and beliefs embedded in social processes which define right and wrong for an individual or a community. Ethics is concerned with the study of morality and the application of reason to elucidate specific rules and principles that determine right and wrong for a given situation. These rules and principles are called ethical theories.

Ethics vs. morality

Moral Standard
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1. Moral standard- the norms about the kind

of actions believed to be morally right and wrong

2. How do you arrive at what is right or wrong is a

result of many factors:

a.
b. c.

How you were raised up Your religion Tradition and belief (friends, family, ethics background, religion, school, media, internet, role model.

Moral reasoning
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The

reasoning process by which human behaviors, institutions, or policies are judged to be in accordance with or in violation of moral standards. To evaluate the adequacy of moral reasoning, ethicists employ three main criteria:
1.
2. 3.

Moral reasoning must be logical. Factual evidence must be accurate, relevant, and complete. Moral standards must be consistent.

Five characteristics of moral standards :

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Moral standards deal with matters that can seriously injure or benefit humans.

i.e. most people hold moral standards against theft, rape, enslavement, murder, child abuse, fraud, lawbreaking, etc.

Moral standards are not established or changed by authoritative bodies.

The validity of moral standards rests on the adequacy of the reasons that are taken to support and justify them; so long as these reasons are adequate, the standards remain valid.

Moral standards, we feel, should be preferred to other values, including self--interest.

This does not mean, of course, that it is always wrong to act on self-interest; it only means that it is wrong to choose selfinterest over morality

Five characteristics of(cont):

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Moral standards are based on impartial considerations. The fact that you will benefit from a lie and that I will be harmed is irrelevant to whether lying is morally wrong.

Moral standards are associated with special emotions and a

special vocabulary (guilt, shame, remorse, etc.).

The fact that you will feel guilty, morally ashamed or remorseful if act contrary to moral standard.

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Do you think a strict family upbringings or religious

education would obviously have a direct impact on your personal moral standards?

Ethics
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Ethics is the study of moral standards

the process of examining the moral standards of a person or society to determine whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable in order to apply them to concrete situations and issues.

The ultimate aim of ethics is to develop a body of

moral standards that we feel are reasonable to hold

standards that we have thought about carefully and have decided are justified standards for us to accept and apply to the choices that fill our lives.

Why Business Ethics?

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A conflict between ethics and self interest pursuit of profit.

Everyday managers make decisions that can affect customers, employees, partners, community, and the world in powerful ways.

Since managers are accountable to these groups, they must have morally defensible reasons for their actions.

Business and ethics are fundamentally connected

Every decision managers make has some ethical content, just as each decision can affect the financials of a business

Ethics is about more that just avoiding illegal actions; it is

about choosing between alternatives in a way that benefits rather than harm stakeholders.

Business Ethics
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A specialized study of moral right and wrong that

concentrates on moral standards as they apply to business institutions, organizations, and behavior.
The most influential institutions within contemporary societies may be their economic societies. Modern corporations are organizations that have the right to sue and be sued, own and sell property, and enter in contracts all in their own name.

Why should business be ethical?

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Accountability to stakeholders Ethical problems are part of the job Personal integrity Legal reasoning is often inadequate ?

Why a good understanding of business ethics is important

The power and influence of business in society is greater than ever

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before. Business has the potential to provide a major contribution to our societies (producing the products and services, providing employment, paying taxes, and acting as an engine for economic development. Business malpractices have the potential to inflict enormous harm on individuals, on communities and on the environment. The demands being placed on business to be ethical by its various stakeholders are constantly becoming more complex and more challenging. Ethical violations continue to occur in business, across countries and across sectors. Business ethics can provide us with the ability to assess the benefi ts and problems associated with different ways of managing ethics in organizations.

Business ethics
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Our approach in this course:

Ethical behavior is the best long range business strategy

Over the long run and for the most part, ethical behavior can give a company significant competitive advantages over the companies that are not ethical. Examples:

Business Ethics: Level of Ethical inquiry in business. 17

Society

Questions raised about the economic, political, legal, or other social systems within which businesses operate. i.e., questions about the morality of capitalism or of the laws, regulations, industrial structures, and social practices within which businesses operate.

Corporation
Questions raised about a particular company. i.e., questions about the morality of the activities, policies, practices, or organizational structure of an individual company taken as a whole. Questions raised about an organization relationship with its stakeholders. i.e., employee rights, consumer rights, suppliers, community etc.

Stakeholders

Personal

Questions about a particular individual within an organization and their behaviors and decisions. i.e., questions about the morality of the decisions, actions, or character of an individual.

Ethical theories
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Has gone far back 2500 years ago Over time with considerable debate, different school

of thoughts developed on how we should live in an ethical life. The theories on ethics can be divided into:

Virtue ethics- living your life according to a commitment to the achievement of a clear ideal Ethics for greater good focus on the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Universal ethics- action are taken out of duty and obligation

Problems with Ethical theories

In virtue ethics, societies can place different emphasis on
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different virtues.

Eg. Greek society valued wisdom, courage and justice. Christian societies valued faith, hoe and charity, so if your virtues are not a direct reflection of the values of the societies in which you live value conflict

In ethics for the greater good ends justify the means

Eg. Nazi launched a national genocide against Jews on the utilitarian grounds of restoring the Aryan race.

In universal ethics, reverse of weakness in ethics for the

greater good. Eg. Research which use of stem cell which is harvested from
human embryo for curing major illness

Ethical Principles in Business

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Utilitarianism: Weighing Social Costs and Benefits

Case: Ford Pinto

Utilitarianism is a general term for any view that holds that

actions and policies should be evaluated on the basis of the benefits and costs they will impose on society.

In any situation, the "right" action or policy is the one that will produce the greatest net benefits or the lowest net costs (when all alternatives have only net costs).

Jeremy Bentham founded traditional utilitarianism An action is right from an ethical point of view if and only if the sum total of utilities produced by that act is greater than the sum total of utilities produced by any other act the agent could have performed in its place.

Utilitarianism
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To determine what the moral thing to do on any

particular occasion might be, there are three considerations to follow:

You must determine what alternative actions are available. You must estimate the direct and indirect costs and benefits the action would produce for all involved in the foreseeable future. You must choose the alternative that produces the greatest sum total of utility.

Problems with the utilitarian reliance on measurement:

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Comparative measures of the values things have for different

people cannot be made. Eg. we cannot get into each others' skins to measure the pleasure or pain caused. Some benefits and costs are impossible to measure. Eg. How much is a human life worth? The potential benefits and costs of an action cannot always be reliably predicted, so they are also not adequately measurable. It is unclear exactly what counts as a benefit or a cost. People see these things in different ways. Utilitarian measurement implies that all goods can be traded for equivalents of each other. However, not everything has a monetary equivalent.

Rights and Duties

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In general, a right is a person's entitlement to

something; one has a right to something when one is entitled to act a certain way or to have others act in a certain way towards oneself.
An entitlement is called a legal right. Entitlements can come from laws or moral standards; the latter are called moral rights or human rights. They specify, in general, that all humans are permitted to do something or are entitled to have something done for them.

Moral right
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Moral

rights have defining them:

three

important

features

Moral rights are closely correlated with duties. Moral rights provide individuals with autonomy and equality in the free pursuit of their interests. Moral rights provide a basis for justifying one's actions and invoking the aid of others.

Moral judgments made on the basis of rights differ

substantially from those based on utility.

Right
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Negative rights are defined entirely in terms of

the duties others have not to interfere with you

Privacy is an example of a negative right

Positive rights imply that others have a duty

not only to refrain from interference, but also to provide you with what you need to pursue your interests.

the rights to food, life, and health care are positive.

Kantism Right
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Kantism right
An action is morally right for a person in a certain situation if, and only if, the person's reason for carrying out the action is a reason that he or she would be willing to have every person act on, in any similar situation. If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right of anyone.

The categorical imperative incorporates two criteria for

determining moral right and wrong: Universalizability and Reversibility

the person's reasons for acting must be reasons that everyone could act on at least in principle the person's reasons for acting must be reasons that he or she would be willing to have all others use, even as a basis of how they treat him or her.

never treat people only as means, but always also as ends.

Major problems with Kants theory

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Kant's theory is not precise enough to always be useful.

Although we might be able to agree on the kinds of

interests that have the status of moral rights, there is substantial disagreement concerning what the limits of each of these rights are and concerning how each of these rights should be balanced against other conflicting rights. A third group of criticisms that have been made of Kant's theory is that there are counter examples that show the theory sometimes goes wrong

Ethical relativism
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A theory that there are no ethical standards that

are absolutely true and that apply or should be applied to the companies and people of all societies. Because all principles have limitations, choose ethical relativism whereby the traditions of the society, personel opinions, circumstances define ethical principles. It is more flexible as opposed to black and white rules.

Justice and Fairness

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Three categories: Distributive justice is concerned with the fair distribution of society's benefits and burdens. Retributive justice refers to the just imposition of penalties and punishments Compensatory justice is concerned with compensating people for what they lose when harmed by others.

Ethical dilemma
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Your ethical principles are most likely to be tested

when you face a situation in which there is no obvious right or wrong decision.