[6.] Introduction to Business Ethics.

 

[6.1.] Business Ethics as Normative and Descriptive.

 

Like medical ethics and legal ethics, business ethics is an area of applied ethics (and thus an area of ethics, and thus an area of philosophy, and thus an area of inquiry).

 

Joseph DesJardins (author of your textbook and professor at the College of St. Benedict, St. Joseph, MN) defines business ethics as follows:

 

business ethics (df.): the area of applied ethics that studies the “standards, values, and principles” “that [do in fact] operate within business” and “seeks to articulate and defend the ones that ought [to] or should operate in business.” (8, emphases added)

 

According to this definition, the discipline of business ethics has two aspects:

·         descriptive: what values actually do guide people engaged in business?

·         normative: what values should guide those people, i.e., what ought they to do?

 

In studying business ethics, we want to know the facts about what people actually do value. But we also want to know what people ought to value. Business ethics asks questions about how things should be done, and it thus goes beyond simply asking questions about ethos:

 

ethos (Gk.): that which is customary or conventional.

 

In this section of the course, we will consider what actual people working for actual companies have done, and thus what their actual values are. We will also ask what those people should have done and thus what their values should be.

 

 

[6.2.] Values and Ethical Values.

 

DesJardins gives the following definitions:

 

values (df.): “beliefs or standards that incline us to act or to choose in one way rather than another. Understood in this way, we can recognize that there can be many different types of values: financial, religious, historical, nutritional, political, scientific, and aesthetic values.” (G5, emphases added)

 

Values are essentially action-guiding and decision-guiding beliefs and standards. But what makes for specifically ethical values?

 

ethical values (df.): “standards that incline us to act in ways that impartially promote human well-being” (G5, emphasis added); “beliefs and principles that seek to promote human well-being in an impartial way.” (6, emphasis added)

 

Notice that this definition of ethical values rules out the possibility of a specific normative theory being true:

 

ethical egoism (df.): the form of consequentialism according to which the morally right thing to do is always whatever benefits you.

 

This theory says that people should seek to promote their own well-being and thus act in as partial a way as possible.

 

At first, DesJardins’ definition of ethical values seems to beg the question in favor of utilitarianism.

 

begging the question (df.):  to assume that a claim is true when one should really be arguing in its defense.

·         Were DesJardins begging the question in favor of utilitarianism, he would simply be assuming without argument that it is true and thereby assuming without argument that Kantian deontology and virtue ethics are false.

 

But DesJardins has a very broad understanding of “human well-being.”

·         He takes it to include all of the following: happiness, health, companionship, meaning, integrity, freedom, respect and autonomy (6).

·         Those last three values are more closely associated with Kant than with the standard utilitarian criterion of well-being. So DesJardins is not necessarily assuming that utilitarianism is true; he seems to be incorporating both utilitarian and Kantian considerations into his approach.

·         His inclusion of integrity under the banner of “human well-being” may also indicate that there is room within his approach for considerations of virtues, as well.

 

Each of items listed by DesJardins can be considered a value that the actions of a company can promote or undermine.

 

 

[6.3.] Core Values of Companies.

 

According to James Collins & Jerry Porras (in their book Built to Last, 1994), many large and successful companies have something in common, viz., they have some explicitly articulated set of core values:

 

core values of a company (df.): “beliefs and principles that provide the ultimate guide in [a company’s] decision making.” (5)

·         E.g., Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, cited three “basic beliefs”: “respect for individuals, service to customers, and striving for excellence.” (ch.3, p.49)

 

But Collins & Porras also say that a company’s success doesn’t depend on its having any particular core values; a successful company’s core values need not be ethical. For example, Philip Morris, the largest tobacco company in the United States, may have as its core value the “ruthless and cold-blooded promotion of smoking.” (6)

 

As it happens, Philip Morris and its parent company, Altria Group, Inc., claim to have the following as their core values:

·         “Integrity, trust and respect”

·         “Passion to succeed”

·         “Executing with quality”

·         “Driving creativity into everything we do”

·         “Sharing with others”[1]

 

A company’s core values can also come into conflict.

·         For example, Philip Morris’s actions may be thought to have promoted the values of freedom and autonomy, but they clearly also undermine health. [However, it is hard to imagine a cigarette company executive genuinely acting to promote his customers’ freedom and autonomy as his primary values. The (alleged) fact that selling cigarettes promotes freedom and autonomy is almost certainly cited after the fact to justify the decision to promote cigarette sales, once that decision has already been made.]

 

 

 

Stopping point for Friday February 13. For next time, read DesJardins ch.2 pp.17-29.