Corporate Ethics for Turbulent Markets : Executive Response to Market Challenges

Oswald Mascarenhas

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781787561939
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

"Corporate executives immersed in the turbulent markets of today face a world not of clear cut moral dilemmas such as right or wrong, or good or evil, but instead must confront large corporate grey areas of lesser good, lesser evil, less true, less unfair, and less unjust. Often these choices become almost indistinguishable. Corporate Ethics for Turbulent Markets: Executive Response to Market Challenges sets out a universal moral foundation of corporate executive ethics. Its chapters attempt to extend the discussion on human dignity to its practical applications, map out strategic approaches for responding to current turbulent markets, and drill moral skills for taming and tapping current turbulent markets. The book features modern techniques of critical thinking, moral reasoning, moral judgment, and moral justification, and charts how to uphold stakeholder rights and duties and understand corporate moral responsibilities. Written as a guide for corporate executives who strive daily"

Chapter 1

The Ethics of Dignity of the Human Person

Executive Summary

This first chapter explores the basic foundation of corporate ethics: the human person in all its dignity and mystery, its corporeality and emotionality, and its cognitive and volitive capacities of moral development. Four fundamental characteristics of the human person, namely individuality, sociality, immanence, and transcendence, will be examined for their potential to understand, live, experience, and witness corporate ethics and morals. We explore the profound meaning and mystery of human personhood invoking several philosophies of the good and human dignity as exposed by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas in the West, by the doctrine of Dharma in the East as expounded by Gautama Buddha, Mahabharata, and Bhagavad Gita, and by Prophets Confucius and Tao, in the East. Several contemporary cases of great human personhood are analyzed: for example, Peace Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela from South Africa (1993) and Peace Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo from China (2017) – cases of human abuse that turned into triumphs of human dignity.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin¹

1.1. Introduction

The completion of the Human Genome Project at the beginning of the new millennium has generated a great deal of knowledge about human DNA and about the correlation between certain gene sequences and certain phenotypic traits. This advance holds promise for making genetic human enhancement (HE) customized to people’s specific needs and desires. For instance, currently, biomedicine in the form of drug therapies and medical procedures can enhance some of our mental and physical capacities above normal upper limits of the human species. While this biomedical advance is very interesting and a big business market, several moral concerns arise:

• Is it morally justifiable to alter human nature by tinkering with the genetic code?
• Are we playing God with human nature in doing so?
• Is it a symptom of our hubris – to improve upon God’s gift of sacred human nature?
• Can we morally seek “mastery” over ourselves and others?
• Do technologies enhancing human nature have unforeseeable and irreversible evil consequences?
• Are these concerns similar to those raised against human reproductive technologies?
• Or, are these moral concerns just cognitive biases that interfere with our moral reasoning?

These are also concerns of corporate ethics of HE. These concerns question our traditional doctrine of absolute human dignity which stems from the claim that God created man and woman in his own likeness unto immortality and eternity – the subject of this chapter. We need philosophically and morally to justify our concerns or psychologically explain away current resistance to HE. We must look carefully at arguments resisting HE as also arguments supporting it. We do this toward the end of this chapter.

Recent advances in the physical, social, biological, neurological, and anthropological sciences have not only spawned radical technological and market breakthroughs, but, more importantly, unearthed tremendous human potentiality for design, creativity and innovation, for invention, discovery, venture and entrepreneurship, for capital accumulation and wealth creation, for individual self-actualization and collective common good. We are experiencing a growing consciousness of the increased power that human beings have over nature and over the future development of the human race. This power can be both a blessing and a curse: it is a blessing if harnessed to do good, to preserve and respect human dignity, to bring about justice, and to promote peace and human solidarity; it can be a curse if the same power is abused to do evil, destroy human worth, generate unjust structures, and provoke war and terrorism, global destruction, and disintegration. We can make or mar our destiny.

What is man? What is being human? What is human personhood? What is corporate human personhood? A related philosophical and more fundamental question is: what is human? And what is being good? Aristotle’s balanced formula for man was: man is a rational animal.

Within ancient Greek philosophical thought and categorization this definition meant that the human being is endowed with the highest of three types of souls:

(1) As a vegetative soul, the human is capable of nutrition, growth, and reproduction.

(2) As an animal soul, the human is capable of movement, sensations, emotions, and experiences.

(3) As a rational soul that unites the other two, the human is capable of knowledge and choice. That is, this rational soul expresses itself in the twofold activity of thinking and willing.

We are even more: our knowledge is reflective (i.e., we know that we know) and our choices are informed and reflective (i.e., we know what we are choosing, and we know why we are choosing it). Our skills and potential for knowledge and choice empower us to be “causes” or “authors” of our own actions, and hence, to be accountable and responsible for the consequences of our actions. Thus, being and action are intrinsically linked in the rational and voluntary nature of our human being.

On the surface, human behavior is basically a set of actions that are governed by one’s feelings, emotions, attitudes, and beliefs regarding proposed ends, ideals, goals, and objectives. In general, most decisions and actions stem from and are affected by our personality or character. To the extent that these decisions and actions are human, they are usually assessed by several dyadic qualifications such as right or wrong, good or bad, ethical or unethical, moral or immoral, just or unjust, and fair or unfair. In general, actions are praiseworthy if good, and blameworthy, if bad. If good, one should be credited for them; if bad, one must accept blame and responsibility for the intended and unintended consequences.

Ethics is concerned with responsible human behavior. Corporate ethics is concerned with responsible corporate governance in relation to decisions, actions, and their outcomes that affect the company as a whole. Good business executives execute good decisions and actions that generate good outcomes and avoid bad decisions and actions that result in bad or harmful consequences.

1.2. Why Ethics of Human Personhood?

Psychology as a science started with two distinct approaches: (1) one emerged as the study of human internal processes that are often difficult to observe directly and (2) single-minded focus on observable behaviors. The former began with the psychoanalytic tradition of Sigmund Freud who believed that the reasons why people act and feel as they do are deep within them; hence, change can be promoted only when people probe their psychic depths and bring to surface and awareness those inner, often unconscious, dynamics. The second approach (2) began with the empirical tradition of B. F. Skinner, its best exponent, called behaviorism, and assumed that the causes of people’s actions are the rewards or punishments, they called reinforcements, they have received; hence, a person’s life can be dramatically changed by precise adjustments in the administration of reinforcements.

From the psychoanalytic tradition of Sigmund Freud emerged two other approaches: (1) humanistic person-centered psychology that included the work of Carl Rogers who pioneered client-centered therapy and (2) humanistic projective psychology that includes the work of Fritz Perls, who pioneered Gestalt therapy. Both psychoanalytic and humanistic traditions, even though much different, understand human behavior in terms of motivational and emotional dynamics, both focus on promoting awareness as the basis for change, and both build theory using observations and direct experience. Both build their theories on clinical experience.

On the other hand, behaviorism focused on observable behaviors and the environmental conditions or contingencies that reinforce them. Citing the rules of science, behaviorism argued that before a phenomenon is accepted as a fact, it must be independently investigated by other scientists and replicated by them. This empirical tradition has evolved through many decades now. During the last five decades or so, the empirical tradition has employed statistical analysis of data collected from scientific experiments to analyze observable behaviors.

Many so-called cognitive theorists now focused on individual’s thoughts and emotions rather than just observable behaviors via environmental reinforcements. They explain behaviors in terms of people’s thoughts, attitudes, expectations, and interpretations about reinforcements. The cognitive psychology theorist seemed to have moved “inside the person” to search for the causes of behavior. Other volitional psychology theorists (e.g., Harry Farlow, Abraham Maslow, Douglas McGregor, and Fredrick Herzberg) have gone deeper to probe into human “motivations.”

Many so-called deterministic psychology theorists (e.g., Frederick Taylor, B. F. Skinner) have continued to view the person in observable mechanistic terms. The latter asserts that humans are information-processing machines that work like computers to solve problems, make decisions, and behave accordingly. By this view, human beings are machines waiting to be programmed by society through homes and schools, colleges and universities, workplaces, and worship places. Sociologist Talcott Parsons proposed yet another view. He portrayed the birth of each infant as the invasion of a barbarian; children are savages who need to be tamed. This infant-as-barbarian view is not too dissimilar to the view of the human person as a passive information-processing machine waiting to be programmed and tamed by society. Both views assert that society must shape and mold the person; both suggest that socializing agents and agencies like parents, home, teachers, school, and managers and the workplace should create the human self. Both view human development as something done by the social world to children, adolescents, and adults at various stages of their life.

Another approach considers humans as vital organisms, who, by their nature, explore, develop, and take challenges, and thus develop themselves, of course, supported by parents, teachers, and workplace superiors. Alfred Kohn (1999), Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985, 1990), and Pink (2009), to name a few, follow this approach in understanding intrinsic motivation. Their central thesis is that people develop through the process of organismic integration as they proactively engage their world. They believe that there is a basic tendency within people to move toward greater coherence and integrity in the organization of their inner world. Inherent in the nature of human development is the intrinsic tendency toward greater consistency and harmony within; that is, people are intrinsically motivated to integration and harmony (Deci, 1975, p. 80).

Even other psychologists have hinted at human organismic integration. Freud spoke of the synthetic function of the ego that suggested that throughout life people work to bring coherence to their experience and thus to the development of their own personality. Child psychologist Jean Piaget hypothesized a similar organizational principle in children, whereby they imbued everything with life. Carl Rogers and fellow humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow spoke of the self-actualization principle within people leading them toward greater internal harmony and integrity. In a similar way, argue Deci and Ryan, people’s perceived sense of competence and perceived sense of autonomy enhance intrinsic motivation that empowers organismic integration. The development of integration in personality reveals who you truly are and indicates becoming all you are capable of – these ground and empower the concept of human authenticity.

A further and deeper question is: what grounds intrinsic motivation and organismic integration in us whereby we discover, develop, and enjoy ourselves as a human integrated personality that is truly individual and social, immanent and transcendent at the same time? When Deci (1975, p. 82) rightfully asserts “that intrinsic motivation and the inherent integrative tendency are natural,” my question is what makes them natural and what grounds this nature? The answers to these questions are beyond psychology and empirical measurement, as empirical methods or cognitive theories cannot stretch their horizons too far and deep. Hence, we have recourse to philosophy. Table 1.1 summarizes the taxonomy of research methodologies in psychology, arguing for the necessary complement of a philosophical approach to the human person.

Table 1.1: A Taxonomy of Psychological Investigations into Human Identity.

1.3. Philosophy of the Human Person

It is in the philosophy of the human person we discuss transempirical concepts like human nature, human dignity, fundamental human rights, the human soul, and human destiny. We examine such concepts in this chapter so as to enrich our understanding of intrinsic motivation and the inherent integrative tendency that are so natural to us but one that are least lived and experienced. It is the human person (richly created and even more designed and engineered by God) that grounds our unique human nature, human personality, human dignity and authenticity, and human development and potential.

Martin Heidegger claimed that modern technology, with its violent metaphysics, destroys being (Heidegger, 1978). It is not modern technology itself, however, that is dangerous but its wanton and wide-scale implementation by modern-day un-eco-sensitive businesses. With its exclusive focus on profitability bottom line, businesses today tend to violate the integrity and diversity of natural ecosystems, human systems, the autonomy and culture of local communities, and the chance that future generations will lead a decent life (Zsolnai, 2015, p. 3).

Case 1.1: Nelson Mandela Fights for Human Dignity

Nelson Mandela, the freedom fighter who led the emancipation of South Africa from white minority rule, who emerged from 27 years in prison to become South Africa’s first elected black president and a global symbol of reconciliation, died, age 95, on Thursday, December 5, 2013, at 8:50 p.m. at his home in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa, after a protracted illness. As flags flew at half-mast across South Africa, a sense of loss, blended with memories of inspiration, spread from President Obama in Washington, DC, to the members of the British Royal Family and on to those who saw Mandela as an exemplar of a broader struggle for peace, harmony, and equality.

Pope Francis praised “the steadfast commitment shown by Mandela in promoting human dignity of all the nation’s citizens and in forging a new South Africa.” President Barack Obama eulogized: “He achieved more than could be expected of any man. I am one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela’s life. My very first political action, the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or a policy or politics, was a protest against apartheid.” Manmohan Singh, then Prime Minister of India, said, “A giant among men has passed away. This is as much India’s loss as South Africa’s. He was a true Gandhian. His life and work will remain a source of eternal inspiration for generations to come.” British Prime Minister David Cameron declared in London: “A great light has gone out in the world.” Russian President Vladimir V. Putin added: Mandela was “committed to the end of his days to the ideals of humanism and justice.” The French mourned differently: they bathed the Eiffel Tower in Paris in green, red, yellow, and blue – the colors of the South African flag. This is a testimony to the immense love, admiration, respect, and inspiration Mandela evoked across continents.

Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in a royal family of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe in the South African village of Mvezo. Mvezo was a remote hilltop village, a tiny hamlet of cows, corn, and mud huts in the rolling hills of the Transkei that still is snaked around by Mbashe River in the southeast of South Africa. His mother spent most of her working day drawing and hauling gallons of freshwater using a pair of donkeys to the white master she worked for in the nearest town. His father, Gadia Henry Mphakanyiswa, was a chief of the Thembu people, a subdivision of the Xhosa nation. Mandela was named Rolihlahla, meaning “troublemaker,” until his first day at school, when at age 7 his teacher, Miss Mdingane, unceremoniously renamed him Nelson to conform to the British bias in education.

Mandela was drawn to politics in his teens while listening to elders talk about the freedom they had before white rule. Educated at a Methodist missionary school and the University College of Fort Hare, then the only residential college for blacks in South Africa, where two years later he was ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Prologue: Corporate Ethical Response to Turbulent Markets
• Chapter 1 The Ethics of Dignity of the Human Person
• Chapter 2 The Ethics of Corporate Executive Virtues
• Chapter 3 The Ethics of Corporate Trusting Relations
• Chapter 4 The Ethics of Corporate Ethical and Moral Charismatic Leadership
• Chapter 5 The Ethics of Corporate Critical Thinking
• Chapter 6 The Ethics of Corporate Stakeholder Rights and Duties
• Chapter 7 The Ethics of Corporate Moral Reasoning, Moral Judgment, and Moral Justification
• Chapter 8 The Ethics of Corporate Legal, Ethical, Moral, and Spiritual (LEMS) Responsibility
• Epilogue Corporate Cosmic Spirituality for Today
• References
• Author Index
• Company Index
• Subject Index