This is Business Ethics

An Introduction

Tobey Scharding

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781119055044, 9781119055051
• eBook ISBN: 9781119055204
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

Take a seat in the boardroom. What will you decide?

Corporations make difficult decisions about the right thing to do every day, but as an organization made up of people with different perspectives and values, how can a business behave ethically? This is Business Ethics offers a dynamic and engaging introduction to the study of corporate morality.

• Offers real-world practical advice for navigating ethical dilemmas in business, developed and explained through illustrative high-profile case studies like the Ford Pinto case, Enron, Walmart and British Petroleum.

• Explores how ethical theory informs business policy and practice.

• Presents unresolved contemporary case studies for consideration, inviting readers to participate in the decision-making and offer their own recommendations.

• The latest in the This is Philosophy series, This is Business Ethics features supplemental online resources for instructors and students at  https://www.wiley.com/enus/thisisphilosophy/thisisbusinessethicsanintroduction

 

Part I
PROBLEMS IN BUSINESS ETHICS

1
ETHICS: DOING THE RIGHT THING

Introduction to Ethics

1.1 Ethics is a discipline that answers certain kinds of questions. Unlike science, which answers questions about what is true of the world—how fast does light move? What does one atom of Beryllium weigh?—ethical questions concern right and wrong, good and bad. We begin by addressing the kinds of questions ethics asks and what makes people able—and required—to answer ethical questions.

What are ethical questions?

1.2 Ethics asks what action it is right (or wrong) to take, what kind of person it is right (or wrong) to be, and in what kind of a world it is right (or wrong) to live. Although we could certainly try to answer those three questions abstractly, often the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves will raise the questions for us. For example, we might consider doing an action but worry that the action is wrong (or feel that it is right, even though others disagree). We might observe that a public figure, or a family member or a friend, seems like a good (or a bad) person. We might feel, based on a particular event, that our world is good or bad. Ethical questions can arise in many different circumstances, even those that seem quite ordinary. We will examine some ordinary circumstances in which ethical questions arise later in this chapter.

1.3 Often people’s awareness that they face an ethical question starts with a vague sense that something seems amiss. These vague senses are intuitions: natural sentiments that inform us about what is right or wrong, good or bad. These intuitions are also called people’s consciences.

1.4 If human beings have a natural sense of what is right and wrong, good and bad, it might seem like there is not much for a course in business ethics to do. To know what is ethical in a business context, all students need to do, perhaps, is immerse themselves in the business world: once they are there, their consciences will naturally guide them toward right and good behavior.

1.5 Indeed, students will often rely on their internal senses of right and wrong to recognize the ethical questions that confront them. But you can improve your ethical judgment by studying ethics. By reflecting on various case studies, you will learn to recognize the most important aspects of ethical challenges. The ethical theories we will study in Chapter 4, in turn, will highlight different kinds of ethical values, making them easier to recognize in the situations you confront. After we examine our first set of case studies later in this chapter, we will consider some characteristics that generally characterize ethical questions.

How to answer ethical questions?

1.6 Recognizing that an ethical questions is present is only one of the challenges associated with ethics. We also need to answer ethical questions. In order to figure out how to answer ethical questions, it is helpful to spend a little time thinking about what allows human beings to answer ethical questions in the first place.

1.7 The most important capacity that helps human beings to answer ethical questions is probably their consciences, as discussed above. A famous philosopher of ethics, Immanuel Kant, once said “Two things overwhelm the mind with constantly new and increasing admiration and awe the more frequently and intently they are reflected upon: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” For Kant, conscience was a “moral law within.” Kant did not think that having a conscience was the end of ethics, however. He set out a detailed decision‐making procedure to help people answer ethical questions. We will study his views about how to decide what is the right thing to do, what is the right kind of person to be, and in what kind of world it is right to live, in Chapter 4.

1.8 The second most important capacity is the human capacity to make choices: surveying a range of possible actions and deciding which action they will do. (This capacity might be even more important than consciences. Whereas consciences give us a sense of what is right and wrong, being able to make choices is what allows us actually to do the right thing, not just have a sense of what it might be.) Another important capacity is the capacity to experience benefits and harms, to the extent that these capacities influence the way we answer questions about what to do, what kind of a person to be, and what kind of a world in which to live.

1.9 Of these capacities, though, it is probably people’s consciences that most hold them to meet ethical standards. Even when it is inconvenient, consciences point people toward the right thing to do and will not let them rest until they have met that standard.

Introductory Case Studies

1.10 Now that we have looked into what ethical questions are, and what makes human beings able (and required) to answer ethical questions, it is time to start making some real ethical recommendations. College students face decisions about what to do every day, including:

• May I loan my classmate substandard notes?
• If I believe that my friend is being exploited in an unpaid internship, should I encourage my friend to quit?
• May I skip cleaning up the dorm when it is my turn, forcing my roommates to pick up the slack?
• May I cheat in a course?

Some of these questions are easy to answer, others not so easy. We will consider cases involving each of these questions, in turn. Try to pay attention to when you see ethical questions arising and take note of how you recognize that they are ethical questions.

Sam and the substandard notes

1.11 Sam is leaving his introduction to geology class one morning after another slack‐off hour of not paying much attention and jotting down notes only haphazardly. It was actually a pretty interesting topic today, he thinks, but for some reason I just can’t seem to get it together to take decent notes.

1.12 As he is passing through the door to the hallway, another student, Maria, approaches him. Sam doesn’t know Maria well but they have chatted a few times before or after class. “Hi Sam,” Maria says. “Hey, Maria,” Sam smiles. “Would you mind lending me your notes for last week?” she asks. “I had to go home for a few days and I missed class.”

1.13 Although Sam is happy to lend Maria his notes, he feels a bit conflicted as he knows that the notes are not very good. Should he tell her the truth? It would be embarrassing to do so. Sam figures that Maria has probably noticed his slack‐off tendencies and is indifferent to them. She would rather borrow notes from someone she already knows rather than try to get better notes from someone she doesn’t know as well. “Sure,” Sam answers, handing over his notebook, “Here you go.” Maria smiles happily and disappears with the notebook.

1.14 After scores are posted for the next examination, though, Maria is not so happy. She confronts Sam after class that day. “Your notes weren’t very good,” she complains. “I studied really thoroughly but half of the stuff on that test didn’t even appear in your notes. The rest of it was barely covered and I think that you might have actually gotten some stuff wrong when you wrote it down.” Sam, who also didn’t do well on the exam, is indifferent to her concerns. “Hey, I guess you should have borrowed someone else’s notes, then,” he replies. “Let the borrower beware.”

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Sidebar Exercise

What do you think: should Sam have shared his sub‐standard notes with Maria? What features of the situation seem most important, from an ethical perspective, to you? For example, you might consider whether Sam did anything ethically wrong in not warning Maria that his notes were poor quality. Is he responsible for her low score on the examination? Consider what you would have done in Sam’s situation and how you would feel if someone did to you what Sam did to Maria.

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Casey and the overly‐demanding internship

1.15 Now, consider a case related to the second question. Casey’s friend, Fred, was selected for an internship at a prestigious advertising firm in their city. Although the internship was unpaid, Fred was so excited to receive it: he felt that it was the first step toward the successful career in advertising he had always wanted.

1.16 As the internship has worn on, though, Fred’s enthusiasm has waned. “They always ask me to do the most menial things. Getting coffee. Making coffee. Making copies. Work that is almost custodial: emptying waste paper baskets, wiping down the kitchen. I don’t feel that I am learning anything about advertising at all.”

1.17 Initially, Casey was not that sympathetic to Fred’s complaints. Having an internship is an opportunity to learn all aspects of the business, she thought. Fred should be grateful for the opportunity to learn about the firm and learn about working in an office, even if he is not always doing the most glamorous things that you might see on a TV show. Over time, though, she has grown worried about the internship. Fred is working such long hou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Preface
• Part I: PROBLEMS IN BUSINESS ETHICS
• Part II: TOOLS TO SOLVE BUSINESS ETHICS DILEMMAS
• Part III: CONTEMPORARY CASE STUDIES
• Part IV: THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS ETHICS
• INDEX
• End User License Agreement