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Business Ethics Week 3 Article on: You See, the Ends Don’t Justify the Means: Visual Imagery and Moral Judgment • Visual imagery and Moral judgement – based on 3 experiments. – Individuals with more visual cognitive styles made more deontological judgments • Cognitive theory to explain human behavior by understanding the thought processes. The assumption is that humans are logical beings that make the choices that make the most sense to them – Visual interference, relative to verbal interference and no interference, decreases deontological judgment. – These effects are due to people’s tendency to visualize the harmful means (sacrificing one person) more than the beneficial end (saving others) Theories of Economic Justice Chapter 2 • Marxian Liberalism – Belief that people have a natural right to liberty – A right to be free of unwanted coercion – Marxian belief that private property is coercive • John Rawl – Difference principle – Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all – Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are reducing the inequalities to the minimum DISCUSSION: Any other views The Corporation as an Individual Chapter 3 • Corporation being morally responsible for what it does – “Corporate veil” • Limited liability concept; absolves directors, officers and stockholders from personal liability – Government policy is towards ethics • Direct activity of the corporation towards a common good The Corporation as a Community - Stakeholder Theory • Primary stakeholders – Owners, customers, employees and suppliers – Weigh more heavily in the decision making process • Secondary stakeholders – All other interested groups • Competitors, government and the general public • Stockholder theory – Management expected to do everything in the interests of stockholders • Maximize Shareholder wealth concept • fiduciary responsibility on directors and management • DISCUSSION • Alternatives – Stakeholder theory – Corporation as a morally responsible individual Can a corporation have a conscience? • Individuals can exercise their right as citizens • But for a Corporation – Economic view in a social arena? – Leads to difference in: – What a corporation should do and what it can do • A corporation must have a conscience – Executives must be both philosophical and practical Defining the Responsibility of persons 1. Being accountable 2. Rule following – http://web.mit.edu/holton/www/courses/language/rule.followi ng.pdf – Individuals are subject to externally imposed norms with some social role that people have to play – What is socially expected 3. Decision making – Persons independent thought process that justify an attitude of trust with whom there is interaction Key characteristic of moral responsibility – • Intellectual and emotional process leading to moral reasoning 2 traits of Morality Frankena – Page 58 1. Rationality – 2. Respect – • • A special awareness and concern for the effects of one’s decisions and policies on others A person acts responsibly if they gather information on the impact of their decisions on others. Same applies to Corporate responsibility – – • Lack of impulsiveness, care in considering alternatives etc. Monitoring employment practices, effects of one’s production processes on the environment and humans, are considered to show the same kind of morality/ respect as individuals Differences in corporations compared to persons Some have inbuilt features into their management incentive systems – How applicable should this be? • Evaluating the idea of Moral Projection – Where is the concept of moral responsibility useful? • Guiding corporate policy • What are proper Business practices? – Chapter 4 • Competition and the Practice of Business – Fair competition: a set of community originated professional practices, consistent with morality. • Eg: as in Virtue ethics