Ethics and Business

A Global Introduction

Bart Wernaart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000416435
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Ethics in business is not a new topic and has been intensely discussed since the emergence of the so-called limited companies. However, privatization, technological and digital innovation, changes in moral perception, economic and financial crises and globalization stir a more recent debate on how companies should behave in our societies.

This book starts from the position that ethics in business should imply an open debate on norms and values, using a sound methodology to get there. Ethics should cross borders: not only the borders of a country, but also the borders of someone's moral imagination. Ethics should not only be about harmony but also about conflict (and how to deal with that). Ethics should be realistic and well substantiated by academic research. Ethics should be used to understand the complexity of the world, and the challenges companies struggle with on various levels.

Therefore, this book is composed of three parts in which ethics is discussed at different levels. In part one we discuss ethics at the level of the individual. In part two we discuss ethics and business. In the third part, ethics is discussed in the context of a globalized world.

In each chapter, we discuss the ethical complications of each topic from various – and preferably opposing – perspectives. Each perspective is methodologically and academically substantiated. Each chapter ends with an extensive literature list in which the original sources are listed for further reading. Furthermore, at the end of each chapter, a summary is written in which the most important definitions and viewpoints are highlighted. The frequent use of colorful and bold examples make this an accessible read for bachelor and master students at business schools and professionals in international business.

PART 1
Ethics and the individual

1 What is ethics?

2 Responsibility

3 Normative ethics

4 A model for ethical decision-making

In the first part of this book we will examine the relationship between ethics and the individual.

To this end, we will discuss what ethics really is in chapter one, and observe that morality is at the core of this discipline. While each individual has his own morality, it may collide with someone else’s sense of morality. In case of such conflicting morality, the matter of responsibility is addressed. In the second chapter we discuss what factors may affect the way an individual can and wants to take a certain responsibility in a given situation. In ethics, there are various opinions on when and how people should take on a certain responsibility in their daily lives. This is called normative ethics, which we will explore in chapter three. Finally, in the last chapter of this part, we will introduce an ethical decision model, in which the most important elements of the first three chapters are embedded. This model can be used to structurally approach an ethical dilemma.

1
What is ethics?

1.1 Ethical behaviour?

1.2 Ethics as an academic discipline

1.3 Morality

1.4 The structural analysis

1.5 The structural evaluation

1.6 Ethics and related disciplines

Ethics is a word that is used by many in different meanings and contexts, but at the same time a difficult concept to easily grasp. In economic professions, ethical behaviour has been an important theme for decades. But what do words like ethics and ethical behaviour really mean? In this chapter we try to provide a clear answer to this question. We do this by first briefly introducing the challenges we might come across when we talk about ethical behaviour. Then, we will explore ethics as an academic discipline: that is to structurally analyse and evaluate morality. We will continue by discussing the meaning of morality itself, and what is needed to act in a moral way. Then, we will discuss a method by which we can analyse and evaluate morality on a structural level. Finally we will discuss academic disciplines that are closely related to ethics, but not similar.

1.1 Ethical behaviour?

We open this section with an example in which we face an ethical dilemma.

Leadership? It’s in your DNA!

BrainCompass is a Dutch platform, located in Rotterdam. Together with a scientific board, they developed a method to assess employees in the field of leadership competencies. It is the view of this platform that talent is not only a combination of someone’s mind-set and environmental factors (in other words: how someone is raised/nurtured). BrainCompass argues that we also need to go back to our basics in order to get a full view of someone’s potential (how we are born). This can be found in our DNA. Therefore, individuals are assessed by an online development assessment and a DNA test. The first is the more ‘traditional’ way of assessing people regarding their professional competencies. The last method is rather revolutionary: the DNA test will tell you how your biological systems work, based on five hormonal features. For instance, someone with a naturally high level of dopamine will generally respond quicker to things that happen in his environment, and be more sensitive to such stimuli. As a result, someone with a high hormonal level of dopamine will be more qualified for a job in the sphere of sales management (Hakker, 2016).

The example ‘Leadership? It’s in your DNA!’ can lead to discussions and is food for thought. The fact that someone’s body is used to assess that person regarding his professional competencies may lead to different and conflicting opinions and is therefore a controversial topic. Some might consider this a serious violation of someone’s physical integrity and privacy, while others may see this as just another method to assess someone on a voluntary basis.

This case can raise various questions that relate to ethics in various grades of complexity. For example, a journalist once called me to pose the following question regarding this case:

• ‘Is it ethically right to use DNA research as an assessment tool?’

However, formulating a question like this is perhaps too easy: it will lead to an unrealistic simplification by suggesting the answer could be either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. If I understood that journalist correctly, he expected me to give the answer ‘no’, since physical integrity is considered by many people to be more important than assessing people for professional purposes. Using someone’s DNA for such reasons makes people feel uncomfortable. I strongly felt that the reason why he called me is that he wanted to substantiate this feeling by arguments from the ethics discipline. However, I did not give him such arguments.

Instead, I kindly told him that ethics as a discipline does not necessarily agree on something or rejects certain things. Ethics explores morality on a structural level, as we will see in the next section. It helps us to reflect on what we consider as morally right or wrong, but does not necessarily prescribe what is right or wrong. There is not a single correct answer, as we might find in a discipline such as statistics. Instead, the answer is usually very personal.

The added value of studying ethics is that it helps us structure our moral reasoning, and it gives us the opportunity to try and understand different ethical viewpoints regarding a certain ethical dilemma. This helps us better understand the world around us, and may give us a more sophisticated opinion on complex issues, such as the ethics in technological innovation. DNA research used in assessing people could be an example of this.

Since the quality of the answer is as good as the quality of the question, it all starts with asking the right question first. When you truly want a reflective and useful answer in ethics, just make sure the question you ask is specific enough to go in-depth, and open enough to allow various viewpoints reach the surface.

Therefore, in the context of our DNA case a much more relevant question would be:

• ‘Under what conditions is it morally acceptable to use DNA research in the assessment of individuals regarding professional competencies?’

Or, alternatively:

• ‘How far may a company go in requesting (potential) employees to undergo an assessment in which analysing their DNA is part of the procedure?’

Both questions are not simply answered with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. Although we might have to reflect on formulating an answer for a while, asking a question like this will definitely lead to more in-depth answers that are more useful and do more justice to what is actually at stake.

If you really want to know: I answered the journalist that there are at least two ways of looking at this. The first is that physical integrity is a very important value that cannot be set aside too easily. There are less drastic ways to assess people than to ask them to make their bodies available for scientific research. While (potential) employees might participate on a voluntary basis regarding such assessments, it remains to be seen if an employee can truly say ‘no’ to such a method when his next career opportunity depends on it. The second way of looking at the issue is result-driven: in the end, alternative test methods in which we do not use someone’s DNA sample will probably lead to similar conclusions. However, they are much more costly, time consuming and intense for the (potential) employee. Using a DNA sample, as long as privacy is guaranteed, is a cheaper, less time-consuming and less intense way of figuring out whether someone matches a certain job profile. In essence, everyone – including the owner of the DNA – is better off in the end. As we will see in chapter 3, this is the classic difference between deontological and consequentialist ethics. To his credit, the journalist in his article included both of my answers, concluding that there are more viewpoints from an ethics perspective, greatly depending on how such DNA samples are specifically processed.

1.2 Ethics as an academic discipline

When we consider the case ‘Leadership? It’s in your DNA!’, we see that it is important to carefully consider what is the right thing to do. And this is exactly what ethics is about. In academic literature, there are numerous definitions on ethics which vary in length, sophistication and content. In this book, we will use the following definition, which includes most generally accepted elements of these definitions:

Ethics

Ethics is an academic discipline that structurally analyses and evaluates morality.

This definition can be subdivided into four elements that need some further explanation: morality, structure, analysis and evaluation.

First, in ethics we try to answer the question of what is right and wrong. Someone’s general perception of ‘rightness’ is also labelled as someone’s ‘morality’. Any person, organization, country or other organized groups of people have their own idea of what is right or wrong and have developed their own morality. As we will see in the next section, morality is the combination of norms and values someone (or a group) seeks to realize. Second, ethics as an academic discipline adds a thorough and well-considered structure in finding this answer to the question of what is right and wrong. Most debates in ethics – especially the one that touches highly sensitive matters – will not excel in a structured conversation. Just look at any heated discussion between politicians during an electoral race. Ethics as a discipline may offer structure to such a discussion, and in taking subsequent decisions in an ethical dilemma. This structure is sought in two academic approaches: analysis and evaluation.

Morality

Structure

In the case of analysis the researcher has a neutral attitude, and mainly tries to structurally map various ethical viewpoints on a certain matter. As you will see in section 1.4, we will use a comparative method for this called ‘functionalism’. This can be a useful activity when someone tries to reach consensus in taking a certain ethical decision, and wants to find out the common ground of the involved parties, or where the difficulties can be expected. It is also a good exercise in preparation of taking your own moral decisions; you want to make sure you have considered the case from all possible viewpoints and as a result take the best decision you can possibly come up with.

Analysis

This last activity is the structural evaluation, in which you eventually move from a neutral towards a more subjective perspective. When we evaluate, we do have an opinion about these ethical viewpoints, and carefully conclude what you consider to be the moral thing to do in a particular situation. T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Content
• Introduction
• Part 1 Ethics and the individual
• Part 2 Business and ethics
• Part 3 Ethics in a globalized world
• Index
• About the author