Balberan, Jan Maxin R.                    ITETHIC                                February 9, 2007

FOR BUSINESS ETHICS

Campbell Jones, Martin Parker and Rene ten Bos

Chapter 2: Common Sense Business Ethics

“If someone put forward a point of view that we think wrong, pr find offensive, then we would be less likely saying, well that’s your opinion.”

It is almost as if we are prepared to let someone enjoy whatever music they enjoy, but have a tendency to want to change their beliefs about right and wrong. This might be because we consider taste to be less important than morality, or might be that we really do think that matters of right and wrong rather than beauty and ugliness are agreeable to rational and persuasive argument.

Business is, in an older sense, a particular trade or activity that a person is engaged in. Business typically refers to jobs and organizations in the private sector. Business is about profit making and being enterprising. Most importantly, enterprises, companies or firms are organizations that respond to the market, which is to say that they work for customers who expect to get what they want, at prices they will pay.

Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one's ethical standards. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.

Business ethics is a form of the art of applied ethics that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. In the increasingly conscience-focused marketplaces of the 21st century, the demand for more ethical business processes and actions is increasing. Simultaneously, pressure is applied on industry to improve business ethics through new public initiatives and laws

Criticism, especially academic criticism, always seems to be quite arrogant and controversial. The shadow of the ivory tower is always long. Yet, the point is to bring into the open what often lies hidden in the world of business ethics. We wanted to show what seems to be assumed in much of business, ethics and business ethics.

Chapter 3: Business Ethics I – Consequences

“The greatest good of the greatest number, subject to the protection of the socially accepted rights of legitimate minorities.”

There might be circumstances when we might well need to defend minorities against Mill called the “tyranny of the majority”. There was a danger that the dominant opinion would actually lead to social stagnation since there would be no organized opposition to the ruling power. In order to defend individuals against majority rule from within a utilitarianism in which fair treatment for all became a higher good than majority rule.

Utilitarianism was the most logical general framework for morality and law, but that the details would need to be continually modified in a progressive way by working out the secondary principles that follow from the principle of utility. Utilitarianism has some very substantial advantages for administrators who wish, or need, to justify their decisions but, in effect, can be used to justify almost anything. This is because it is extremely easy to manipulate, consciously or not, the information that goes into the equation in order to get the right answer at the other end. The greatest happiness principle may sound like the most impartial form of reason, but can just as easily play the role of merely disguising self-interest or prejudice. Utilitarian seemed to behave as if they were machines valuing logic over anything else. It is ironic that these people, who set out to capture the questioning spirit, the disposition to ask the why everything, would end up with such a dry and disenchanting understanding of ethics. They wanted people to make decisions for them rather than to trust in God, tradition or authority. To this end, they developed an ethics that could be adopted by any reasonable individual.   

Chapter 4: Business Ethics II – Intentions

“Humans have aims and intentions, but the world is bewildering and aimless.”

That we, humans have intentions in our live and formulate goal is exactly what makes us capable of reason and virtue. In other words, the discrepancy we are talking about here is one between the world as it is and the world as we would like it to be. The problem is that the wish to bridge the gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, between ‘facts’ and ‘values’ , is often an example of a massive arrogance and delusion. Complaints about the evils in the world tend to deteriorate into assertions about the hidden goals of God, the struggle between good and evil, or the laws of human nature, such answer clearly exceeds the boundaries of human reasons and we thinks that they are arrogant and stupid. It is this harsh judgment that makes us so eager to explain the boundaries of knowledge.

There is some sort of relationship between virtue and happiness; we should by no means believe that the prospect of happiness should be the main motivation for acting virtuously. In the sense, Kant certainly questions a neat relationship between being good and being happy. For Kant, “there is not the least ground in the moral law for a necessary connection between morality and the proposition happiness of a being belonging to the world.” This does not mean that we should not strive for the good. Quite the contrary, bu8t it does mean that the good and happiness are quite different matters. Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we are to make ourselves happy but of how we are to become worthy of happiness. Happiness is beyond moral control. You might end up being happy, or you might not. Everything hinges on this insight into human limitation. There are only a few things that we, being finite and fragile creatures, can control. This, however, does not allow us to be lazy when it comes to morality. One the contrary, while we should understand that we can not have god-like powers; we have the duty to act as if we do. It is, in other words, understandable and excusable that we fail in our understanding of the world, but we really should not fail when it comes to morality. That we do often fail in daily practice, again and again, and always will is perhaps tragic. Being good is not a condition, or a rule, but an endless struggle.