Human Action in Business

Praxiological and Ethical Dimensions

Wojciech W. Gasparski, Leo V. Ryan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781560002581
• eBook ISBN: 9781351292382
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Praxiology deals with working and doing from the point of view of effectiveness. It has three components: analysis of concepts involving purposive actions; critique of modes of action from the viewpoint of efficiency; and normative advisory aspects in recommendations for increasing human efficiency. This fifth volume of the Praxiology series is devoted to Human Action in Business: Praxiological and Ethical Dimensions. The adjective praxiological here means not only related to praxiology as human theory, but also assessed against the dimensions of effectiveness and efficiency. Adding also the ethical dimension, one defines the universe of the discourse about conduct characteristic of business, the economy, and management.

Topics in business and management philosophy and theory are discussed by eminent contributors from different corners of the world: P. Ulrich (Switzerland); M. Bohata (Czech Republic); S. K. Chakreborty (India); J. Donaldson, H.E. Sternberg, and P. Graham (U.K.); H. van Lujik and H. Hummels (The Netherlands); O. Loukola (Finland); Y. Pesqueux and I. Tovey (France); T.A. Mathias (India); W. W. Gasparski, A. Lewicka-Strzalecka and J. Sojka (Poland); M. Tamari (Israel); R. E. Freeman, R. G. Kennedy, S. Natale, J. A. Matel, N. Bowie, D. McCann, L. V. Ryan, P. Werhane, and K. Goodpaster (United States). Selected speeches by Pope John Paul II addressed to managers, businessmen, and general audiences involved in the economy are also included in this volume.

In Volume 5, invited specialists examine the praxiological and ethical aspects of human action under the rubric of the "Triple E": Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Ethics. The volume opens with contributions reflecting on the praxiological and ethical foundations for business followed by sections discussing human action from the perspectives of religious beliefs and cultural diversity. Another section illustrates the application of these principles to business. The concluding chapters examine praxiology and ethics as the moral agenda for professional education. The volume is a must read for economists, businesspeople, social scientists, and policymakers.

Part One
Business Activity and the Triple “E”

Praxiology and Ethics:
The Business Ethics Case

Wojciech W. Gasparski
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology,
Polish Academy of Sciences,
Warsaw, Poland

This paper is dedicated
to the memory of
Professor Kenneth E. Boulding,
who died March 18th, 1993
in Boulder Colorado, U.S.A.

1. Introduction

Alfred Victor Espinas, a French social philosopher, wrote over a century ago that skills of human beings, like instincts of animals, although similar to each other in a certain degree, have different substantial qualities. An instinct is a form of action of an individual acquired by the individual by inheritance together with an organism while skills are products of the individuals experience and reflection in which invention, initiative and freedom of an individual are precipiced. Every improvement of human practice is a result of actor”s courage to break off his or her routine behaviour. It does not mean, however, that improvements emerge out of nothing. Quite the contrary, they are transformations of means an individual has at his or her disposal. Human beings perform great deal of their activities according to tradition rather. Tradition which defines methods, forms, habits, norms, morals, believes, etc. relayed from one generation to another not by inheritance but thanks to learning based on examples and teaching. Actually, everybody belongs to a certain social environment which interprets rales and formulates for him or her both “what should be done” and “what should not be done”. From this point of view every social group is defined by its skills no less that every species is defined by its instincts (Espinas 1979).

Mos, maris - customs, habits, morals. We hear here the Cicero”s voice calling: O témpora! O moresl People do “what shan”t be done”, they don”t do “what should be done”! The customs, norms, rales, morals of the social environment, of the world Cicero belonged to, had been violated.

Moral rules as well as praxiological rales compose a triad of practical philosophy defined differently by different philosophers involved in ethics and praxiology. Tadeusz Kotarbihski (see Gasparski 1993c) defines the triad as composed of: a study (or science) of “how to live in happiness”, i.e. felicitology; a study of practicality of human action, i.e praxiology, and a study of “how one should live to deserve the name of an honest man”, i.e., ethics proper. According to Mario Bunge [1989] members of a triad are: value theory, i.e., axiology, moral theory, i.e., ethics, and action theory, i.e., praxiology itself. All of them are interrelated and should be considered from both scientific (praxiology from scientific/ technical) and philosophical points of view. Each of them is accompanied by meta-studies oriented toward philosophy of concepts and theories of value (meta-axiology), moral (metaethics), and action (metaprax-iology) respectively. Both triads deserve the name of ethics sensu largo. It is why Bunge put the name of ethics on a cover page of his book, stating that the “book is about values, morals, and human actions” as well as about relevant studies. It is why Kotarbihski considered practical philosophy as a synonym of ethics in a broader sense. But neither Kotarbihski nor Bunge were the first authors who discussed praxiology and ethics together and as interrelated.

The very first author was an English philosopher William Ralph Boyce Gibson who as early as in 1904 wrote in his A Philosophical Introduction to Ethics that:

The proper propaedeutic for a course in moral philosophy would, in my opinion, consist of a theory of experience (or philosophical logic), followed up by a Ideological (or philosophical) psychology.

I say “theory of experience” instead of theory of “knowledge” or “epistemolo-gy”, in order to include the theory of action or “praxology”. A theory of experience is the natural introduction to philosophy proper, for since the spiritual element is ignored in all scientific investigation by a methodological necessity, it is indispensable in passing from science into philosophy to acquire some familiarity with its significance in experience, to be introduced in fact to that fuller, richer experience whereof spiritual principles of unity are the functional essentials. By such a discipline, the student, already more or less versed in the scientific categories, and familiar with that form of causal explanation which accounts for a phenomenon by adducing the totality of the relevant antecedent conditions, is introduced to the philosophical type of explanation in terms of final causes.

The importance of the teleological point of view for philosophy can hardly be over-estimated.[…](Gibson 1904, 190)

The Gibsoi's teleological orientation was echoed in Friedrich von Hayek writings published five decades latter:

It has often been suggested that […] economics and the other theoretical sciences of society should be described as “teleological” sciences. This term is, however, misleading as it is apt to suggest that not only the actions of individual men but also the social structures which they produce are deliberately designed by somebody for a purpose. It leads thus either to an “explanation” of social phenomena in terms of ends fixed by some superior power or to the opposite and no less fatal mistake of regarding all social phenomena as the product of conscious human design, to a “pragmatic” interpretation which is a bar to all real understanding of these phenomena. Some authors, particularly O. Spann, have used the term teleological to justify the most abstruse metaphysical speculations. Others, like K. Englis, have used it in an unobjectionable manner and sharply distinguished between teleological and normative sciences. (See particularly the illuminating discussions of the problem in K. Englis, Teleologische Theorie der Wirtschaft [Brünn, 1930].) But the term remains nevertheless misleading. If a name is needed, the term praxeological sciences, deriving from A. Espinas, adopted by T. Kotarbihski and E. Slutsky, and now clearly defined and extensively used by Ludwig von Mises (Nationalökonomie Geneva, 1940¹), would appear to be the most appropriate. (Hayek 1979, 45)

Ludwig von Mises, another leading praxiologist of this century, the teacher of Hayek, discusses praxiology not in a context of ethics but in a context of physics and physiology. Therefore his triad is completely different from previous ones.

Man”s freedom to choose and to act is restricted in a threefold way. There are first the physical laws to whose unfeeling absoluteness man must adjust his conduct if he wants to live. There are second the individuals innate constitutional characteristics and dispositions and the operation of environmental factors; we know that they influence both the choice of the ends and that of the means, although our cognizance of the mode of their operation is rather vague. There is finally the regularity of phenomena with regard to the interconnectedness of means and ends, viz., the praxeological law as distinct from the physical and from the physiological law. (Mises 1966, 885)

It seems that praxiology of von Mises subsumes ethics to a certain degree, i.e., to a degree praxiology is a part of practical philosophy identified with ethics in a broader meaning. It does not, however, subsume ethics proper; therefore ethics proper being outside of the Mises” triad composes with it a tetrad.

Let us review relationships between praxiology and ethics as described by the representatives of Polish, Austro-American, and Canadian-Argentinean approaches.

2. Human Action as the Ultimate Given

Ludvig von Mises considered human action as an ultimate given which, according to him, is necessarily always rational (Mises 1966, 19).

The term “rational action” is […] pleonastic and must be rejected as such. When applied to the ultimate ends of action, the terms rational and irrational are inappropriate and meaningless. The ultimate end of action is always the satisfaction of some desires of the acting man. Since nobody is in a position to substitute his own value judgments for those of the acting individual, it is vain to pass judgment on other people's aims and volitions. No man is qualified to declare what would make another man happier or less discontent. The critic either tells us what he believes he would aim at if he were in the place of his fellow; or, in dictatorial arrogance blithery disposing of his fellow”s will and aspirations, declares what condition of this other man would better suit for himself, the critic. […]

The opposite of action is not irrational behavior, but a reactive response to stimuli on the part of the bodily organs and instincts which cannot be controlled by the volition of the person concerned. (Mises 1966, 19-20)

Although human action is an ultimate given², claims Mises, praxiology is indifferent to the ultimate goals of action.

There are people whose only aim is to improve the conditions of their own ego. There are other people with whom awareness of the troubles of their fellow men causes as much uneasiness as or even more uneasiness than their own wants. There are people who desire nothing else than the satisfaction of their appetites for sexual intercourse, food, drinks, fine homes, and other material things. But other men care more for the satisfactions commonly called “higher” and “ideal”. There are individuals eager to adjust their actions to the requirements of social cooperation; there are, on the other hand, refractory people who defy the rules of social life. There are people for whom the ultimate goal of the earthly pilgrimage is the preparation for a life of bliss. There are other people who do not believe in the teachings of any religion and do not allow their actions to be influenced by them. (Mises 1966, 14-15)

Praxiology being a science of means, not of ends applies the term “happiness” in a formal sense, Therefore the praxiological proposition “man”s unique aim is to attain happiness” is tautological, because it does not imply any statement about the state of affairs from which man expects happiness, concludes Mises. It does not mean, however, that a man ignores values. Quite the contrary.

It is customary to say that acting man has a scale of wants or values in his mind when he arranges his actions. On the basis of such a scale he satisfies what is of higher value, i.e., his more urgent wants, and he leaves unsatisfied what is of lower value, i.e., what is a less urgent want. (Mises 1966, 94)

The difference between ethics and praxiology, as described by Ludwig von Mises, is as follows:

Ethical doctrines are intent upon establishing scales of value according to which man should act but does not necessarily always act. They claim for themselves the vocation of telling right from wrong and of advising man concerning what he should aim at as the supreme good. They are normative disciplines aiming at the cognition of what ought to be. They are not neutral with regard to facts; they judge them from the point of view of freely adopted standards.

This is not the attitude of praxeology and economics. They are fully aware of the fact that the ultimate ends of human action are not open to examination from any absolute standard. Ultimate ends are ultimately given, they are purely subjective, they differ with various people and with the same people at various moments in their lives. Praxeology and economics deal with the means for the attainment of ends chosen by the acting individuals. They do not express any opinion with regard to such problems as whether or not sybaritism is better than ascetism. They apply to the means only one yardstick, viz., whether or not they are suitable to attain the ends at which the acting individuals aim.

[…]The polar notions normal and perverse can be used anthropologically for the distinction between those who behave as most people do and outsiders and atypical exceptions; they can be applied biologically for the distinction between those whose behavior preserves the vital forces and those whose behavior is self-destructive; they can be applied in an ethical sense for distinction between those who behave correctly and those who act otherwise than they should. However, in the frame of a theoretical science of human action, there are no room for such a distinction. Any examination of ultimate ends turns out to be purely subjective and therefore arbitrary.

Value is the importance that acting man attaches to ultimate ends. Only to ultimate ends is primary and original value assigned. Means are valued derivatively according to their serviceableness in contributing to the attainment of ultimate ends. Their valuation is derived from the valuation of the respective ends. They are important for man only as far as they make it possible for him to attain some ends. Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. Neither is values in wor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• The Learned Society of Praxiology
• Contents
• Editorial
• Introduction: Leo V. Ryan, C.S.V.
• Part One: Business Activity and the Triple “E”
• Part Two: The Triple “E” in Business from a Religion Perspective
• Part Three: The Triple “E” in Business versus Cultural Diversity
• Part Four: Implementation of the Triple “E” Principles
• Notes about the Authors