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Business Ethics/Corporate Social Responsibility Overview. Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View. Ethics is concerned with the following: Good vs Bad Right vs Wrong Fair vs Unfair Praise vs Blame. Business Ethics & Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View.
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Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Ethics is concerned with the following: • Good vs Bad • Right vs Wrong • Fair vs Unfair • Praise vs Blame
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View • What are the differences between legal, social, and ethical responsibility?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View • What is implied by shareholder wealth maximization? Specifically, what does this perspective 'mean' for the interests of other stakeholders?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Deontology: • An ethical theory that holds that actions are right or wrong independent of their consequences
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Does the contemplated action: • Conform to important principles?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Problem: • It is not clear on what basis non-humans can be considered to have ‘rights’
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Utilitarianism: • An ethical theory that holds that actions are right if they produce, or tend to produce, the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of persons
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Does the contemplated action: • Conform to important principles? • Create more good than harm?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Problem: • This perspective only recognizes the instrumental value of ‘goods’
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Justice: • Consists in giving each person his or her due, treating equals equally and unequals unequally • Distributive • Procedural • Compensatory • Retributive
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Does the contemplated action: • Conform to important principles? • Create more good than harm? • Lead to fair outcomes?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Problem: • Focus is on persons, and giving them what they ‘deserve’ based on ‘merit’
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Ethic of Care: • Asks us to recognize and take seriously the moral worth of relationships, particularly those characterized by caring
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Does the contemplated action: • Conform to important principles? • Create more good than harm? • Lead to fair outcomes? • Promote caring relationships?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Problem: • It is not clear what might be meant by ‘caring’ for non-humans—or what it might mean for them to ‘care’ for us
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Libertarianism: • Suggest right action consists in maximizing the capacity for free, informed personal choice
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Does the contemplated action: • Conform to important principles? • Create more good than harm? • Lead to fair outcomes? • Promote caring relationships? • Advance personal liberty?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Problem: • Non-humans are not considered to have ‘choices’ in the way in which humans do, and therefore are not privileged with liberty
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Virtue theory: • Focus is on achieving our personal ethical ideal–a matter of who we are, not what we do
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Does the contemplated action: • Conform to important principles? • Create more good than harm? • Lead to fair outcomes? • Promote caring relationships? • Advance personal liberty? • Stimulate personal ideals?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Problem: • ‘Who’ we are in an ideal sense may have little or no relation with the ‘external’ world
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View • And to compound the problem...what of the entity known as the corporation?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Legal View • What is a corporation?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Social View Corporations are not human beings. The differences between human individuals and corporations, other formal organizations, and nations are significant from a moral point of view and from the point of view of moral responsibility.
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Social View A corporation as such has no conscience, no feelings, no consciousness of its own. It has a conscience only to the extent that those who make it up act for it in such a way as to evince something comparable to conscience.
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Social View Because a corporation only acts through those who act for it, it is the latter who must assume responsibility for the corporation.
Business Ethics/Corporate Social Responsibility Overview The exclusively economic definition of the purpose of the corporation is a deadly oversimplification, allowing overemphasis on self-interest at the expense of consideration of others. --Kenneth Andrews
Business Ethics/Corporate Social Responsibility Overview Man…ought to regard himself, not as something separated and detached, but as a citizen of the world, a member of the vast commonwealth of nature…to the interest of this great community, he ought at all times to be willing that his own little interest should be sacrificed. --Adam Smith
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Land Ethic: • A thing is right when it tends to preserve the beauty, stability, and integrity of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: The Moral View • Does the contemplated action: • Conform to important principles? • Create more good than harm? • Lead to fair outcomes? • Promote caring relationships? • Advance personal liberty? • Stimulate personal ideals? • Contribute to sustainability?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: Mindwalk Locke believes land that is left "wholly to nature" is "waste." How does this viewpoint compare with the attitudes of today's American businesses? Give examples.
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: Mindwalk • One of the distinguishing characteristics of any social system is the way in which property is owned and transferred from one party to another. What are the socio-political implications of community property ownership? Of private property ownership?
Business Ethics &Corporate Social Responsibility: Mindwalk If the best way to insure adequate treatment of the environment is through some form of community ownership, can we conclude socialism is a better political system for ensuring the protection of nature? What evidence do we have for this conclusion? Perhaps a hybrid system would be a good framework for preserving the environment. Either "community owned, individually managed" or "individually owned, managed for the community." What type of system do you recommend?
