Unit 2 – Philosophy

1. Objectives

3 questions:

1. Complicate your relationship with the ethical experience

- The tools to build normative judgement are always social
- Make you understand that as a manager, you are also a philosopher
- Concepts that will help you understand what’s at stake when encountering an ethical
experience

2. Enhance your ability to problematize reality and/or make sense or already existing social
issues
- What is going on in a situation from an ethical perspective?
- Theoretical resources

3. Build bridges with the discourse and engagement units

- Normative sensitivity; pay attention to values and norms being used
- Question the ethical reasoning at stake that are being developed already

2. Basic definitions

Ethics. Morality. Deontology. Law

Ethics = set of rules, values, principles that are experienced by one/more social actors performing a
particular action in a particular situation

- People engaging in an ethical reasoning act in the action, not before (morality)
- Example : critique/dilemma – decision to delocalize a company (reflexivity in action); fire
someone or not

Morality = set of principles that take the form of general and universal obligations regardless of the
situation or action

- Universal obligations before the action

- Examples: the interdiction of loan remuneration in Muslim countries, buddhism – red
meat, stealing or killing in the Ancient Testament

Deontology = set of rules that are to be followed by specific people, social actors (psichologists,
professionals, etc.)

- Different from the law: explicit and formal requirement for a particular professional
practice
- Example: doctors - secrecy oath, same for priests

Law = set of rules that legally sanction certain fellow-citizens practices (public body)

- Legal rules for particular fellow-citizens

- Example: sexual and moral harassment, speed limits
Similarities and differences

Similarities: they all have to do with specific rules that guide action ; what is good and what’s right

Differences

Different dimensions/subdimensions

1. Relationship with action

- Ethics: during an action
- Morality: before the action
- Deontology: before the action
- Law: before the action

2. Application
- Ethics: all subjects
- Morality: all subjects
- Deontology: specific professionals
- Law: all citizens

3. Origin of behavioral sanctions

- Ethics: society, social sanction (people on the street, everyone around you)
- Morality: social sanction; moral communities (more specific); if you are not Muslim, you
will not be sanctioned by eating pork
- Deontology: professional sanction by professional communities
- Law: specific institutions/state – police, justice

General introduction

Levels. Objects. Theories of ethics - three dimensional slicing of ethical theories

Levels of analysis

= analytical slicing of social reality; 3 different subdimensions

1. Institutional – focus on institutional entities

- Cultural and ideological models (capitalism, romanticism)
- Legal/regulatory framework (public policies)
- Social systems (market economies)
- Example: Is capitalism fair? Is the market economy fair?

2. Organizational – focus on organizational entities

- Organizational behaviors
- Organizational configuration and corporate governance
- Example: Fairness of a marketing campaign, a strategy, is RD fairly funded by an
organization? Legitimacy of teleworking etc

3. Individual – focus on individual entities (psychological traits of features)

- Risk averse/seeking
- Values, norms, beliefs
 - Motives, motivations

Level of analysis & Ethics

- Institutional ethics : good society, fair institutions

- Organizational ethics: good economic actors, fair organizational practices – corporate
scandals, controversial practices
- Individual: good life and virtuous/fair actions

Objects of analysis

= analytical slicing of ethical problems

1. Procedural ethics
- Question the legitimacy of the way a decision is made (attached to procedures that
might be used to determine how benefits and burdens of various kinds are allocated to
people)
- Individual consent and autonomy : do they benefit from autonomy when they make
decisions
- Decisional resources – sufficient, available, quality
- Decisional power – distribution of power (fairness); are only the partners in charge of the
strategic orientation or all the members?
- Decisional criteria – subjective/objective, quantitative/qualitative
- Decisional procedure – opacity/transparency, long/short chained

2. Substantial ethics
- Questions the legitimacy of a decision/action (principles/logics that underlie an action)

The Voice Example on procedural ethics

- No physical discrimination
- Democratization of access to artist career

- Limited gender diversity (one woman as a judge)

- Limited music diversity (pop)
- Stressful performance (time/number of songs)

The voice example on substantive ethics

- She was blaming the western governments providing weapons to unstable countries; she
was defending the terrorists and she had conspiracy theory lenses
- Criticisms, remove her from the show

Theories

= ethical theories; set of philosophical argumentation defining the principles and logics according to
which a person or an action can be qualified as right/wrong

- Virtue ethics
- Consequentialism
- Deontology

1. Virtue ethics
 - Closed book
- Actions, practices, discourses and decisions matter way more than people’s features
- Example: Bush/Trump; I care for their political agenda, actions, not their virtue

2. Consequentialism (consequences of an action)

- open book
- Logic: outcomes-related, consequences
- Principle: maximize utility -> pleasures or preferences satisfaction (material and
symbolic)
- Variations: individual (egoism) and collective(utilitarianism)

Pure egoism:

U = sum of individual preferences

X = preferences which bring you utility when pleased

Y = preferences which bring you disutility (preased)

Final decision: option that brings the greater U, given revenue constraints

Example: dilemma – doner kebap or locally/organic food

P1 – kebap : Feeling (stuffed/taste) – health (weight/digestion) – social justice ideas

P2 – organic : Health (long-term perspective) + Social justice – Feeling (stuffed/taste)

Based on your own preferences, you should take the decisions if you are a consequentialist

3. Deontology : duty or principle that you should please to perform an action

- Logic: rules oriented – duties
- Principle: respect of an already set moral rules
- Variations: depend on the a priori moral rues defined
- Examples: ten commandments.

Act in such a way that you treat humanity always at the same time as an end and never simply as a
means : consider pleasing the whole humanity when you make a decision

Example kebap-organic food : depend on the rules which the action should be derived from

survivalism, class conflict, hedonism, health, middle path, social justiceLimited number of ethical
theories that sociologically frame our sense of justice – we have plural but limited number of moral
reflexivity depending on a situation
Example: seduction in the classroom

To pass the class, you need to have bodily nice features; the hot ones pass, the others not; all the
men fail

 Promote a wrong value in a pedagogical situation

 Follow the industrial rule, not the inspired one (evaluate the intellect, not the body)

Example: political impunity

Belgium, elected representatives are allowed not to be fined for speed limits – not fair

 The wrong world would be satisfied;

 Renown (fame) over Civic (equality) – same rules to everyone