Ethics 3-30

Corporate social responsibility, governance, ethical corporate culture, and ethical decision making.

• Insights into the identification and analysis of key issues to be considered and questions or challenges to be raised.
• Approaches to combining and applying decision relevant factors into practical action.

conforms to certain standards.

• Consequences or well-offness
• Rights and duties affected
• Fairness involved
• Motivation or virtues expected

Consequentialism, utilitarianism, and theology.

Deontology

Categorical Imperative, and justice as impartiality.

Virtue

Maximizing the utility produced by a decision. Rightness of an act depends on its consequences.

• Which consequences should be counted?
• How they should be counted
• Who deserves to be included in the set of affected stakeholders to be considered?

Concerned with overall utility.

The obligations or duties motivating a decision or actions.

Always act in such a way that you can also will that the maxim of your action should become a universal law. Meaning that if everyone would not follow the same decision rule it is not a moral one.

The interest's of individual are taken into account in decisions.

the motivating aspects of moral character demonstrated by decision makers.

Guilty act

Guilty mind

• The interpretation of a virtue is culture-sensitive
• As is the interpretation of what is justifiable or right
• One's perception of what is right is influenced by self-interest.

Check a decision in a quick, preliminary manner.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

If you are comfortable with an action after asking yourself whether you would mind if all your associates, friends, and family were aware of it, then you should act.

Do what your gut feeling tells you to do.

Do only what can be explained before a committee of your professional peers.

Do the greatest good for the greatest number

Do what demonstrated the virtues expected.

• The assumption that all shareholders want to maximize only short-term profits appears too narrow a focus.
• The rights and claims of many non-shareholder groups are being accorded status in corporate decision making.

• Interests should be better off as a result of the decision (Well-offness) (Consequentialism)
• The decision should result in a fair distribution of benefits and burdens (Fairness) (Deontology)
• The decision should not offend any of the rights of any stakeholder (Right) (Deontology)
• The resulting behavior should demonstrate duties owed as virtuously as expected (Virtuosity) (Virtue ethics)

Costs not included in the determination of profit.

Mirror image alternatives used to measure impacts indirectly.

All four.

Value and a probability of its occurrence.

• Legitimacy or legal and/or moral right to influence the organization
• Power to influence the organization
• Urgency of the issues arising

• 1. Profit or loss only
• 2. 1 plus externalities
• 3. 2 plus probabilities of outcomes
• 4. Cost-benefit analysis or risk-benefit analysis plus ranking of stakeholders

• Life
• Health and safety
• Fair treatment
• Exercise of conscience
• Dignity and privacy
• Freedom of speech

• Ask is the decision:
• 1. Profitable
• 2. Legal
• 3. Fair
• 4. Right
• 5. Going to further sustainable development (Optional)

Attempt to revise if any negative responses.

Develop questions based on three moral standards. More broad than the 5-Questions approach and better suited to considerations of decisions that have impacts outside the corporation.

• Utilitarian - maximize net benefit to society as a whole
• Individual rights - respect and protect
• Justice - fair distribution of benefits and burdens

Analyze a decision based on four key aspects.

• Ground rule ethics
• End-point ethics
• Rule ethics
• Social contract ethics

Individuals and organizations have ground rules that govern their behavior. Purpose is to illuminate an organizations/individuals rules and values.

Purpose is to determine the greatest net good for all concerned.

Purpose is to determine what boundaries a person/organization should take into account according the ethical principles.

Incorporates the concept of fairness. Purpose is to determine how to move the boundaries to remove concerns or conflict.

They do not specifically incorporate a thorough review of the motivation for the decisions involved, or the virtues or character traits expected.

• Well-offness or Consequentalism
• Rights, duty or Deontology
• Fairness or Justice
• Virtue expectations or Virtue Ethics

All four must be satisfied for a decision to be ethical

Inadvertent or knowing overuse of jointly owned assets or resources.

• Conforming to an unethical corporate culture
• Misinterpreting public expectations
• Focusing on short-term profit and shareholder only impacts
• Focusing only on legalities
• Limits to fairness
• Limits to rights canvassed
• Conflicts of interest
• Interconnectedness of stakeholders
• Failure to identify all stakeholder groups
• Failure to rank the specific interests of stakeholders
• Leaving out well-offness, fairness, or rights
• Failure to consider motivation
• Failure to consider virtues

• Identify the facts and all stakeholder groups likely to be affected
• Rank the stakeholders and their interests
• Assess the impact of the proposed action

• Focuses on past actions
• Does not take into account external factors
• Considers some resources to be free or have no costs
• Focus is narrow