Case Study 5 pages double space
Management Ethics
Ethics, Diversity and Organizational Culture
Age and Cultural Diversity can make Business Ethics stumble
With MULTIPLE generations now in the workforce, many employers have embraced age and cultural diversity initiatives with an objective of creating create an all-inclusive workplace. However, cultural diversity can give rise to ethical issues that can be challenging for managers and employees to resolve.
Religious Differences
Gender Issues (more women in work force than ever before)
Hiring Decisions
General Business Practices
Age differential
As a group, please come up with one ethics-related situation that occurred since the last class. Share with the class the ethical conflict, action, and results.
Chapter Three:
Justice and Economic Distribution
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Management Ethics
Reflection Questions
Chap 3 – Justice and Economic Distribution
1. What does the concept of justice mean to you?
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King Jr.
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
What is Justice ?
Moral principle that determines what is just, equitable, and morally right based on ethical, political, environmental, and religious beliefs and values.
-- guided by truth, reason, and fairness --
Promoting welfare, virtue, and freedom
Keeping intact the foundations of our democracy including upholding the law
Securing natural rights
According to Merriam Webster dictionary
-- Justice is the use of law and being fair --
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
Justice involves REAL issues that deal with the equality and fair treatment of humanity and the environment.
Justice also involves the laws in a country or nation, and the arrangement of how a government will protect it’s values and maintain order while preserving the rights of the people.
What is Justice ?
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
Maximizing Welfare
Improving standard of living for society as a whole
Bringing the “greatest happiness for the greatest number” of people = UTILITARIAN
This means that a person’s theory of justice is based on promoting prosperity or spurring economic growth, to seek the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.
Examples: Social Security, healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid), public schools, criminal justice system with prisons
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
Respecting Freedom
Having respect for individual rights and universal human rights.
e.g. the Bill of Rights
Emphasis on respect for individual rights
Laissez-faire camp (free-market libertarians)
Policies that respect voluntary choices so minimal government intervention in individual lives and choices.
Fairness camp (egalitarian theorists)
Policies that give everyone a fair chance at success so government passes laws that ensure everyone has equal opportunity.
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
Promoting Virtue
Looking at justice by affirming certain virtues and conceptions of the ‘good life’.
These virtues must be defined by society by drawing from moral or religious ideals.
“A just society affirms certain virtues”
Policies and laws are made based on those virtues.
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
Virtue Ethics
A State Of Character Or Habit
Which Is The Result Of Dispositions And Deliberations
Prompting Us To Actions
Within The Context Of The Human Goods Which We Pursue In Our Lives
Habitual Actions Based on Values
ARISTOTLE
(384-322 B.C.)
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
Essential Questions:
How is justice defined?
Can a free society ensure both justice and liberty?
Should justice be our first priority?
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
Chapter Three: Justice and Economic Distribution
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69% of Americans have less than $1000 in savings
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THE TOP 1% ARE EVERYWHERE
The top 1% of income earners are everywhere. They walk among us peacefully, and often times invisible to you and me. Why are we trying to hunt them down? They have worked hard to get to where they are and many of them employ thousands of the rest of us 99%. Many of them entertain us with their movies, or their witty morning banter. Some even fix our broken bones or mend our melancholy hearts. Even more donate a significant amount to charity. Shouldn’t we say “thank you” to the top 1% instead of eviscerating them?
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A household income of $383,500 places you in the top 1% of households in the US
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Introduction
Economic justice concerns a network of moral issues in our society.
These issues are raised by society’s norms about distribution of wealth, income, status, and power.
Should CEOs give themselves enormous salaries at the expense of stockholder profits and employee salaries?
Should expensive medical procedures be available only to those who can afford them?
The Nature of Justice
Definitions of justice: Justice is related to morality as part to a whole, and is often specified in connection with concepts such as fairness, equality, or rights.
Aristotle (384 – 322 BC)
His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues – Cicero described his literary style as "a river of gold" – it is thought that only around a third of his original output has survived.
John Stuart Mill (May 1806 – May 1873)
British philosopher, political economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory and political economy. Called "the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century". Mill's conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.
The Nature of Justice
Aristotle on justice as fairness: Treat similar cases alike except where there is some relevant difference
Mill on justice as a moral right: Justice implies something that is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but something that an individual can claim from us as a moral right
The Nature of Justice
Five rival principles of distribution:
Each an equal share
Each according to individual need
Each according to personal effort
Each according to social contribution
Each according to merit
Reflection
Questions ?
MANAGEMENT ETHICS 5-1
Management Ethics
Reflection Questions
2. Which theory of distributive justice do you find most convincing?
Chap 3 – Justice and Economic Distribution
Management Ethics
Reflection Questions
3. What do you see as the major economic challenges facing our society today and, in particular, your generation?
Chap 3 – Justice and Economic Distribution
“The Alderson Federal Prison Camp in West Virginia housed domestic guru Martha Stewart... is the type of institution that has come to be known as a “country-club prison.” How is this sort of description likely to affect some people’s notion of equality of justice?”
Son of James Mill and stands as a principle theorist of Utilitarianism)
1865-1868 Member of Parliament
Main Works: System of Logic (1834), Political Economy (1848), On Liberty (1859), Utilitarianism (1861), The Subjection of Women (1869)
The Utilitarian View
Reconciling rival principles of justice: Mill argued that rival principles of justice can be reconciled only on the basis of the principle of utility, such as through considerations of general well-being.
Utilitarianism does not tell us which economic system will produce the most happiness.
The Utilitarian View
Deciding which system will promote most happiness depends on knowing:
The type of economic ownership
The form of production and distribution
The type of authority arrangements
The range and character of material incentives
The nature and extent of social security and welfare provisions
(3) The Utilitarian View
Distinctive utilitarian application:
Worker participation: In his Principles of Political Economy (1848), Mill argued for the formation of labor and capital partnerships promoting equality between workers and industrialists.
Greater equality of income: Utilitarians are more likely to favor equal income distribution on the basis of the so-called declining marginal utility of money.
The Libertarian View
The idea of Lockean negative and natural rights: The idea amounts to (1) non-interference with the way others choose to live or act, and (2) the ownership of those rights prior to any social and political institution.
Nozick’s entitlement theory: Nozick maintains that people are entitled to their holdings (that is, goods, money, and property) as long as they have acquired them fairly.
Distinctive libertarian ideals:
Liberty: Libertarians support economic laissez-faire and oppose any governmental economic activity that interferes with the marketplace, even if the point is to enhance the performance of the economy.
Free markets: Libertarians don’t contend that people morally deserve what they get in a free market, but only that they are entitled to it. Moreover, justice does not necessarily help those in need.
The Libertarian View
The Libertarian View
Property rights: For libertarians, property rights exist prior to any social systems and legislative acts.
Criticisms of libertarian property rights:
Property includes more than material objects. It also has many abstract forms.
Property ownership is not a simple right but involves a bundle of different rights.
“According to the libertarian theory of justice, the people that own the house in the background have no obligation to assist the homeless. The wealth that they have acquired is theirs to dispose of entirely as they wish.”
Rawls’s Theory of Justice
Main features: John Rawls (1921–2002), one of the most influential contemporary social and political philosophers, suggests a social concept of justice in his ground-breaking work A Theory of Justice.
Two important features of Rawls’s theory:
The hypothetical-contract approach
The principles of justice that Rawls derives through it
Rawls’s Theory of Justice
The original position: John Rawls (1921–2002), one of the most influential contemporary social and political philosophers, proposes a thought experiment – individuals are allowed to choose the principles of justice that should govern them prior to any existing political or social arrangement.
The nature of the choice: Each individual will choose the set of principles that will be best for him/herself (and loved ones).
Rawls’s Theory of Justice
The veil of ignorance: To avoid disagreement with others while pursuing one’s self-interest, all circumstances and conditions that can influence one’s choice of principles of justice (economic background, talents, privileges, etc.) should be removed.
Once the basis for bias is eliminated, the groundwork for a choice of fair principles of justice is established.
Rawls’s Theory of Justice
Choosing the principles: People in the original position will want more, rather than less, of the so-called primary social goods (income and wealth, rights, liberties, opportunities, status, and self-respect).
The maximin principle: People in the original position will also choose conservatively, by trying to maximize the minimum that they will receive. They want to make sure that the worst that could happen to them is the least bad of the alternatives.
Rawls’s Theory of Justice
The two principles:
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties, compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: Open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; giving the greatest expected benefit to the least advantaged members of society.
TOP 5%188,001
TOP 10%140,001
TOP 25%89,125
TOP HALF50,742
BOTTOM 25%25,411
BOTTOM 10%12,154