Business Ethics:
Assigned Articles
Day 2 discussion
Summary
• Ethical decisions
– Are varied
– Occur at different levels of an organization
– Can have negative consequences
• Ethical involve trade-offs
– Personal gain
– Consequences on stakeholder(s)
Ethical Decision Making
• We applied the model on p.88
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Attempted to clarify what the decisions were
Who were stakeholders and their interests
How were stakeholders affected
What were available alternatives
• We did not identify what additional
information or facts could have helped us
make a better evaluation.
Ethical Theories
• The articles gave us opportunities to see
how these theories can be applied. For
example:
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What were consequences actions on customers?
Rights of competitors?
What are duties of individuals involved?
What should have been the right thing to do?
Influence of Organizational
Culture
• How can these decisions have been made?
• What are likely influences on individuals?
(“Greed” is an all encompassing, but
simplistic answer. We need to understand
how to prevent or avoid these decisions
within an organizational context.)
Towards an Ethical Culture
• On a sheet of paper: what can a wellintentioned CEO do to create an Ethical
Culture?
Corporate Social Responsibility
• Do you agree with Milton Freedman, that
the pursuit of profits contributes to society’s
good?
• What do three models say?
– Corporate citizenship
– Social contract
– Enlightened self interest
• Is it all about reputation management?
The following slides are what I
intended to use to in my conclusion
in today’s class. These can also be
found in the file containing Chapter
5 notes.
What should a business do?
• Business has the social responsibility to obey the law.
• Philosophers would contend that we have responsibilities
beyond the law and they distinguish between different
types of responsibilities, on a scale from more to less
demanding and binding.
– First, we have responsibilities not to cause harm to
others.
– A second, perhaps less binding responsibility, is to
prevent harm even in those cases where one is not the
cause.
– Finally, there might be responsibilities to do good.
Philosophical priorities in CSR
• Do good
Maximize economic, social
and environmental value
• Do no harm
Even in those cases
where one is not the cause
• Do no harm
Avoid economic, environmental and social harm
Corporate “Responsibilities”
• Even when not explicitly prohibited by law, ethics would
demand that we not cause avoidable harm. In practice,
this ethical requirement is very close to responsibilities
established by the precedents of tort law.
• Beyond the responsibility to obey the law, a second level
of responsibilities would hold that business has a social
responsibility not to violate anyone’s rights.
• But there are also cases in which business is not causing
harms, but could easily prevent harms from occurring. A
more inclusive understanding of corporate social
responsibility would hold that business has a
responsibility to prevent harms.
A Responsibility
to “Do Good?”
• Perhaps the most wide-ranging standard of CSR would hold that
business has a social responsibility to do good things and to make
society a better place.
• Many of the debates surrounding corporate social responsibility
involve the question of whether business really has a responsibility
to support such good causes.
– Some people argue that, like all cases of charity, this is
something that deserves praise and admiration, but it is not
something that every business ought to do.