Project 3

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This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative

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attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee.

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Preface

Ethics is about determining value; it’s deciding what’s worth doing and what doesn’t matter so much.

Business ethics is the way we decide what kind of career to pursue, what choices we make on the job,

which companies we want to work with, and what kind of economic world we want to live in and then

leave behind for those coming after. There are no perfect answers to these questions, but there’s a

difference between thinking them through and winging it. The Business Ethics Workshop provides a

framework for identifying, analyzing, and resolving ethical dilemmas encountered through working life.

This text’s principles:

 It’s your call. Some of the book’s case studies ask for defenses of ethical positions that few agree with

(for example, the claim that a drug dealer’s job is better than a police officer’s). Exercises like this align

with the textbook’s aim: provoking reasoning freed from customary divisions between right and wrong. In

the end, no one completely resists their own habits of thinking or society’s broad pressures, but testing the

limits sharpens the tools of ethical analysis. These tools can be relied on later on when you face decisions

that you alone have to make. The aim of this book is to help make those decisions with coherent,

defensible reasoning.

 Keep it mostly real. Ethics is an everyday activity. It’s not mysterious, head-in-the-clouds ruminating

but determining the worth of things around us: Working at an advertising agency is exciting—actors,

lights, cameras, and TV commercials—but do I really want to hock sugary breakfast cereals to children?

Should I risk my reputation by hiring my college roommate, the one who’s habits of showing up late and

erratically to class have carried over to working life? These are the immediate questions of business ethics,

and while any textbook on the subject must address broad, impersonal questions including the

responsibilities of massive corporations in modern societies, this book’s focus stays as often as possible on

ordinary people in normal but difficult circumstances.

 Be current. The rules of ethical thinking don’t change much, but the world is a constant revolution. The

textbook and its cases follow along as closely as possible, citing from blog posts and recent news stories.

As a note here, to facilitate reading some of these citations have been slightly and silently modified.

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 Let’s talk about our problem. Case studies are the most important components of this text because it

was written for a discussion-intensive class. Ethics isn’t something we know; it’s something we do, and

trying out our reasoning is the best way to confirm that it’s actually working.

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Chapter 1

What Is Business Ethics?

Chapter Overview

Chapter 1 "What Is Business Ethics?" defines business ethics and sketches how debates within the field

happen. The history of the discipline is also considered, along with the overlap between business and

personal ethics.

1.1 What Is Business Ethics?

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define the components of business ethics.

2. Outline how business ethics works.

Captive Customers

Ann Marie Wagoner studies at the University of Alabama (UA). She pays $1,200 a year for books, which is

exasperating, but what really ticks her off is the text for her composition class. Called A Writer’s Reference

(Custom Publication for the University of Alabama), it’s the same Writer’s Reference sold everywhere

else, with slight modifications: there are thirty-two extra pages describing the school’s particular writing

program, the Alabama A is emblazoned on the front cover, there’s an extra $6 on the price tag (compared

with the price of the standard version when purchased new), and there’s an added sentence on the back:

“This book may not be bought or sold used.” The modifications are a collective budget wrecker. Because

she’s forced to buy a new copy of the customized Alabama text, she ends up paying about twice what she’d

pay for a used copy of the standard, not-customized book that’s available at Chegg.com and similar used-

book dealers.

For the extra money, Wagoner doesn’t get much—a few additional text pages and a school spirit cover.

Worse, those extra pages are posted free on the English department’s website, so the cover’s the only

unambiguous benefit. Even there, though, it’d be cheaper to just buy a UA bumper sticker and paste it

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across the front. It’s hard to see, finally, any good reason for the University of Alabama English

Department to snare its own students with a textbook costing so much.

Things clear up when you look closely at the six-dollar difference between the standard new book cost and

the customized UA version. Only half that money stays with the publisher to cover specialized printing

costs. The other part kicks back to the university’s writing program, the one requiring the book in the first

place. It turns out there’s a quiet moneymaking scheme at work here: the English department gets some

straight revenue, and most students, busy with their lives, don’t notice the royalty details. They get their

books, roll their eyes at the cash register, and get on with things.

Wagoner noticed, though. According to an extensive article in the Wall Street Journal, she calls the cost

of new custom books “ridiculous.” She’s also more than a little suspicious about why students aren’t more

openly informed about the royalty arrangement: “They’re hiding it so there isn’t a huge uproar.” [1]

While it may be true that the Tuscaloosa University is hiding what’s going on, they’re definitely not doing

a very good job since the story ended up splattered across the Wall Street Journal. One reason the story

reached one of the United States’ largest circulation dailies is that a lot of universities are starting to get in

on the cash. Printing textbooks within the kickback model is, according to the article, the fastest growing

slice of the $3.5 billion college textbook market.

The money’s there, but not everyone is eager to grab it. James Koch, an economist and former president

of Old Dominion University and the University of Montana, advises schools to think carefully before

tapping into customized-textbook dollars because, he says, the whole idea “treads right on the edge of

what I would call unethical behavior. I’m not sure it passes the smell test.” [2]

What Is Business Ethics?

What does it mean to say a business practice doesn’t “pass the smell test”? And what would happen if

someone read the article and said, “Well, to me it smells all right”? If no substance fills out the idea, if

there’s no elaboration, then there probably wouldn’t be much more to say. The two would agree to

disagree and move on. Normally, that’s OK; no one has time to debate everything. But if you want to get

involved—if you’re like Wagoner who sounds angry about what’s going on and maybe wants to change it—

you’ll need to do more than make comments about how things hit the nose.

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Doing business ethics means providing reasons for how things ought to be in the economic world. This

requires the following:

 Arranging values to guide decisions. There needs to be a clearly defined and well-justified set of

priorities about what’s worth seeking and protecting and what other things we’re willing to compromise or

give up. For example, what’s more important and valuable: consumers (in this case students paying for an

education) getting their books cheaply or protecting the right of the university to run the business side of

its operation as it sees fit?

 Understanding the facts. To effectively apply a set of values to any situation, the situation itself must be

carefully defined. Who, for example, is involved in the textbook conflict? Students, clearly, as well as

university administrators. What about parents who frequently subsidize their college children? Are they

participants or just spectators? What about those childless men and women in Alabama whose taxes go to

the university? Are they involved? And how much money are we talking about? Where does it go? Why?

How and when did all this get started?

 Constructing arguments. This shows how, given the facts, one action serves our values better than other

actions. While the complexities of real life frequently disallow absolute proofs, there remains an absolute

requirement of comprehensible reasoning. Arguments need to make sense to outside observers. In simple,

practical terms, the test of an ethical argument resembles the test of a recipe for a cook: others need to be

able to follow it and come to the same result. There may remain disagreements about facts and values at

the end of an argument in ethics, but others need to understand the reasoning marking each step taken on

the way to your conclusion.

Finally, the last word in ethics is a determination about right and wrong. This actual result, however, is

secondary to the process: the verdict is only the remainder of forming and debating arguments. That’s

why doing ethics isn’t brainwashing. Conclusions are only taken seriously if composed from clear values,

recognized facts, and solid arguments.

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Bringing Ethics to Kickback Textbooks

The Wall Street Journal article on textbooks and kickbacks to the university is a mix of facts, values, and

arguments. They can be sorted out; an opportunity to do the sorting is provided by one of the article’s

more direct assertions:

Royalty arrangements involving specially made books may violate colleges’ conflict-of-interest

rules because they appear to benefit universities more than students.

A conflict of interest occurs when a university pledges to serve the interest of students but finds that its

own interest is served by not doing that. It doesn’t sound like this is a good thing (in the language of the

article, it smells bad). But to reach that conclusion in ethical terms, the specific values, facts, and

arguments surrounding this conflict need to be defined.

Start with the values. The priorities and convictions underneath the conflict-of-interest accusation are

clear. When university takes tuition money from a student and promises to do the best job possible in

providing an education to the student, then it better do that. The truth matters. When you make a

promise, you’ve got to fulfill it. Now, this fundamental value is what makes a conflict of interest

worrisome. If we didn’t care about the truth at all, then a university promising one thing and doing

something else wouldn’t seem objectionable. In the world of poker, for example, when a player makes a

grand show of holding a strong hand by betting a pile of chips, no one calls him a liar when it’s later

revealed that the hand was weak. The truth isn’t expected in poker, and bluffing is perfectly acceptable.

Universities aren’t poker tables, though. Many students come to school expecting honesty from their

institution and fidelity to agreements. To the extent these values are applied, a conflict of interest becomes

both possible and objectionable.

With the core value of honesty established, what are the facts? The “who’s involved?” question brings in

the students buying the textbooks, the company making the textbooks (Bedford/St. Martin’s in Boston),

and the University of Alabama. As drawn from the UA web page, here’s the school’s purpose, the reason it

exists in the first place: “The University of Alabama is a student-centered research university and an

academic community united in its commitment to enhancing the quality of life for all Alabamians.”

Moving to the financial side, specific dollar amounts should be listed (the textbook’s cost, the cost for the

non-customized version). Also, it may be important to note the financial context of those involved: in the

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case of the students, some are comfortably wealthy or have parents paying for everything, while others

live closer to their bank accounts edge and are working their way through school.

Finally, the actual book-selling operation should be clearly described. In essence, what’s going on is that

the UA English Department is making a deal with the Bedford/St. Martin’s textbook company. The

university proposes, “If you give us a cut of the money you make selling textbooks, we’ll let you make

more money off our students.” Because the textbooks are customized, the price goes up while the supply

of cheap used copies (that usually can be purchased through the Internet from stores across the nation)

goes way down. It’s much harder for UA students to find used copies, forcing many to buy a new version.

This is a huge windfall for Bedford/St. Martin’s because, for them, every time a textbook is resold used,

they lose a sale. On the other side, students end up shelling out the maximum money for each book

because they have to buy new instead of just recycling someone else’s from the previous year. Finally, at

the end of the line there is the enabler of this operation, the English department that both requires the

book for a class and has the book customized to reduce used-copy sales. They get a small percentage of

Bedford/St. Martin’s extra revenue.

With values and facts established, an argument against kickback textbooks at Alabama can be drawn up.

By customizing texts and making them mandatory, UA is forcing students to pay extra money to take a

class: they have to spend about thirty dollars extra, which is the difference between the cost of a new,

customized textbook and the standard version purchased, used. Students generally don’t have a lot of

money, and while some pass through school on the parental scholarship, others scrape by and have to

work a Mc Job to make ends meet. So for at least some students, that thirty dollars directly equals time

that could be spent studying, but that instead goes to flipping burgers. The customized textbooks,

consequently, hurt these students’ academic learning in a measurable way. Against that reality there’s the

university’s own claim to be a “student-centered” institution. Those words appear untrue, however, if the

university is dragging its own students out of the library and forcing them to work extra hours. To comply

with its own stated ideals—to serve the students’ interests—UA should suspend the kickback textbook

practice. It’s important to do that, finally, because fulfilling promises is valuable; it’s something worth

doing.

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Argument and Counterargument

The conclusion that kickback textbooks turn universities into liars doesn’t end debate on the question. In

fact, because well-developed ethical positions expose their reasoning so openly (as opposed to “it doesn’t

smell right”), they tend to invite responses. One characteristic, in other words, of good ethical arguments

is that, paradoxically but not contradictorily, they tend to provoke counterarguments.

Broadly, there are three ways to dispute an argument in ethics. You can attack the

1. facts,

2. values,

3. reasoning,

In the textbook case, disputing the facts might involve showing that students who need to work a few

extra hours to afford their books don’t subtract that time from their studying; actually, they subtract it

from late-night hours pounding beers in dank campus bars. The academic damage done, therefore, by

kickback textbooks is zero. Pressing this further, if it’s true that increased textbook prices translate into

less student partying, the case could probably be made that the university actually serves students’

interests—at least those who drink too much beer—by jacking up the prices.

The values supporting an argument about kickback textbooks may, like the facts, be disputed. Virginia

Tech, for example, runs a text-customization program like Alabama’s. According to Tech’s English

Department chair Carolyn Rude, the customized books published by Pearson net the department about

$20,000 a year. Some of that cash goes to pay for instructors’ travel stipends. These aren’t luxury retreats

to Las Vegas or Miami; they’re gatherings of earnest professors in dull places for discussions that reliably

put a few listeners to sleep. When instructors—who are frequently graduate students—attend, they’re

looking to burnish their curriculum vitae and get some public responses to their work. Possibly, the trip

will help them get a better academic job later on. Regardless, it won’t do much for the undergraduates at

Virginia Tech. In essence, the undergrads are being asked to pay a bit extra for books to help graduate

students hone their ideas and advance professionally.

Can that tradeoff be justified? With the right values, yes. It must be conceded that Virginia Tech is

probably rupturing a commitment to serve the undergrads’ interest. Therefore, it’s true that a certain

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amount of dishonesty shadows the process of inflating textbook costs. If, however, there’s a higher value

than truth, that won’t matter so much. Take this possibility: what’s right and wrong isn’t determined by

honesty and fidelity to commitments, but the general welfare. The argument here is that while it’s true

that undergrads suffer a bit because they pay extra, the instructors receiving the travel stipends benefit a

lot. Their knowledge grows, their career prospects improve, and in sum, they benefit so much that it

entirely outweighs the harm done to the undergrads. As long as this value—the greatest total good—

frames the assessment of kickback textbooks, the way is clear for Tech or Alabama to continue the

practice. It’s even recommendable.

The final ground on which an ethical argument can be refuted is the reasoning. Here, the facts are

accepted, as well as the value that universities are duty bound to serve the interests of the tuition-paying

undergraduate students since that’s the commitment they make on their web pages. What can still be

debated, however, is the extent to which those students may actually be benefitted by customizing

textbooks. Looking at the Wall Street Journal article, several partially developed arguments are presented

on this front. For example, at Alabama, part of the money collected from the customized texts underwrites

teaching awards, and that, presumably, motivates instructors to perform better in the classroom, which

ends up serving the students’ educational interests. Similarly, at Virginia Tech, part of the revenue is

apportioned to bring in guest speakers, which should advance the undergraduate educational cause. The

broader argument is that while it’s true that the students are paying more for their books than peers at

other universities, the sequence of reasoning doesn’t necessarily lead from that fact to the conclusion that

there’s a reproachable conflict of interest. It can also reach the verdict that students’ educational

experience is improved; instead of a conflict of interest, there’s an elevated commitment to student

welfare inherent in the kickback practice.

Conclusion. There’s no irrefutable answer to the question about whether universities ought to get involved

in kickback textbooks. What is clear, however, is that there’s a difference between responding to them by

asserting that something doesn’t smell right, and responding by uniting facts, values, and reasoning to

produce a substantial ethical argument.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Business ethics deals with values, facts, and arguments.

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 Well-reasoned arguments, by reason of their clarity, invite counterarguments.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. What is the difference between brainwashing and an argument?

2. What does it mean to dispute an argument on the basis of the facts?

3. What does it mean to dispute an argument on the basis of the values?

4. What does it mean to dispute an argument on the basis of the reasoning?

[1] John Hechinger, “As Textbooks Go ‘Custom,’ Students Pay: Colleges Receive Royalties for School-Specific

Editions; Barrier to Secondhand Sales,” Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2008, accessed May 11,

2011,http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121565135185141235.html.

[2] John Hechinger, “As Textbooks Go ‘Custom,’ Students Pay: Colleges Receive Royalties for School-Specific

Editions; Barrier to Secondhand Sales,” Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2008, accessed May 11,

2011,http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121565135185141235.html.

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1.2 The Place of Business Ethics

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Distinguish the place of business ethics within the larger field of decision making.

2. Sketch the historical development of business ethics as a coherent discipline.

The Boundaries and History of Business Ethics

Though both economic life and ethics are as old as history, business ethics as a formal area of study is

relatively new. Delineating the specific place of today’s business ethics involves

 distinguishing morality, ethics, and meta-ethics;

 dividing normative from descriptive ethics;

 comparing ethics against other forms of decision making;

 sketching some inflection points in the histories of ethics and business ethics.

Morality, Ethics, and Meta-ethics: What’s the Difference?

The back and forth of debates about kickback textbooks occurs on one of the three distinct levels of

consideration about right and wrong. Morals occupy the lowest level; they’re the direct rules we ought to

follow. Two of the most common moral dictates are don’t lie and don’t steal. Generally, the question to ask

about a moral directive is whether it was obeyed. Specifically in the case of university textbooks, the

debate about whether customized textbooks are a good idea isn’t morality. It’s not because morality

doesn’t involve debates. Morality only involves specific guidelines that should be followed; it only begins

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when someone walks into a school bookstore, locates a book needed for a class, strips out the little

magnetic tag hidden in the spine, and heads for the exit.

Above all morality there’s the broader question about exactly what specific rules should be instituted and

followed. Answering this question is ethics. Ethics is the morality factory, the production of guidelines

that later may be obeyed or violated. It’s not clear today, for example, whether there should be moral rule

prohibiting kickback textbooks. There are good arguments for the prohibition (universities are betraying

their duty to serve students’ interests) and good arguments against (schools are finding innovative sources

of revenue that can be put to good use). For that reason, it’s perfectly legitimate for someone like Ann

Marie Wagoner to stand up at the University of Alabama and decry the practice as wrong. But she’d be

going too far if she accused university administrators of being thieves or immoral. They’re not; they’re on

the other side of an ethical conflict, not a moral one.

Above both morality and ethics there are debates about meta-ethics. These are the most abstract and

theoretical discussions surrounding right and wrong. The questions asked on this level include the

following: Where do ethics come from? Why do we have ethical and moral categories in the first place? To

whom do the rules apply? Babies, for example, steal from each other all the time and no one accuses them

of being immoral or insufficiently ethical. Why is that? Or putting the same question in the longer terms

of human history, at some point somewhere in the past someone must have had a light bulb turn on in

their mind and asked, “Wait, is stealing wrong?” How and why, those interested in meta-ethics ask, did

that happen? Some believe that morality is transcendent in nature—that the rules of right and wrong

come from beyond you and me and that our only job is to receive, learn, and obey them. Divine command

theory, for example, understands earthly morality as a reflection of God. Others postulate that ethics is

very human and social in nature—that it’s something we invented to help us live together in communities.

Others believe there’s something deeply personal in it. When I look at another individual I see in the

depth of their difference from myself a requirement to respect that other person and his or her

uniqueness, and from there, ethics and morality unwind. These kinds of meta-ethical questions, finally,

are customarily studied in philosophy departments.

Conclusion. Morality is the rules, ethics is the making of rules, and meta-ethics concerns the origin of the

entire discussion. In common conversation, the words morality and ethics often overlap. It’s hard to

change the way people talk and, in a practical field like business ethics, fostering the skill of debating

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arguments is more important than being a stickler for words, but it’s always possible to keep in mind that,

strictly speaking, morality and ethics hold distinct meanings.

What’s the Difference between Normative Ethics and Descriptive Ethics?

Business ethics is normative, which means it concerns how people ought to act. Descriptive ethics depicts

how people actually are acting.

At the University of Alabama, Virginia Tech, and anywhere kickback textbooks are being sold, there are

probably a few students who check their bank accounts, find that the number is low, and decide to mount

their own kickback scheme: refund the entire textbook cost to themselves by sneaking a copy out of the

store. Trying to make a decision about whether that’s justified—does economic necessity license theft in

some cases?—is normative ethics. By contrast, investigating to determine the exact number of students

walking out with free books is descriptive. So too is tallying the reasons for the theft: How many steal

because they don’t have the money to pay? How many accuse the university of acting dishonestly in the

first place and say that licenses theft? How many question the entire idea of private property?

The fields of descriptive ethics are many and varied. Historians trace the way penalties imposed for theft

have changed over time. Anthropologists look at the way different cultures respond to thievery.

Sociologists study the way publications, including Abbie Hoffman’s incendiary book titled Steal This

Book, have changed public attitudes about the ethics of theft. Psychologists are curious about the

subconscious forces motivating criminals. Economists ask whether there’s a correlation between

individual wealth and the kind of moral rules subscribed to. None of this depends on the question about

whether stealing may actually be justifiable, but all of it depends on stealing actually happening.

Ethics versus Other Forms of Decision

When students stand in the bookstore flipping through the pages of a budget buster, it’s going to cross a

few minds to stick it in the backpack and do a runner. Should they? Clear-headed ethical reflection may

provide an answer to the question, but that’s not the only way we make decisions in the world. Even in the

face of screaming ethical issues, it’s perfectly possible and frequently reasonable to make choices based on

other factors. They include:

 The law

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 Prudence (practicality)

 Religion

 Authority figures

 Peer pressure

 Custom

 Conscience

When the temptation is there, one way to decide whether to steal a book is legal: if the law says I can’t, I

won’t. Frequently, legal prohibitions overlap with commonly accepted moral rules: few legislators want to

sponsor laws that most believe to be unjust. Still, there are unjust laws. Think of downloading a text (or

music, or a video) from the web. One day the downloading may be perfectly legal and the next, after a bill

is passed by a legislature, it’s illegal. So the law reverses, but there’s no reason to think the ethics—the

values and arguments guiding decisions about downloading—changed in that short time. If the ethics

didn’t change, at least one of the two laws must be ethically wrong. That means any necessary connection

between ethics and the law is broken. Even so, there are clear advantages to making decisions based on

the law. Besides the obvious one that it’ll keep you out of jail, legal rules are frequently cleaner and more

direct than ethical determinations, and that clarity may provide justification for approving (or

disapproving) actions with legal dictates instead of ethical ones. The reality remains, however, that the

two ways of deciding are as distinct as their mechanisms of determination. The law results from the votes

of legislators, the interpretations of judges, and the understanding of a policeman on the scene. Ethical

conclusions result from applied values and arguments.

Religion may also provide a solution to the question about textbook theft. The Ten Commandments, for

example, provide clear guidance. Like the law, most mainstream religious dictates overlap with generally

accepted ethical views, but that doesn’t change the fact that the rules of religion trace back to beliefs and

faith, while ethics goes back to arguments.

Prudence, in the sense of practical concern for your own well-being, may also weigh in and finally guide a

decision. With respect to stealing, regardless of what you may believe about ethics or law or religion, the

possibility of going to jail strongly motivates most people to pay for what they carry out of stores. If that’s

the motivation determining what’s done, then personal comfort and welfare are guiding the decision more

than sweeping ethical arguments.

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Authority figures may be relied on to make decisions: instead of asking whether it’s right to steal a book,

someone may ask themselves, “What would my parents say I should do? Or the soccer coach? Or a movie

star? Or the president?” While it’s not clear how great the overlap is between decisions based on authority

and those coming from ethics, it is certain that following authority implies respecting the experience and

judgment of others, while depending on ethics means relying on your own careful thinking and

determinations.

Urges to conformity and peer pressure also guide decisions. As depicted by the startling and funny Asch

experiments (see Video Clip 1.1), most of us palpably fear being labeled a deviant or just differing from

those around us. So powerful is the attraction of conformity that we’ll deny things clearly seen with our

own eyes before being forced to stand out as distinct from everyone else.

Custom, tradition, and habit all also guide decisions. If you’re standing in the bookstore and you’ve never

stolen a thing in your life, the possibility of appropriating the text may not even occur to you or, if it does,

may seem prohibitively strange. The great advantage of custom or tradition or just doing what we’ve

always done is that it lets us take action without thinking. Without that ability for thoughtlessness, we’d

be paralyzed. No one would make it out of the house in the morning: the entire day would be spent

wondering about the meaning of life and so on. Habits—and the decisions flowing from them—allow us to

get on with things. Ethical decisions, by contrast, tend to slow us down. In exchange, we receive the

assurance that we actually believe in what we’re doing, but in practical terms, no one’s decisions can be

ethically justified all the time.

Finally, the conscience may tilt decisions in one direction or another. This is the gut feeling we have about

whether swiping the textbook is the way to go, coupled with the expectation that the wrong decision will

leave us remorseful, suffering palpable regret about choosing to do what we did. Conscience,

fundamentally, is a feeling; it starts as an intuition and ends as a tugging, almost sickening sensation in

the stomach. As opposed to those private sensations, ethics starts from facts and ends with a reasoned

argument that can be publicly displayed and compared with the arguments others present. It’s not clear,

even to experts who study the subject, exactly where the conscience comes from, how we develop it, and

what, if any, limits it should place on our actions. Could, for example, a society come into existence where

people stole all the time and the decision to not shoplift a textbook carries with it the pang of remorse? It’s

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hard to know for sure. It’s clear, however, that ethics is fundamentally social: it’s about right and wrong as

those words emerge from real debates, not inner feelings.

History and Ethics

Conflicts, along with everything necessary to approach them ethically (mainly the ability to generate and

articulate reasoned thoughts), are as old as the first time someone was tempted to take something from

another. For that reason, there’s no strict historical advance to the study: there’s no reason to confidently

assert that the way we do ethics today is superior to the way we did it in the past. In that way, ethics isn’t

like the physical sciences where we can at least suspect that knowledge of the world yields technology

allowing more understanding, which would’ve been impossible to attain earlier on. There appears to be, in

other words, marching progress in science. Ethics doesn’t have that. Still, a number of critical historical

moments in ethics’ history can be spotted.

In ancient Greece, Plato presented the theory that we could attain a general knowledge of justice that

would allow a clear resolution to every specific ethical dilemma. He meant something like this: Most of us

know what a chair is, but it’s hard to pin down. Is something a chair if it has four legs? No, beds have four

legs and some chairs (barstools) have only three. Is it a chair if you sit on it? No, that would make the

porch steps in front of a house a chair. Nonetheless, because we have the general idea of a chair in our

mind, we can enter just about any room in any home and know immediately where we should sit. What

Plato proposed is that justice works like that. We have—or at least we can work toward getting—a general

idea of right and wrong, and when we have the idea, we can walk into a concrete situation and correctly

judge what the right course of action is.

Moving this over to the case of Ann Marie Wagoner, the University of Alabama student who’s outraged by

her university’s kickback textbooks, she may feel tempted, standing there in the bookstore, to make off

with a copy. The answer to the question of whether she ought to do that will be answered by the general

sense of justice she’s been able to develop and clarify in her mind.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a distinct idea of fundamental ethics took hold: natural

rights. The proposal here is that individuals are naturally and undeniably endowed with rights to their

own lives, their freedom, and to pursue happiness as they see fit. As opposed to the notion that certain

acts are firmly right or wrong, proponents of this theory—including John Locke and framers of the new

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American nation—proposed that individuals may sort things out as they please as long as their decisions

and actions don’t interfere with the right of others to do the same. Frequently understood as a theory of

freedom maximization, the proposition is that your freedom is only limited by the freedoms others

possess.

For Wagoner, this way of understanding right and wrong provides little immediate hope for changing

textbook practices at the University of Alabama. It’s difficult to see how the university’s decision to assign

a certain book at a certain price interferes with Wagoner’s freedom. She can always choose to not

purchase the book, to buy one of the standard versions at Amazon, or to drop the class. What she

probably can’t justify choosing, within this theory, is responding to the kickback textbooks by stealing a

copy. Were she to do that, it would violate another’s freedom, in this case, the right of the university (in

agreement with a publisher) to offer a product for sale at a price they determine.

A third important historical direction in the history of ethics originated with the proposal that what you

do doesn’t matter so much as the effects of what you do. Right and wrong are found in the consequences

following an action, not in the action itself. In the 1800s John Stuart Mill and others advocated the idea

that any act benefitting the general welfare was recommendable and ethically respectable.

Correspondingly, any act harming a community’s general happiness should be avoided. Decisions

about good or bad, that means, don’t focus on what happens now but what comes later, and they’re not

about the one person making the decision but the consequences as they envelop a larger community.

For someone like Wagoner who’s angry about the kickback money hidden in her book costs, this

consequence-centered theory opens the door to a dramatic action. She may decide to steal a book from the

bookstore and, after alerting a reporter from the student newspaper of her plan, promptly turn herself

into the authorities as a form of protest. “I stole this book,” she could say, “but that’s nothing compared

with the theft happening every day on this campus by our university.” This plan of action may work out—

or maybe not. But in terms of ethics, the focus should be on the theft’s results, not the fact that she

sneaked a book past security. The ethical verdict here is not about whether robbery is right or wrong but

whether the protest stunt will ultimately improve university life. If it does, we can say that the original

theft was good.

Finally, ethics is like most fields of study in that it has been accompanied from the beginning by skeptics,

by people suspecting that either there is no real right and wrong or, even if there is, we’ll never have much

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luck figuring out the difference. The twentieth century has been influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s

affirmation that moral codes (and everything else, actually) are just interpretations of reality that may be

accepted now, but there’s no guarantee things will remain that way tomorrow. Is stealing a textbook right

or wrong? According to this view, the answer always is, “It depends.” It depends on the circumstances, on

the people involved and how well they can convince others to accept one or another verdict. In practical

terms, this view translates into a theory of cultural or contextual relativism. What’s right and wrong only

reflects what a particular person or community decides to believe at a certain moment, and little more.

The Historical Development of Business Ethics

The long philosophical tradition of ethical thought contains the subfield of business ethics. Business

ethics, in turn, divides between ethics practiced by people who happen to be in business and business

ethics as a coherent and well-defined academic pursuit.

People in business, like everyone else, have ethical dimensions to their lives. For example, the company

W. R. Grace was portrayed in the John Travolta movie A Civil Action as a model of bad corporate

behavior. [1]

What not so many people know, however, is that the corporation’s founder, the man named

W. R. Grace, came to America in the nineteenth century, found success, and dedicated a significant

percentage of his profits to a free school for immigrants that still operates today.

Even though questions stretch deep into the past about what responsibilities companies and their leaders

may have besides generating profits, the academic world began seriously concentrating on the subject

only very recently. The first full-scale professional conference on academic business ethics occurred in

1974 at the University of Kansas. A textbook was derived from the meeting, and courses began appearing

soon after at some schools.

By 1980 some form of a unified business ethics course was offered at many of the nation’s colleges and

universities.

Academic discussion of ethical issues in business was fostered by the appearance of several specialized

journals, and by the mid-1990s, the field had reached maturity. University classes were widespread,

allowing new people to enter the study easily. A core set of ideas, approaches, and debates had been

established as central to the subject, and professional societies and publications allowed for advanced

research in and intellectual growth of the field.

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The development of business ethics inside universities corresponded with increasing public awareness of

problems associated with modern economic activity, especially on environmental and financial fronts. In

the late 1970s, the calamity in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, focused

international attention on questions about a company’s responsibility to those living in the surrounding

community and to the health of the natural world. The Love Canal’s infamy began when a chemical

company dumped tons of toxic waste into the ground before moving away. Despite the company’s

warnings about the land’s toxicity, residential development spread over the area. Birth defects and similar

maladies eventually devastated the families. Not long afterward and on the financial front, an insider

trading scandal involving the Wall Street titan Ivan Boesky made front pages, which led John Shad,

former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, to donate $20 million to his business school

alma mater for the purpose of ethics education. Parallel (though usually more modest) money infusions

went to university philosophy departments. As a discipline, business ethics naturally bridges the two

divisions of study since the theory and tools for resolving ethical problems come from philosophy, but the

problems for solving belong to the real economic world.

Today, the most glamorous issues of business ethics involve massively powerful corporations and

swashbuckling financiers. Power and celebrity get people’s attention. Other, more tangible issues don’t

appear in so many headlines, but they’re just as important to study since they directly reach so many of

us: What kind of career is worth pursuing? Should I lie on my résumé? How important is money?

The Personal History of Ethics

Moving from academics to individual people, almost every adult does business ethics. Every time people

shake their exhausted heads in the morning, eye the clock, and decide whether they’ll go to work or just

pull up the covers, they’re making a decision about what values guide their economic reality. The way

ethics is done, however, changes from person to person and for all of us through our lives. There’s no

single history of ethics as individuals live it, but there’s a broad consensus that for many people, the

development of their ethical side progresses in a way not too far off from a general scheme proposed by

the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg.

Pre-conventional behavior—displayed by children, but not only by them—is about people calculating to

get what they want efficiently: decisions are made in accordance with raw self-interest. That’s why many

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children really do behave better near the end of December. It’s not that they’ve suddenly been struck by

respect for others and the importance of social rules; they just figure they’ll get more and better presents.

Moving up through the conventional stages, the idea of what you’ll do separates from what you want.

First, there are immediate conventions that may pull against personal desires; they include standards and

pressures applied by family and friends. Next, more abstract conventions—the law and mass social

customs—assert influence.

Continuing upward, the critical stages of moral development go from recognizing abstract conventions to

actively and effectively comparing them. The study of business ethics belongs on this high level of

individual maturity. Value systems are held up side by side, and reasons are erected for selecting one over

another. This is the ethics of full adulthood; it requires good reasoning and experience in the real world.

Coextensive with the development of ideas about what we ought to do are notions about responsibility—

about justifiably blaming people for what they’ve done. Responsibility at the lowest level is physical. The

person who stole the book is responsible because they took it. More abstractly, responsibility attaches to

notions of causing others to do a wrong (enticing someone else to steal a book) and not doing something

that could have prevented a wrong (not acting to dissuade another who’s considering theft is, ultimately, a

way of acting). A mature assignment of responsibility is normally taken to require that the following

considerations hold:

 The person is able to understand right and wrong.

 The person acts to cause—or fails to act to prevent—a wrong.

 The person acts knowing what they’re doing.

 The person acts from their own free will.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Morality is the set of rules defining what ought to be done; ethics is the debate about what the rules

should be; meta-ethics investigates the origin of the entire field.

 Normative ethics concerns what should be done, not what is done.

 Ethics is only one of a number of ways of making decisions.

 Business ethics as an academic study is a recent development in the long history of ethical reflection.

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 With respect to individuals, the development of ethical thought may be studied, as well as notions of

responsibility.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. List two basic questions belonging to the field of morality.

2. List two basic questions belonging to the field of ethics.

3. What is one basic question belonging to the field of meta-ethics?

4. What is an example of normative ethics? And descriptive ethics?

5. Explain the difference between a decision based on ethics and one based on the law.

6. Explain the difference between a decision based on ethics and one based on religion.

7. List two factors explaining the recent development and growth of business ethics as a coherent discipline.

[1] Steven Zaillian (director), A Civil Action (New York: Scott Rudin, 1998), film.

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1.3 Is Business Ethics Necessary?

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Articulate two extreme views of business ethics.

2. Describe the sense in which business ethics is inevitable.

Two Extreme Views of the Business World

At the boundaries of the question about whether business ethics is necessary, there are conflicting and

extreme perceptions of the business world. In graphic terms, these are the views:

 Business needs policing because it’s a dirty enterprise featuring people who get ahead by being selfish

liars.

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 Successful businesses work well to enrich society, and business ethicists are interfering and annoying

scolds threatening to ruin our economic welfare.

A 1987 New York Times article titled “Suddenly, Business Schools Tackle Ethics” begins this way:

“Insider-trading scandals in the last year have badly tarnished the reputations of some of the nation’s

most prominent financial institutions. Nor has Wall Street been the only area engulfed in scandal;

manufacturers of products from contraceptives to military weapons have all come under public scrutiny

recently for questionable—if not actionable—behavior.” [1]

Slimy dealing verging on the illegal, the message is, stains the economic world from one end to the other.

A little further into the article, the author possibly gives away her deepest feelings about business when

she cracks that business ethics is “an oxymoron.”

What will business leaders—and anyone else for that matter—do when confronted with the accusation of

sliminess? Possibly embrace it—an attitude facilitated by an infamous article originally published in

the Harvard Business Review. In “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?” the author suggests businessmen and

women should double down on the strategy of getting ahead through deceit because if you’re in business,

then everyone already knows you’re a liar anyway. And since that’s common knowledge, taking liberties

with the truth doesn’t even count as lying: there’s no moral problem because that’s just the way the

business game is played. In the author’s words, “Falsehood ceases to be falsehood when it is understood

on all sides that the truth is not expected to be spoken—an exact description of bluffing in poker,

diplomacy, and business.” [2]

The basic argument is strong. Ethically, dishonesty stops being reproachable—it stops being an attempt to

mislead—when everyone knows that you’re not telling the truth. If it weren’t for that loophole, it’d be

difficult to enjoy movies. Spiderman swinging through New York City skyscrapers isn’t a lie, it’s just fun

because everyone agrees from the beginning that the truth doesn’t matter on the screen.

The problem with applying this logic to the world of commerce, however, is that the original agreement

isn’t there. It’s not true that in business everyone knows there’s lying and accepts it. In poker, presumably,

the players choosing to sit down at the table have familiarized themselves with the rules and techniques of

the game and, yes, do expect others to fake a good hand from time to time. It’s easy to show, however, that

the expectation doesn’t generally hold in office buildings, stores, showrooms, and sales pitches. Take, for

example, a car advertisement claiming a certain model has a higher resale value, has a lower sticker price,

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or can go from zero to sixty faster than its competition. People in the market for a new car take those

claims seriously. If they’re prudent, they’ll check just to make sure (an economic form of “trust but

verify”), but it’s pretty rare that someone sitting in front of the TV at home chuckles and calls the claim

absurd. In poker, on the other hand, if another player makes a comparable claim (“I have the highest hand

at the table!”), people just laugh and tell the guy to keep drinking. Poker isn’t like business.

The argument that bluffing—lying—in business is acceptable because everyone does it and everyone

knows everyone’s doing it doesn’t hold up. However, the fact that someone could seriously make the

argument (and get it published in the Harvard Business Review no less) certainly provides heavy

ammunition for those who believe that most high-level businesspeople—like those who read the Harvard

Business Review—should have a hard time looking at themselves in the mirror in the morning.

Opposing the view that business life is corrupt and needs serious ethical policing, there’s the view that

economic enterprises provide wealth for our society while correcting their own excesses and problems

internally. How does the correction work? Through the marketplace. The pressures of demanding

consumers force companies into reputable behavior. If a car manufacturer lies about its product, there

may be a brief uptick in sales, but eventually people will figure out what’s going on, spread the word at the

water cooler and on Facebook, and in the end the company’s sales will collapse. Similarly, bosses that

abuse and mistreat subordinates will soon find that no one wants to work for them. Workers who cheat on

expense reports or pocket money from the till will eventually get caught and fired. Of course it must be

admitted that some people sometimes do get away with something, but over the long run, the forces of the

economic world inexorably correct abuses.

If this vision of business reality is correct, then adding another layer of academic ethics onto what’s

already going on in the real world isn’t necessary. More, those who insist on standing outside corporate

offices and factory buildings preaching the need for oversight and remedial classes in morality become

annoying nags. That’s especially true if the critics aren’t directly doing business themselves. If they’re

ensconced in university towers and gloomy libraries, there may even be a suspicion that what really drives

the call to ethics is a burning resentment of all the money Wall Street stars and captains of industry seem

to make, along with their flashy cars, palatial homes, and luxurious vacations.

An issue of the Cato Institute’s Policy Report from 2000 carries an article titled “Business Ethics Gone

Wrong.” It asserts that some proponents of business ethics aren’t only bothersome envious—their

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resentment-fueled scolding actually threatens our collective economic welfare. Business ethics, according

to the author, “is fundamentally antagonistic to capitalist enterprise, viewing both firm and manager as

social parasites in need of a strong reformative hand.” [3]

These reforms—burdensome regulations, prying investigations, and similar ethical interventions—

threaten to gum up the capitalist engine: “If the market economy and its cornerstone, the shareholder-

oriented firm, are in no danger of being dealt a decisive blow, they at least risk death by a thousand

cuts.” [4]

There’s a problem with this perspective on the business world. Even if, for the sake of argument, it’s

acknowledged that economic forces effectively police commerce, that doesn’t mean business ethics is

unnecessary or a threat to the market economy. The opposite is the case: the view that the marketplace

solves most problems is an ethics. It’s a form of egoism, a theory to be developed in later chapters but with

values and rules that can be rapidly sketched here. What are most valued from this perspective is our

individual welfare and the freedom to pursue it without guilt or remorse. With that freedom, however,

comes a responsibility to acknowledge that others may be guided by the same rules and therefore we’re all

bound by the responsibility to look out for ourselves and actively protect our own interests since no one

will be doing it for us. This isn’t to confirm that all businesspeople are despicable liars, but it does mean

asserting that the collective force of self-interest produces an ethically respectable reality. Right and

wrong comes to be defined by the combined force of cautious, self-interested producers and consumers.

In the face of this argument defending a free-for-all economic reality where everyone is doing the best

they can for themselves while protecting against others doing the same, objections may be constructed. It

could be argued, for example, that the modern world is too complex for consumers to adequately protect

their own interests all the time. No matter how that issue gets resolved, however, the larger fact remains

that trusting in the marketplace is a reasonable and defensible ethical posture; it’s a commitment to a set

of values and facts and their combination in an argument affirming that the free market works to

effectively resolve its own problems.

Conclusion. It’s not true that doing business equals being deceitful, so it’s false to assert that business

ethics is necessary to cure the ills of commerce. It is true that the business world may be left to control its

own excesses through marketplace pressure, but that doesn’t mean business escapes ethics.

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Business Ethics Is Inevitable

Business ethics is not about scolding, moralizing, or telling people to be nice. Ethics doesn’t have to be

annoying or intrusive. On the other hand, it can’t just be dismissed altogether because ethics in business is

unavoidable. The values guiding our desires and aspirations are there whether they’re revealed or not.

They must be because no one can do anything without first wanting something. If you don’t have a goal,

something you’re trying to achieve or get, then you won’t have anything to do when you get out of bed in

the morning. Getting up in the morning and going, consequently, mean that you’ve already selected

something as desirable, valuable, and worth pursuing. And that’s doing ethics; it’s establishing values.

The only real and durable difference, therefore, between those who understand ethics and those who don’t

is that the former achieve a level of self-understanding about what they want: they’ve compared their

values with other possibilities and molded their actions to their decisions. The latter are doing the same

thing, just without fully realizing it. The question about whether ethics is necessary, finally, becomes a

false one. You can choose to not understand the ethics you’re doing (you can always drop this class), but

you can’t choose to not do ethics.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Views about the ethical nature of the business vary widely.

 Because ethics is the arrangement of values guiding our aspirations and actions, some form of ethics is

unavoidable for anyone acting in the economic world.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. Why might someone believe the business world needs exterior ethical monitoring and correction?

2. What is the argument that the business world can regulate itself, and why is that an ethics?

3. In your own words, why is business ethics unavoidable?

[1] Sandra Salmans, “Suddenly, Business Schools Tackle Ethics,” New York Times, August 2, 1987, accessed May 11,

2011, http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/02/education/suddenly-business-schools-tackle-ethics.html.

[2] Albert Carr, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?,” Harvard Business Review 46 (January–February, 1968), 143–53.

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[3] Alexei M. Marcoux, “Business Ethics Gone Wrong,” Cato Policy Report 22, no. 3 (May/June 2000), accessed May

11, 2011,http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v22n3/cpr-22n3.html.

[4] Alexei M. Marcoux, “Business Ethics Gone Wrong,” Cato Policy Report 22, no. 3 (May/June 2000), accessed May

11, 2011,http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v22n3/cpr-22n3.html.

1.4 Facebook and the Unavoidability of Business Ethics

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E

1. Show how business ethics stretches beyond working life.

The Facebook Firing

Business ethics in some form is inescapable inside factories, office buildings, and other places where work

gets done. The application of business ethics principles and guidance doesn’t stop, though, when the

workday ends or outside the company door. Because our economic lives mingle so intimately with our

private existences, the decisions and reasoning shaping our laboring eventually shape our lives generally.

Business ethics, as the problems bedeviling Dawnmarie Souza show, provides a way to examine and make

sense of a large segment of our time, both on and off the job.

Souza’s problems started when the ambulance she worked on picked up a “17.” That’s code for a

psychiatric case. This particular 17, as it happened, wasn’t too crazy to form and submit a complaint about

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the treatment received from Souza. Since this was the second grievance the ambulance service had

received on Souza in only ten days, she sensed that she’d be getting a suspension. “Looks like,” she wrote

on her Facebook page later that day, “I’m getting some time off. Love how the company allows a 17 to be a

supervisor.” She also referred to her real supervisor with some choice four-letter words.

A number of coworkers responded to her post with their own supportive and agreeing comments.

Management responded by firing her.

The termination decision came easily to the ambulance service, American Medical Response of

Connecticut, since their policy explicitly prohibited employees from identifying or discussing the company

or other employees in the uncontrolled public forum that is the Internet. Around the water cooler, at

home, or during weekend parties, people can say what they like. Given the semi-permanent record that is

the web, however, and the ambulance service’s natural inclination to protect its public image, posting

there was out of bounds.

But, Souza responded, there’s no difference. If people can talk at the water cooler and parties, why can’t

they post on Facebook? She’s not claiming to speak for the company, she’s just venting with a keypad

instead of vocal chords.

The celebrity blogger and Facebook addict Perez Hilton came down on the company’s side: “We think

Dawnmarie should be fired, and we support the company’s decision to let her go. When you post things

online, it’s out there for the public to see, and it’s a sign of disloyalty and disrespect to deal with a work-

related grievance in such a manner.” [1]

The Reach of Business Ethics

When someone like Perez Hilton—a blogger most comfortable deriding celebrities’ bad hair days—finds

himself wrapped in a business ethics debate, you’ve got to figure the discipline is pretty much

unavoidable. Regardless, the Souza episode displays many of the ways business ethics connects with our

nonworking existence, whether we like it or not:

 It doesn’t sound like Souza displayed any great passion about her job. Maybe she really doesn’t care that

she got fired. Or maybe she cares but only because it means a lost paycheck. On the other hand, it may

just have been a bad day; it’s possible that she usually gets up in the morning eager to mount the

ambulance. It’s hard to know, but it’s certain that this—the decision about what we want to do with our

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professional lives—is business ethics. When choosing a job, what has value? The money it provides?

Satisfaction from helping others? Status? Or do you just want something that gives you the most free time

possible? There are no rights or wrong answers, but these are all ethical decisions tangling your personal

and professional lives together.

 The mix between the personal and professional on the question of one’s job tends to link tighter as people

get older. Many of us define who we and others are through work. When finding out about someone new,

the question—embraced by some and dreaded by others—inevitably comes up. When meeting a woman at

a party, when being sent on a blind date, or when discussing old high school friends or the guy who just

moved into the next-door apartment, the question hums just below the surface, and it’s never long until

someone comes out and asks. Of course, for collegians and young people working part-time jobs, it

doesn’t matter so much because everyone knows that where you work isn’t where you’ll end up working.

Once someone hits the mid-twenties, though, the question “what do you do?” starts to press and it won’t

let up.

 Perez Hilton wrote that Souza displayed disloyalty to her company when she trashed the management on

Facebook. The following questions are raised: What is loyalty? What is it worth? When should you feel it?

When do you have a right to demand it from others? Is there any difference among loyalty to the

company, to family, and to friends?

 One of Hilton’s readers posted a pithy response to Hilton in the web page’s comments section: “I bet if she

were gay, and did the same exact thing, you would be singing a different tune!” Perez Hilton, it’s widely

known, is about as exuberantly gay as they come. As it happens, in his line of work that orientation isn’t

professionally harmful. For others, however, the revelation may be career damaging. Hilton, in fact, is

despised by some in Hollywood for his habit of outing gay celebrities, people who hide part of themselves

in the name of furthering their career. The business ethics question here is also a life one. Would you hide

who you are to facilitate things at work? Should you? Doesn’t everyone do that to some extent and in some

ways?

 Another reader posted this comment: “In the US, your employer owns you. I mean they can make you piss

in a cup to check and see what you did over the weekend.” Should employers be able to change what you

do over the weekend?

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 A number of readers defended Souza by upholding the right to free speech—she should be able to say

whatever she wants wherever she wants without fear of retribution. In response to those assertions, this

was posted, “Of course we have freedom of speech. Employers also have the freedom to employ whoever

they wish. Your decision is whether whatever is on your mind is more important than your job.” Does

freedom of speech—or any other basic liberty—end or get conditioned when the workday begins?

 One commenter wrote, “I’m going to have to agree with the company on this one. An employer expects

proper business demeanor even while off the clock.” What is “proper demeanor”? Who decides? On the

basis of what?

 Many people spend eight (or more) hours a day on the job. There’s no shortage of women who see their

boss more than their husband, of men who remember the birthday of the guy in the next cubicle before

their own child’s. Parties tend to include workmates; companies invite clients to ball games. The sheer

hours spent at work, along with the large overlaps between professional and social relationships, make

separating the ethics of the office and the home nearly impossible.

 This comment is aimed right at Perez Hilton and his Internet gossip column, which wins few points for

checking and confirming claims but definitely gets the juicy and embarrassing rumors out about the

private lives of celebrities: “Are you insane? All you did for God knows how long is put nasty stuff up

about people for the public to see as a sign of disloyalty and disrespect.” Assuming that’s a reasonable

depiction of Hilton’s work, the question his career raises is: what are you willing to do to the lives of

others to get yourself ahead at work?

Underlining all these questions is a distinction that’s easy to make in theory but difficult to maintain in

real life. It’s one betweeninstitutional business ethics and personal business ethics. Institutional ethics in

business deals with large questions in generic and anonymous terms. The rules and discussions apply to

most organizations and to individuals who could be anyone. Should companies be allowed to pollute the

air? What counts as a firing offense? The personal level, by contrast, fills with questions for specific people

enmeshed in the details of their particular lives. If Perez Hilton has gotten rich dishing dirt on others, is

he allowed to assert that others must treat their employers respectfully?

K E Y T A K E A W A Y

 The questions pursued by business ethics cross back and forth between professional and personal lives.

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R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. What are two reasons business ethics decisions tend to affect lives outside work?

2. What are two ways business ethics decisions may affect lives outside work?

[1] “Facebook-Related Firing Sparks Legal Drama!,” PerezHilton.com (blog), accessed May 11,

2011, http://perezhilton.com/2010-11-09-woman-fired-over-comments- she-made-about-her-boss-on-facebook-

brings-about-court-case#respond.

1.5 Overview of The Business Ethics Workshop

This textbook is organized into three clusters of chapters. The first group develops and explains the main

theories guiding thought in business ethics. The goals are to clarify the theoretical tools that may be used

to make decisions and to display how arguments can be built in favor of one stance and against others.

The questions driving the chapters include the following:

 Are there fundamental rules for action that directly tell us what we ought to do? If so, are the imperatives

very specific, including dictates like “don’t lie”? Or are they more flexible, more like rules broadly

requiring fairness and beneficence to others?

 Are fundamental rights—especially the conviction that we’re all free to pursue the destinies we choose—

the key to thinking about ethics? If we have these rights, what happens when my free pursuit of happiness

conflicts with yours?

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 Could it be that what we do doesn’t matter so much as the effects of what’s done? How can a framework

for decisions be constructed around the idea that we ought to undertake whatever action is necessary

(even lying or stealing) in order to bring about a positive end, something like the greater happiness of

society overall?

 To what extent are perspectives on right and wrong only expressions of the particular culture we live in?

Does it makes sense to say that certain acts—say bribery—are OK in some countries but wrong in others?

The second cluster of chapters investigates business ethics on the level of the individual. The goal is to

show how the tools of ethical reasoning may be applied to personal decisions made in connection with our

nine-to-five lives. The questions driving the chapters include the following:

 What values come into play when a career path is selected?

 Can I justify lying on my résumé? How far am I willing to go to get a raise or promotion?

 Besides a paycheck, what benefits will I seek at work? Money from a kickback? An office romance?

 What do I owe my employer? Is there loyalty in business, or is there nothing more than the money I’m

paid and the duties I’m assigned according to my work contract?

 Do I have an obligation to report on someone else doing something I think is wrong?

 If people work for me, what responsibilities do I have toward them inside and outside the office?

 What values govern the way I hire, promote, and fire workers?

The third cluster of chapters considers institutional business ethics. These are general and sweeping

issues typically involving corporations, the work environments they promote, and the actions they take in

the economic world. Guiding questions include the following:

 What counts as condemnable discrimination in the workplace, and what remedies ought to be tried?

 Which attitudes, requirements, and restrictions should attach to sex and drugs in the workplace?

 Should there be limits to marketing techniques and strategies? Is there anything wrong with creating

consumer needs? What relationships should corporations form with their consumers?

 Do corporations hold ethical responsibilities to the larger community in which they operate, to the people

who aren’t employees or consumers but live nearby?

 Is there a corporate responsibility to defend the planet’s environmental health?

 Should the economic world be structured to produce individually successful stars or to protect the welfare

of laboring collectives?

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1.6 Case Studies

Gray Matters

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Source: Photo courtesy of Sasha Wolff, http://www.flickr.com/photos/sashawolff/3388815964.

To foster ethical discussion and understanding in the workplace, the Lockheed Martin Company

developed a quiz for employees called “Gray Matters.” The quiz is multiple choices, with a range of points

awarded (or subtracted) depending on the response. Subsequently, the approach has been adopted by a

wide range of corporations. Here’s a typical question matched with its possible answers and the

corresponding points:

Six months after you hired an assistant accountant who has been working competently and

responsibly, you learn that she departed from the truth on her employment application: she

claimed she had a college degree when she didn’t. You’re her manager; what should you do?

1. Nothing because she’s doing her job just fine. (–10 points)

2. Bring the issue to the human resources department to determine exactly how company policy

determines the situation should be handled. (10 points)

3. Fire her for lying. (5 points)

4. Carefully weigh her work performance, her length of service, and her potential benefit to the

company before informing anyone of what happened or making any recommendations. (0

points)

Q U E S T I O N S

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1. The three principle components of business ethics are facts, values, and arguments. What are the facts

pertinent to an ethical evaluation of this case? Is there any information not contained in the question that

you’d like to have before making a decision about what should be done?

2. From the facts and information provided, can you sketch a set of values and chain of reasoning justifying

the answer that the quiz’s original authors sanctioned as the right one? (Leave the decision in the hands of

the HR department and existing company policy.)

3. You get some points for C (firing her). What values and reasoning may lead to that determination?

4. According to the quiz authors, the worst answer is A. Maybe they’re wrong, though. What values and

reasoning may lead to the conclusion that doing “nothing because she’s doing her job just fine” is an

excellent response?

5. One of the most important questions about a situation’s facts is “who’s involved?”

o Would it be reasonable to say that, ethically, this is an issue just between you and the woman who

you hired after she lied on her résumé?

o If you expand the answer about who’s involved to include other workmates at the company, as

well as the company’s clients and shareholders, does that change the ethical perspective you have

on what should be done with the lying (but capable) coworker?

6. What’s the difference between morality and ethics?

o Would you categorize response B (bring the issue to HR to determine exactly how company policy

determines the situation should be handled) as leading to a decision more based on morality or

more based on ethics? Explain.

o Would you categorize response D (carefully weigh her work performance, her length of service,

and her potential benefit to the company before informing anyone of what happened or making

any recommendations) as leading to a decision more based on morality or ethics? Explain.

Who made your iPhone?

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Source: Photo courtesy of Tobias Myrstrand Leander, http://www.flickr.com/photos/s8an/5207806926/.

Connie Guglielmo, a reporter for Bloomberg news services, begins an article on Apple this way: “Apple

Inc. said three of its suppliers hired 11 underage workers to help build the iPhone, iPod and Macintosh

computer last year, a violation it uncovered as part of its onsite audit of 102 factories.” [1]

Her story adds details. The underage workers were fifteen in places where the minimum legal age for

employment is sixteen. She wasn’t able to discover the specific countries, but learned the infractions

occurred in one or more of the following: China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the

Czech Republic, and the Philippines.

Following the discovery, the employees were released, and disciplinary action was taken against a number

of the foreign suppliers. In one case, Apple stopped contracting with the company entirely.

The story closes with this: “Apple raised $2.62 to $204.62 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The

shares more than doubled last year.”

Q U E S T I O N S

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1. The ethical question is whether Apple ought to contract (through suppliers) fifteen-year-olds to work on

factory floors. Is the fact that the stock price has been zooming up a pertinent fact, or does it not affect

the ethics? Explain.

2. From the information given and reasonable assumptions about these factories and the living conditions of

people working inside them, sketch an ethical argument against Apple enforcing the age workplace rule.

What fundamental values underwrite the argument?

3. From the information given and reasonable assumptions about these factories and the living conditions of

people working inside them, sketch an argument in favor of Apple enforcing the age workplace rule. What

fundamental values underwrite the argument?

4. Within the context of the Apple situation, what’s the difference between making a decision in terms of the

law and in terms of ethics?

5. Assume that in the countries where fifteen-year-olds were working, it’s customary for children

even younger to earn an adult-type living.

o What is an advantage of following the local customs when making economic decisions like the one

confronting Apple?

o Does the custom of employing young workers in some countries change your ethical consideration

of the practice in those places? Why or why not?

6. Attributing responsibility—blaming another for doing wrong—requires that the following

conditions hold:

o The person is able to understand right and wrong.

o The person acts to cause (or fails to act to prevent) a wrong.

o The person acts knowing what they’re doing.

o The person acts from their own free will.

Assuming it’s unethical for fifteen-year-olds to work factory shifts making iPhones, who bears

responsibility for the wrong?

o Do the fifteen-year-olds bear some responsibility? Explain.

o Does Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple? Explain.

o Are shareholders guilty? Explain.

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o Do people who use iPhones bear responsibility? Explain.

I Swear

Since 2006, students at the Columbia Business School have been required to pledge “I adhere to the

principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

This is a substantial promise, but it doesn’t sound like it’ll create too many tremendous burdens or require

huge sacrifices.

A somewhat more demanding pledge solidified in 2010 when a group of business school students from

Columbia, Duke Fuqua, Harvard, MIT Sloan, NYU Stern, Rensselaer Lally, Thunderbird, UNC Kenan-

Flagler, and Yale met to formalize the following MBA Oath:

As a business leader I recognize my role in society.

 My purpose is to lead people and manage resources to create value that no single individual can

create alone.

 My decisions affect the well-being of individuals inside and outside my enterprise, today and

tomorrow.

Therefore, I promise that:

 I will manage my enterprise with loyalty and care, and will not advance my personal interests at

the expense of my enterprise or society.

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 I will understand and uphold, in letter and spirit, the laws and contracts governing my conduct

and that of my enterprise.

 I will refrain from corruption, unfair competition, or business practices harmful to society.

 I will protect the human rights and dignity of all people affected by my enterprise, and I will

oppose discrimination and exploitation.

 I will protect the right of future generations to advance their standard of living and enjoy a

healthy planet.

 I will report the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly.

 I will invest in developing myself and others, helping the management profession continue to

advance and create sustainable and inclusive prosperity.

In exercising my professional duties according to these principles, I recognize that my behavior

must set an example of integrity, eliciting trust and esteem from those I serve. I will remain

accountable to my peers and to society for my actions and for upholding these standards. [2]

Q U E S T I O N S

1. The second introductory clause of the MBA Oath is “My decisions affect the well-being of individuals inside

and outside my enterprise, today and tomorrow.” [3]

What’s the difference between seeing this as a

positive ethical stand in favor of a broad social responsibility held by those in business, and seeing it as

arrogance?

2. Looking at the MBA Oath, can you list a set of values that are probably shared by those responsible for its

creation?

3. All this pledging and oathing suddenly popping up at business schools drew the attention of

the New York Times, and soon after, an article appeared: “A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of

Immorality.” [4]

Many of the readers’ comments at the end are interesting. The commenter paulnyc

writes that “most students go to MBA programs to advance their careers and to earn more

money, pure and simple, and there is nothing wrong with it.” [5]

o What values underlie paulnyc’s perspective?

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o How is paulnyc’s vision different from the one espoused in the oath?

4. The commenter JerryNY wrote, “Greed IS good as long as it is paired with the spirit of fairness.

Virtually all of the major advances in science and technology were made with greed as one of the

motivating factors. Gugliemo [sic] Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, Henry Ford and

Steve Jobs would not have given us the life changing technological advances of our time were it

not for personal greed. Remove that element, and your class is destined for mediocrity.” [6]

Is it plausible to assert that JerryNY shares most of the values of those who wrote the MBA Oath,

it’s just that he sees a different business attitude as the best way to serve those values? If so,

explain. If not, why not?

5. Eric writes,

I would refuse to take that oath…on principle. The idea that an individual’s proper motive

should be to serve “the greater good” is highly questionable. This altruistic ethic is what

supported the collectivist of communism and National Socialism. If my life belongs first and

foremost to “the greater good,” it follows that the greatest virtue is to live as a slave. A

slave’s existence, after all, is devoted primarily for the benefit of his master. The master can

be a plantation owner or a King or an oligarchy or a society that demands your servitude.

The only oath I’d be willing to take is, “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never

live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” [7]

In your own words, contrast the values the MBA Oath supporters espouse with the values the

commenter Eric espouses.

6. The commenter Clyde Wynant is skeptical. He writes this about those who take the MBA Oath:

“Call me hyper-cynical, but I can’t help wondering if a lot of these kids aren’t hoping that having

this ‘pledge’ on their résumé might help them look good.” [8]

Is it unethical to take the pledge without expecting to adhere to it simply because you think it will

help in your job search, or is that strategy just a different kind of ethics? Explain.

7. The commenter Mikhail is skeptical. He writes, “Give me a break…With the next upswing of the

economy, these leeches will be sucking the lifeblood out of our collective economies like the

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champions they truly are!!! Yes, perhaps opportunistic parasites every last one of them—but

really, it’s not their fault—they’re just programmed that way.” [9]

When he says business school students are programmed, what does he mean? If someone is

programmed to be an opportunistic parasite in business, can we blame them for what they do? If

so, how? If not, who should be blamed?

8. The commenter as is skeptical. He writes, “Don’t make me laugh. If they are so concerned about

the ‘greater good,’ go into teaching and nursing.” [10]

Assume the MBA Oath does stress the importance of the greater good, and you too are going into

the economic world with that as a privileged value. How could you respond to the argument that

you really should be doing nursing or something more obviously serving the general good?

9. According to the Times, B-schoolers aren’t lining up for the MBA Oath: only about 20 percent take the

pledge. How could you convince the other 80 percent to sign on?

I.M.P. (It’s My Party)

“Look at them!” he said, his eyes dancing. “That’s what it’s all about, the way the people feel. It’s

not about the sellout performances and the caliber of the bands that appear here. It’s about the

people who buy tickets, having a good time.” [11]

Source: Photo courtesy of Kevin Dooley, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/4530723795/.

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That’s Seth Hurwitz quoted in the Washington Post, talking about his 9:30 Club, a small venue playing

over-the-hill bands on the way down, and fresh acts scratching their way up.

The story’s curious detail is that even though Hurwitz calls his company I.M.P. (It’s My Party), he doesn’t

spend much time at his club. In fact, he’s almost never there. Part of the reason is that his workday begins

at 6 a.m., so he’s actually back in bed preparing for the next day before his enterprise gets going in earnest

each night. His job is straightforward: sitting in the second floor office of his suburban DC home, he

scrutinizes the music publications and statistics, probing for bands that people want to see and that won’t

charge too much to appear. He told the Post that he won’t book an act as a favor, and he won’t flatter a

group into playing his club to keep them away from the competition by overpaying them. “I don’t

subscribe,” he says, “to doing shows that will lose money.”

Hurwitz has been connected with music in one way or another for almost as long as he can remember.

The Post relates some of his early memories:

He rigged a system to broadcast radio from his basement to his parents and brothers in the living

room. “I used to bring my singles into class and play them,” Hurwitz said. When he was 16, he

decided he wanted to be a deejay and got his chance when alternative rock station WHFS gave

him a spot. “It was from 7:45 to 8—fifteen minutes,” he said, laughing. “But that was okay

because I wanted to be on the radio, and I had my own show, as a high school student.” He said

he was fired “for being too progressive.” [12]

It’s a long way from getting fired for playing music too obscure for alternative radio to where Hurwitz is

now: putting on concerts by bands selected because they’ll make money.

Q U E S T I O N S

1. Hurwitz is brutally honest about the fact that he’ll only contract bands capable of turning a profit.

When he was younger and a deejay, he insisted on playing the music he judged best no matter

how many people turned off the radio when his show came on (an attitude that cost him the job).

o What, if anything, is Hurwitz the older concert promoter compromising to get ahead? Is there an

ethical objection that could be raised here? If so, what? If not, why not?

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o When Hurwitz was a deejay, he played records that led people to change the station. Then the

station changed him. Is this an example of business regulating itself? Is there an ethical side to

this, or is it just the way money works? Explain.

o From the information given, would you judge that Hurwitz is successful in business? Why or why

not?

o Are all these questions part of institutional business ethics or personal business ethics? Explain.

2. Hurwitz says that he doesn’t book bands as favors. Presumably at least some of the favors he’s

talking about would be to friends.

o Do people who run their own company have an ethical responsibility to separate friends from

business?

3. One nice thing about Hurwitz working upstairs in his own house is that he can show up for work in the

morning in his pajamas. Should all places of business be like that—with people free to wear whatever they

want for work? Explain your answer from an ethical perspective.

4. Most of Hurwitz’s shows are on weeknights. Some concertgoers may have such a good time that

they can’t make it in to work the next day.

o If you go to a concert on a Wednesday and are too hung over to make it to work on Thursday,

what should you tell your boss on Friday? That you were hung over? That your car broke down?

Something else? Justify.

o Should Hurwitz accept some responsibility and blame for absent employees? Explain.

[1] Connie Guglielmo, “Apple Says Children Were Used to Build iPhone, iPod (Update1),” Bloomberg,

February 27, 2010, accessed May 11, 2011,

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aiEeeQNHkrOY.

[2] “The MBA Oath,” MBA Oath, accessed May 11, 2011, http://mbaoath.org/about/the-mba-oath.

[3] “The MBA Oath,” MBA Oath, accessed May 11, 2011, http://mbaoath.org/about/the-mba-oath.

[4] Leslie Wayne, “A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality,” New York Times, May 29, 2009,

accessed May 11, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html.

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[5] paulnyc, May 30, 2009 (10:58 a.m.), comment on Leslie Wayne, “A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of

Immorality,” New York Times, May 29, 2009, accessed May 11, 2011,

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?sort

=oldest.

[6] JerryNY, May 30, 2009 (10:51 a.m.), comment on Leslie Wayne, “A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of

Immorality,” New York Times, May 29, 2009, accessed May 11, 2011,

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?sort

=oldest.

[7] Eric, May 30, 2009 (10:35 a.m.), comment on Leslie Wayne, “A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of

Immorality,” New York Times, May 29, 2009, accessed May 11, 2011,

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?sort

=oldest.

[8] Clyde Wynant, May 30, 2009 (10:55 a.m.), comment on Leslie Wayne, “A Promise to Be Ethical in an

Era of Immorality,” New York Times, May 29, 2009, accessed May 11, 2011,

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?sort

=oldest.

[9] Mikhail, May 30, 2009 (10:35 a.m.), comment on Leslie Wayne, “A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of

Immorality,” New York Times, May 29, 2009, accessed May 11, 2011,

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?sort

=oldest.

[10] as, May 30, 2009 (10:35 a.m.), comment on Leslie Wayne, “A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of

Immorality,” New York Times, May 29, 2009, accessed May 11, 2011,

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/business/30oath.html?sort

=oldest.

[11] Avis Thomas-Lester, “A Club Owner’s Mojo,” Washington Post, December 28, 2009, accessed May

11, 2011, http://views.washingtonpost.com/on-success/what-it-takes/2009/12/seth_hurwitz.html.

[12] Avis Thomas-Lester, “A Club Owner’s Mojo,” Washington Post, December 28, 2009, accessed May

11, 2011, http://views.washingtonpost.com/on-success/what-it-takes/2009/12/seth_hurwitz.html.

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Chapter 2

Theories of Duties and Rights: Traditional Tools for Making Decisions in Business When the Means Justify

the Ends

Chapter Overview

Chapter 2 "Theories of Duties and Rights: Traditional Tools for Making Decisions in Business When the

Means Justify the Ends" examines some theories guiding ethical decisions in business. It considers ethics

defined by duties and rights.

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2.1 The Means Justify the Ends versus the Ends Justify the

Means

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E

1. Distinguish ethical theory centered on means from theory centered on ends.

A Foundational Question

In business ethics, do the means justify the ends, or do the ends justify the means? Is it better to have a set

of rules telling you what you ought to do in any particular situation and then let the chips fall where they

may, or should you worry more about how things are going to end up and do whatever’s necessary to

reach that goal?

Until recently, Eddy Lepp ran an organic medicine business in Northern California. His herbal product

soothed nausea and remedied vomiting, especially as suffered by chemo patients. He had a problem,

though. While his business had been OK’d by California regulators, federal agencies hadn’t approved: on

the national level, selling his drug was breaking the law. On the other hand, not selling his remedy had a

significant downside: it was consigning his clients to debilitating suffering. So when federal agents came

knocking on his door, he had to make a decision.

If the means justify the ends—if you should follow the rules no matter the consequences—then when the

agents ask Lepp point blank whether he’s selling the medicine, the ethical action is to admit it. He should

tell the truth even though that will mean the end of his business. On the other hand, if the ends justify the

means—if your ethical interest focuses on the consequences of an act instead of what you actually do—

then the ethics change. If there are a law forcing people to suffer unnecessarily, it should be broken. And

when the agents ask him whether he’s selling, he’s going to have an ethical reason to lie.

Across the entire field of traditional ethics, this is a foundational distinction. Is it what you do that

matters, or the consequences? It’s hard to get oriented in ethics without making a preliminary decision

between these two. No one can make the decision for you, but before anyone can make it, an

understanding of how each works should be reached. This chapter will consider ethics as focusing on the

specific act and not the consequences. Theories of duties and rights center discussion.

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Chapter 3 "Theories of Consequence Ethics: Traditional Tools for Making Decisions in Business when the

Ends Justify the Means" is about ethics as looking at the consequences instead of the act.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 When the means justify the ends, ethical consideration focuses on what you do, not the consequences of

what you’ve done.

 Traditionally, focusing on means instead of ends leads to an ethics based on duties or rights.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. Your mother is ill with diabetes, and you can’t afford her medicine. In the pharmacy one day, you notice

the previous customer forgot that same prescription on the counter when she left. Why might the premise

that the ends justify the means lead you to steal the pills?

2. Why might the premise that the means justify the ends lead you to return the pills?

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2.2 Perennial Duties

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define an ethical duty.

2. Distinguish specific duties.

3. Show how ethical duties work in business.

4. Consider advantages and drawbacks of an ethics based on duties.

Duties

“Should I steal that?”

“No, stealing’s wrong.”

Basic ethics. There are things that are right and others that are wrong, and the discussion ends. This level

of clarity and solidity is the main strength of an ethics based on duties. We all have a duty not to steal, so

we shouldn’t do it. More broadly, when we’re making moral decisions, the key to deciding well is

understanding what our duties are and obeying them. An ethics based on duties is one where certain rules

tell us what we ought to do, and it’s our responsibility to know and follow those rules.

The Madoff Family

If we’re supposed to obey our duties, then what exactly are they? That’s a question Andrew Madoff faced

in December 2008 when he learned that some—maybe most, maybe all—of the money he and his family

had been donating to the charitable Lymphoma Research Foundation and similar medical investigation

enterprises was, in fact, stolen.

It was big money—in the millions—channeled to dedicated researchers hot on the trail of a remedy for

lymphoma, a deadly cancer. Andrew, it should be noted, wasn’t only a cancer altruist; he was also a

victim, and the charitable money started flowing to the researchers soon after he was diagnosed.

It’s unclear whether Andrew knew the money was stolen, but there’s no doubt that his dad did. Dad—

Bernard “Bernie” Madoff—was the one who took it. The largest Ponzi scheme in history, they call it.

A Ponzi scheme—named after the famous perpetrator Charles Ponzi—makes suckers of investors by

briefly delivering artificially high returns on their money. The idea is simple: You take $100 from client A,

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promising to invest the money cleverly and get a massive profit. You spend $50 on yourself, and at the

end of the year, you send the other $50 back to the client along with a note saying that the original $100

investment is getting excellent results and another $50 should come in next year and every year from then

on. Happy client A recommends friends, who become clients B, C, and D. They bring in a total of $300, so

it’s easy to make good on the original promise to send a $50 return the next year to client A. And you’ve

now got $250 remaining from these three new clients, $150 of which you will soon return to them ($50

for each of the three new clients), leaving you with $100 to spend on yourself. The process repeats, and it’s

not long before people are lining up to hand over their money. Everyone makes off like bandits.

Bandit is the right term for Madoff, who ran his Ponzi empire for around fifteen years. So many people

handed over so much cash, and the paper trail of fake stock-purchase receipts and the rest grew so

complicated that it’s impossible to determine exact numbers of victims and losses. Federal authorities

have estimated the victims were around five thousand and the losses around $65 billion, which works out

to about $13 million squeezed from each client.

Madoff had, obviously, rich clients. He met them at his home in New York City; at his mansion in hyper-

wealthy Palm Beach, Florida; or on his fifty-five-foot yacht cleverly named Bull. He impressed them with a

calm demeanor and serious knowledge. While it’s true that he was mostly taking clients’ money and

sticking it in his wallet, the investments he claimed to engineer were actually quite sophisticated; they had

to do with buying stock in tandem with options to buy and sell that same stock on the futures market. He

threw in technical words like “put” and “call” and left everyone thinking he was either crazy or a genius.

Since he was apparently making money, “genius” seemed the more likely reality. People also found him

trustworthy. He sat on the boards of several Wall Street professional organizations and was known on the

charity circuit as a generous benefactor. Health research was a favorite, especially after Andrew’s cancer

was diagnosed.

Exactly how much money Madoff channeled to Andrew and other family members isn’t clear. By late

2008, however, Andrew knew that his father’s investment company had hit a rough patch. The stock

market was crashing, investors wanted their money back, and Madoff was having trouble rounding up the

cash, which explains why Andrew was surprised when his father called him in and said he’d decided to

distribute about $200 million in bonuses to family members and employees.

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It didn’t make sense. How could there be a cash-flow crisis but still enough cash to pay out giant bonuses?

The blunt question—according to the Madoff family—broke Madoff down. He spilled the truth: there was

little money left; it was all a giant lie.

The next day, Andrew reported the situation to the authorities.

Madoff sits in jail now. He’ll be there for the rest of his life. He claims his scheme was his project alone

and his children had no knowledge or participation in it, despite the fact that they were high executives in

his fraudulent company. Stubbornly, he has refused to cooperate with prosecutors interested in

determining the extent to which the children may have been involved. His estate has been seized. His

wife, though, was left with a small sum—$2.5 million—to meet her day-to-day living expenses. Bilked

investors got nearly nothing.

One of those investors, according to ABC News, was Sheryl Weinstein. She and her family are now looking

for a place to live because after investing everything with Madoff and losing it, they were unable to make

their house payments. At Madoff’s sentencing hearing, and with her husband seated beside her, she spoke

passionately about their plight and called Madoff a “beast.” The hearing concluded with the judge calling

Madoff “evil.” [1]

Weinstein was well remembered by Madoff’s longtime secretary, Eleanor Squillari. Squillari reported that

Weinstein would often call Madoff and that “he would roll his eyes and then they’d go meet at a hotel.”

Their affair lasted twenty years, right up until the finance empire collapsed.

What Do I Owe Myself? Historically Accumulated Duties to the Self

Over centuries of thought and investigation by philosophers, clergy, politicians, entrepreneurs, parents,

students—by just about everyone who cares about how we live together in a shared world—a limited

number of duties have recurred persistently. Called perennial duties, these are basic obligations we have

as human beings; they’re the fundamental rules telling us how we should act. If we embrace them, we can

be confident that in difficult situations we’ll make morally respectable decisions.

Broadly, this group of perennial duties falls into two sorts:

1. Duties to ourselves

2. Duties to others

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Duties to the self-begin with our responsibility to develop our abilities and talents. The abilities we find

within us, the idea is, aren’t just gifts; it’s not only a strike of luck that some of us are born with a knack

for math, or an ear for music, or the ability to shepherd conflicts between people into agreements. All

these skills are also responsibilities. When we receive them, they come with the duty to develop them, to

not let them go to waste in front of the TV or on a pointless job.

Most of us have a feeling for this. It’s one thing if a vaguely clumsy girl in a ballet class decides to not sign

up the next semester and instead use the time trying to boost her GPA, but if someone who’s really good—

who’s strong, and elegant, and a natural—decides to just walk away, of course the coach and friends are

going to encourage her to think about it again. She has something that so few have, it’s a shame to waste

it; it’s a kind of betrayal of her own uniqueness. This is the spot where the ethics come in: the idea is that

she really should continue her development; it’s a responsibility she has to herself because she really can

develop.

What about Andrew Madoff, the cancer sufferer? He not only donated money to cancer research charities

but also dedicated his time, serving as chairman of the Lymphoma Research Foundation (until his dad

was arrested). This dedication does seem like a duty because of his unique situation: as a sufferer, he

perfectly understood the misery caused by the disease, and as a wealthy person, he could muster a serious

force against the suffering. When he did, he fulfilled the duty to exploit his particular abilities.

The other significant duty to oneself is nearly a corollary of the first: the duty to do ourselves no harm. At

root, this means we have a responsibility to maintain ourselves healthily in the world. It doesn’t do any

good to dedicate hours training the body to dance beautifully if the rest of the hours are dedicated to

alcoholism and Xanax. Similarly, Andrew should not only fight cancer publicly by advocating for medical

research but also fight privately by adhering to his treatment regime.

At the extreme, this duty also prohibits suicide, a possibility that no doubt crosses Bernie Madoff’s mind

from time to time as he contemplates spending the rest of his life in a jail cell.

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What Do I Owe Others? Historically Accumulated Duties to Others

The duties we have to ourselves be the most immediate, but the most commonly referenced duties are

those we have to others.

Avoid wronging others are the guiding duty to those around us. It’s difficult, however, to know exactly

what it means to wrong another in every particular case. It does seem clear that Madoff wronged his

clients when he pocketed their money. The case of his wife is blurrier, though. She was allowed to keep

more than $2 million after her husband’s sentencing. She claims she has a right to it because she never

knew what her husband was doing, and anyway, at least that much money came to her from other

perfectly legal investment initiatives her husband undertook. So she can make a case that the money is

hers to keep and she’s not wronging anyone by holding onto it. Still, it’s hard not to wonder about

investors here, especially ones like Sheryl Weinstein, who lost everything, including their homes.

Honesty is the duty to tell the truth and not leave anything important out. On this front, obviously, Madoff

wronged his investors by misleading them about what was happening with their money.

Respect others are the duty to treat others as equals in human terms. This doesn’t mean treating everyone

the same way. When a four-year-old asks where babies come from, the stork is a fine answer. When adult

investors asked Madoff where the profits came from, what they got was more or less a fairy tale. Now, the

first case is an example of respect: it demonstrates an understanding of another’s capacity to comprehend

the world and an attempt to provide an explanation matching that ability. The second is a lie; but more

than that, it’s a sting of disrespect. When Madoff invented stories about where the money came from, he

disdained his investors as beneath him, treating them as unworthy of the truth.

Beneficence is the duty to promote the welfare of others; it’s the Good Samaritan side of ethical duties.

With respect to his own family members, Madoff certainly fulfilled this obligation: every one of them

received constant and lavish amounts of cash. There’s also beneficence in Andrew’s work for charitable

causes, even if there’s a self-serving element, too. By contrast, Madoff displayed little beneficence for his

clients.

Gratitude is the duty to thank and remember those who help us. One of the curious parts of Madoff’s last

chapter is that in the end, at the sentencing hearing, a parade of witnesses stood up to berate him. But

even though Madoff had donated millions of dollars to charities over the years, not a single person or

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representative of a charitable organization stood up to say something on his behalf. That’s ingratitude, no

doubt.

But there’s more here than ingratitude; there’s also an important point about all ethics guided by basic

duties: the duties don’t exist alone. They’re all part of a single fabric, and sometimes they pull against each

other. In this case, the duty Madoff’s beneficiaries probably felt to a man who’d given them so much was

overwhelmed by the demand of another duty: the duty to respect others, specifically those who lost

everything to Madoff. It’s difficult to imagine a way to treat people more disdainfully than to thank the

criminal who stole their money for being so generous. Those who received charitable contributions from

Madoff were tugged in one direction by gratitude to him and in another by respect for his many victims.

All the receivers opted, finally, to respect the victims.

Fidelity is the duty to keep our promises and hold up our end of agreements. The Madoff case is littered

with abuses on this front. On the professional side, there’s the financier who didn’t invest his clients’

money as he’d promised; on the personal side, there’s Madoff and Weinstein staining their wedding vows.

From one end to the other in terms of fidelity, this is an ugly case.

Reparation is the duty to compensate others when we harm them. Madoff’s wife, Ruth, obviously didn’t

feel much of this. She walked away with $2.5 million.

The judge overseeing the case, on the other hand, filled in some of what Ruth lacked. To pay back bilked

investors, the court seized her jewelry, her art, and her mink and sable coats. Those things, along with the

couple’s three multimillion-dollar homes, the limousines, and the yacht, were all sold at public auction.

The Concept of Fairness

The final duty to be considered—fairness—requires more development than those already listed because

of its complexity.

According to Aristotle, fairness is treating equals equally and un-equals unequally. The treat equals

equally part means, for a professional investor like Madoff, that all his clients get the same deal: those

who invest equal amounts of money at about the same time should get an equal return. So even though

Madoff was sleeping with one of his investors, this shouldn’t allow him to treat her account distinctly from

the ones belonging to the rest. Impartiality must govern the operation.

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The other side of fairness is the requirement to treat un-equals unequally. Where there’s a meaningful

difference between investors—which means a difference pertaining to the investment and not something

extraneous like a romantic involvement—there should correspond a proportional difference in what

investors receive. Under this clause, Madoff could find justification for allowing two distinct rates of

return for his clients. Those that put up money at the beginning when everything seemed riskier could

justifiably receive a higher payout than the one yielded to more recent participants. Similarly, in any

company, if layoffs are necessary, it might make sense to say that those who’ve been working in the

organization longest should be the last ones to lose their jobs. In either case, the important point is

that fairness doesn’t mean everyone gets the same treatment; it means that rules for treating people

must be applied equally. If a corporate executive decides on layoffs according to a last-in-first-out

process, that’s fine, but it would be unfair to make exceptions.

One of the unique aspects of the idea of fairness as a duty is its hybrid status between duties to the self

and duties to others. While it would seem strange to say that we have a duty of gratitude or fidelity to

ourselves, it clearly makes sense to assert that we should be fair to ourselves. Impartiality—the rule of no

exceptions—means no exceptions. So a stock investor who puts his own money into a general fund he runs

should receive the same return as everyone else. A poor investment that loses 10 percent should cost him

no more than 10 percent (he has to be fair to himself), and one that gains 10 percent shouldn’t net him

any more than what the others receive (he has to be fair to others).

Modern Fairness: Rawls

The recent American philosopher John Rawls proposes a veil of ignorance as a way of testing for fairness,

especially with respect to the distribution of wealth in general terms. For example, in society as Madoff

knew it, vast inequalities of wealth weren’t only allowed, they were honored: being richer than anyone else

was something to be proud of, and Madoff lived that reality full tilt. Now, if you asked Madoff whether

we should allow some members of society to be much wealthier than others, he might say that’s fair:

everyone is allowed to get rich in America, and that’s just what he did. However, the guy coming into

Madoff’s office at 3 a.m. to mop up and empty the trash might see things differently. He may claim to

work just as hard as Madoff, but without getting fancy cars or Palm Springs mansions. People making the

big bucks, the suggestion could follow, should get hit with bigger taxes and the money used to provide

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educational programs allowing guys from the cleaning crew to get a better chance at climbing the income

ladder. Now, given these two perspectives, is there a way to decide what’s really fair when it comes to

wealth and taxes?

Rawls proposes that we try to re-imagine society without knowing what our place in it would be. In the

case of Madoff, he may like things as they are, but would he stick with the idea that everything’s fair if he

were told that a rearrangement was coming and he was going to get stuck back into the business world at

random? He might hesitate there, seeing that he could get dealt a bad hand and, yes, end up being the guy

who cleans offices. And that guy who cleans offices might figure that if he got a break, then he’d be the rich

one, and so he’s no longer so sure about raising taxes. The veil of ignorance is the idea that when you set

up the rules, you don’t get to know beforehand where you’ll fall inside them, which is going to force you to

construct things in a way that is really balanced and fair.

As a note here, nearly all children know the veil of ignorance perfectly. When two friends together buy a

candy bar to split, they’ll frequently have one person break it, and the other choose a half. If you’re the

breaker, you’re under the veil of ignorance since you don’t know which half you’re going to get. The result

is you break it fairly, as close to the middle as you can.

Balancing the Duties

Duties include those to

 develop abilities and talents,

 do ourselves no harm,

 avoid wronging others,

 honesty,

 respect others,

 beneficence,

 gratitude,

 fidelity,

 reparation,

 fairness,

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Taken on their own, each of these plugs into normal experience without significant problems. Real

troubles come, though, when more than one duty seems applicable and they’re pulling in different

directions.

Take Andrew Madoff, for example. Lying in bed at night and taking his ethical duties seriously, what

should he do in the wake of the revelation that his family business was in essence a giant theft? On one

side, there’s an argument that he should just keep on keeping on by maintaining his life as a New York

financier. The route to justifying that decision starts with a duty to him:

 Develop abilities and talents. As an expert in finance, someone with both knowledge of and

experience in the field, Andrew should continue cultivating and perfecting his talents, at least those he

had acquired on the legitimate side of the family’s dealings.

Beyond the duty to himself, Andrew can further buttress his decision to keep his current life going by

referencing a duty to others:

 Beneficence. This may demand that Andrew continue along the lines he’d already established because

they enabled his involvement with cancer research. He’s got money to donate to the cause and his very

personal experience with the disease allows rare insight into what can be done to help sufferers. To the

extent that’s true, beneficence supports Andrew’s decision to go on living as he had been.

On the other side, what’s the duty-based argument in favor of Andrew taking a different path by breaking

away from his old lifestyle and dedicating all his energy and time to doing what he can for the jilted

investors the family business left behind?

 Respect. The duty to treat others as equals demands that Andrew take seriously the abilities and lives of

all those who lost everything. Why should they be reduced to powerlessness and poverty while he

continues maximizing his potential as a stock buyer and nonprofit leader? Respecting others and their

losses may mean leaving his profession and helping them get back on their feet.



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 Reparation. This duty advances as the proposal for Andrew to liquidate his assets and divide the money

as fairly as possible among the ruined investors. It may be that Andrew didn’t orchestrate the family Ponzi

scheme, but wittingly or not, he participated and that opens the way to the duty to repayment.

So which path should Andrew follow? There’s no certain answer. What duties do allow Andrew—or

anyone considering his situation—to achieve is a solid footing for making a reasonable and defendable

decision. From there, the ethical task is to weigh the various duties and choose which ones pull harder and

make the stronger demand.

Where Do Duties Come From?

The question about the origin of duties belongs to meta-ethics, to purified discussions about the theory of

ethics as opposed to its application, so it falls outside this book’s focus. Still, two commonly cited sources

of duties can be quickly noted.

One standard explanation is that duties are written into the nature of the universe; they’re part of the way

things are. In a sense, they’re a moral complement to the laws of physics. We know that scientists form

mathematical formulas to explain how far arrows will travel when shot at a certain speed; these formulas

describe the way the natural world is. So too in the realm of ethics: duties are the rules describing how the

world is in moral terms. On this account, ethics isn’t so different from science; it’s just that scientists

explore physical reality and ethicists explore moral reality. In both cases, however, the reality is already

there; we’re just trying to understand it.

Another possible source for the duties is humanity in the sense that part of what it means to be human is

to have this particular sense of right and wrong. Under this logic, a computer-guided robot may beat

humans in chess, but no machine will ever understand what a child does when mom asks, “Did you break

the vase? Tell me the truth.” Maybe this moral spark children are taken to feel is written into their genetic

code, or maybe it’s something ineffable, like a soul. Whichever, the reason it comes naturally is because

it’s part of our nature.

What Are the Advantages and Drawbacks of an Ethics Based on Duties?

One of the principal advantages of working with an ethics of duties is simplicity: duties are fairly easy to

understand and work with. We all use them every day. For many of us these duties are the first thing

coming to mind when we hear the word ethics. Straightforward rules about honesty, gratitude, and

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keeping up our ends of agreements—these are the components of a common education in ethics, and most

of us are well experienced in their use.

The problem, though, comes when the duties pull against each other: when one says yes and the other

says no. Unfortunately, there’s no hard-and-fast rule for deciding which duties should take precedence

over the others.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Duties include responsibilities to one self and to others.

 Duties do not exist in isolation but in a network, and they sometimes pull against each other.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. Bernie Madoff was a very good—though obviously not a perfect—fraudster. He got away with a lot for a

long time. How could the duty to develop one’s own abilities be mustered to support his decision to

become a criminal?

2. In the Madoff case, what duties could be mustered to refute the conclusion that he did the right thing by

engaging in fraud?

3. Madoff gave up most of his money and possessions and went to jail for his crimes. Is there anything else

he should have done to satisfy the ethical duty of reparation?

4. In your own words, what does it mean to treat equals equally and un-equals unequally?

[1] Brian Ross, Anna Schecter, and Kate McCarthy, “Bernie Madoff's Other Secret: His Hadassah CFO

Mistress,” ABCNews.com, April 16, 2011, accessed May 11,

2011,http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Madoff/story?id=8319695&page=1.

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2.3 Immanuel Kant: The Duties of the Categorical Imperative

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative.

2. Show how the categorical imperative functions in business.

3. Consider advantages and drawbacks of an ethics based on the categorical imperative.

Kant

German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) accepted the basic proposition that a theory of duties—

a set of rules telling us what we’re obligated to do in any particular situation—was the right approach to

ethical problems. What he set out to add, though, was a stricter mechanism for the use of duties in our

everyday experience. He wanted a way to get all these duties we’ve been talking about to work together, to

produce a unified recommendation, instead of leaving us confused between loyalty to one principle and

another. At least on some basic issues, Kant set out to produce ethical certainty.

Lying is about as primary as issues get in ethics, and the Madoff case is shot through with it:

 Bernie Madoff always claimed that the Ponzi scheme wasn’t the original idea. He sought money from

investors planning to score big with complicated financial maneuvers. He took a few losses early on,

though, and faced the possibility of everyone just taking their cash and going home. That’s when he

started channeling money from new investors to older ones, claiming the funds were the fruit of his

excellent stock dealing. He always intended, Madoff says, to get the money back, score some huge

successes, and they’d let him get on the straight and narrow again. It never happened. But that doesn’t

change the fact that Madoff thought it would. He was lying temporarily, and for the good of everyone in

the long run.

 Sheryl Weinstein had a twenty-year affair with Madoff. She also invested her family’s life savings with

him. When the Ponzi scheme came undone, she lost everything. To get some money back, she considered

writing a tell-all, and that led to a heart-wrenching decision between money and her personal life. Her

twenty-year dalliance was not widely known, and things could have remained that way: her husband and

son could’ve gone on without the whole world knowing that the husband was a cuckold and the son the

product of a poisoned family. But they needed money because they’d lost everything, including their

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home, in Madoff’s scam. So does she keep up the false story or does she turn the truth into a profit

opportunity?

What does Kant say about all this? The answer is his categorical imperative. An imperative is something

you need to do. A hypothetical imperative is something you need to do, but only in certain circumstances;

for example, I have to eat, but only in those circumstances where I’m hungry. A categorical imperative, by

contrast, is something you need to do all the time: there are ethical rules that don’t depend on the

circumstances, and it’s the job of the categorical imperative to tell us what they are. Here, we will consider

two distinct expressions of Kant’s categorical imperative, two ways that guidance is provided.

First Version of the Categorical Imperative

The first version or expression of the categorical imperative: Act in a way that the rule for your action

could be universalized. When you’re thinking about doing something, this means you should imagine

that everyone did it all the time. Now, can this make sense? Can it happen? Is there a world you can

imagine where everyone does this thing that you’re considering at every opportunity? Take the case of

Madoff asking himself, “Should I lie to keep investor money flowing in?” What we need to do is imagine

this act as universalized: everyone lies all the time. Just imagine that. You ask someone whether it’s sunny

outside. It is sunny, but they say, “No, it’s raining.” The next day you ask someone else. Again, it’s sunny,

but they say, “No, it’s snowing.” This goes on day after day. Pretty soon, wouldn’t you just give up listening

to what people say? Here’s the larger point: if everyone lies all the time, pretty soon people are going to

stop listening to anyone. And if no one’s listening, is it possible to lie to them?

What Kant’s categorical imperative shows is that lying cannot be universalized. The act of lying can’t

survive in a world where everyone’s just making stuff up all the time. Since no one will be taking anyone

else seriously, you may try to sell a false story but no one will be buying.

Something similar happens in comic books. No one accuses authors and illustrators of lying when Batman

kicks some bad guys into the next universe and then strips off his mask and his hair is perfect. That’s not a

lie; it’s fiction. And fictional stories can’t lie because no one expects they’ll tell the truth. No one asks

whether it’s real or fake, only whether it’s entertaining. The same would go in the real world if everyone

lied all the time. Reality would be like a comic: it might be fun, or maybe not, but accusing someone of

lying would definitely be absurd.

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Bringing this back to Madoff, as Kant sees it he has to make a basic decision: should I lie to investors to

keep my operation afloat? The answer is no. According to the categorical imperative, it must be no, not

because lying is directly immoral, but because lying cannot be universalized and therefore it’s immoral.

The same goes for Sheryl Weinstein as she wonders whether she should keep the lid on her family-

wrecking affair. The answer is no because the answer is always no when the question is whether I should

lie. You might want to respond by insisting, “She’s already done the deed and Bernie’s in jail so it’s not

going to happen again. The best thing at this point would be for her to just keep her mouth shut and hold

her family together as best she can.” That’s a fair argument. But for Kant it’s also a loser because the

categorical imperative gives the last word. There’s no appeal. There’s no lying, no matter what.

One more point about the universalization of acts: even if you insist that a world could exist where

everyone lied all the time, would you really want to live there? Most of us don’t mind lying so much as

long as we’re the ones getting away with it. But if everyone’s doing it, that’s different. Most of us might

agree that if we had a choice between living in a place where everyone told the truth and one where

everyone lied, we’d go for the honest reality. It just makes sense: lying will help you only if you’re the sole

liar, but if everyone’s busy taking advantage of everyone else, then there’s nothing in it for you, and you

might just as well join everyone in telling the truth.

Conclusion. The first expression of the categorical imperative—act in such a way that the rule for your

action could be universalized—is a consistency principle. Like the golden rule (treat others as you’d like to

be treated), it forces you to ask how things would work if everyone else did what you’re considering doing.

Objections to the First Version of the Categorical Imperative

One of the objections to this ethical guidance is that a reality without lying can be awfully uncomfortable.

If your boss shows up for work on a Friday wearing one of those designer dresses that looks great on a

supermodel and ridiculous everywhere else, and she asks what you think, what are you going to say?

“Hideous”? Telling the truth no matter what, whether we’re at work or anywhere else, is one of those

things that sounds good in the abstract but is almost impossible to actually live by.

Then the problem gets worse. A deranged addict storms into your office announcing that he’s just received

a message from the heavens. While chewing manically on dirty fingernails, he relates that he’s supposed

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to attack someone named Jones—anyone named Jones. “What,” he suddenly demands, “is your name?”

Unfortunately, you happen to be named Sam Jones. Now what?

Second Version of the Categorical Imperative

The second expression of the categorical imperative is: Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an

end. To treat people as ends, not means is to never use anyone to get something else. People can’t be tools

or instruments; they can’t be things you employ to get to what you really want. A simple example of using

another as a means would be striking up a friendship with Chris because you really want to meet his wife

who happens to be a manager at the advertising company you desperately want to work for.

It’d be hard to imagine a clearer case of this principle being broken than that of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.

He used the money from each new investor to pay off the last one. That means every investor was nothing

but a means to an end: everyone was nothing more than a way to keep the old investors happy and attract

new ones.

Madoff’s case of direct theft is clear cut, but others aren’t quite so easy. If Weinstein goes ahead and writes

her tell-all about life in bed with Madoff, is she using him as a means to her end (which is making

money)? Is she using book buyers? What about her husband and the suffering he would endure? It can be

difficult to be sure in every case exactly what it means to “use” another person.

Another example comes from Madoff’s son, Andrew, who donated time and money to the cause of treating

cancer. On one hand, this seems like a generous and beneficial treatment of others. It looks like he’s

valuing them as worthwhile and good people who deserve to be saved from a disease. On the other hand,

though, when you keep in mind that Andrew too had cancer, you wonder whether he’s just using other

peoples’ suffering to promote research so that he can be saved.

Summarizing, where the first of the categorical imperative’s expressions was a consistency principle (treat

others the way you want to be treated), this is a dignity principle: treat others with respect and as holding

value in themselves. You will act ethically, according to Kant, as long as you never accept the temptation

to treat others as a way to get something else.

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Objections to the Second Version of the Categorical Imperative

The principal objection to this aspect of Kant’s theory is that, like the previous, it sounds good in the

abstract, but when you think about how it would actually work, things become difficult.

Almost all businesses require treating people as means and not as ends. In the grocery store, the cashier

isn’t waiting there to receive your respectful attention. She’s there to run your items through the scanner

and that’s it. The same goes for the guy in the produce section setting up the banana display. Really,

just paying someone to do a job—no matter what the job might be—is treating them as a means to an end,

as little more than a way to get the work done.

If that’s right, then you’re not going too far by wondering whether the entire modern world of jobs and

money would unravel if we all suddenly became Kantians. Paying a janitor to clean up after hours, a

paralegal to proofread a lawyer’s briefs, a day-care worker to keep peace among children at recess, all

these treatments of others seem to fail Kant’s test.

Defenders of Kant understand all this perfectly and can respond. One argument is that providing someone

with a job is not treating them as a means to your ends; instead, by allowing them the opportunity to earn

a living, you’re actually supporting their projects and happiness. Seen this way, hiring people is not

denigrating them, it’s enabling. And far from being immoral in the Kantian sense, it’s ethically

recommendable.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 The first expression of Kant’s categorical imperative requires that ethical decisions be universalizable.

 The second expression of Kant’s categorical imperative requires that ethical decisions treat others as ends

and not means.

 Kant’s conception of ethical duties can provide clear guidance but at the cost of inflexibility: it can be hard

to make the categorical imperative work in everyday life.

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R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. Imagine Madoff lied to attain his clients’ money as he did, but instead of living the high life, he donated

everything to charity. For Kant, does this remove the ethical stain from his name? Why not?

2. Think back to your first job, whatever it was. Did you feel like you were used by the organization, or did

you feel like they were doing you a favor, giving you the job? How does the experience relate to the

imperative to treat others as an end and not a means?

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2.4 Rights

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define an ethical right.

2. Distinguish specific rights.

3. Show how ethical rights work in business.

4. Consider advantages and drawbacks of an ethics based on rights.

Rights

An ethics based on rights is similar to an ethics based on duties. In both cases specific principles provide

ethical guidance for your acts, and those principles are to be obeyed regardless of the consequences

further down the line. Unlike duties, however, rights-based ethics concentrate their force in delineating

your possibilities. The question isn’t so much What are you morally required to do; it’s more about

defining exactly where and when you’re free to do whatever you want and then deciding where you need

to stop and make room for other people to be free too. Stated slightly differently, duties tend to be ethics

as what you can’t do, and rights tend to be about what you can do.

My Property, My Religion, My Nonprofit Organization, My Health Care, My

Grass

Charles Edward “Eddy” Lepp is in jail now, in a prison not too far away from the site of the business that

got him in trouble: Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens and Ministry. What was Eddy Lepp the gardener and

minister up to on his twenty-acre property near a lake in California, about a hundred miles north from

San Francisco? Here are the highlights:

 Ministry. Lepp claims—and there doesn’t seem to be anyone who disputes him—that he’s an authentic

Rastafarian reverend.

 Rastafarianism. Developed over the last century in Africa and the Caribbean, the religion works within

the basic structure of Christianity but contains important innovations. Haile Selassie I was the emperor of

Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974 and, according to the faith, was also the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

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Further, marijuana—called ganja by believers—accompanies religious meetings and ceremonies; it brings

adherents closer to God.

 Lepp’s Medicinal Gardens. In fact, this wasn’t a garden so much as a collective farm. Lepp oversaw

the work of volunteers—their numbers totaling about two hundred—and did some harvesting and

planting himself. Many of the farm’s marijuana leaves were smoked by the 2,500 members of his zonked-

out church as part of Rastafarian celebrations and meetings, and the rest was, according to Lepp,

distributed to individuals with serious health problems.

 Marijuana and health care. Studies indicate that in some patients marijuana may alleviate nausea

and vomiting, especially as connected with chemotherapy. There’s also a list of further symptoms and

maladies the drug could relieve, according to some evidence. It should be noted here that many suspect

the persons conducting these studies (not to mention the patients receiving the testing) are favorably

predisposed toward marijuana in the first place, and the prejudice may contaminate conclusions. What’s

certain is that from a strictly medical perspective, the question about marijuana’s utility remains

controversial. Among those who are convinced, however, smoking is a good remedy. That’s why in

California patients have been granted a legal right to possess and use marijuana medicinally, as long as

they’ve got a doctor’s approval. Unfortunately for Lepp, California law can’t bar federal prosecutions, and

it was the US Drug Enforcement Administration from all the way out in Washington, DC, that eventually

came after him. [1]

About retirement age now, Eddy Lepp is one of those guys who never really left Woodstock. Before being

incarcerated, he slumped around in tie-dyes and jeans. He liked wearing a hat emblazoned with the

marijuana leaf. Out on his semirural farm, he passed the days smoking joints and listening to Bob Marley

music.

Everyone seems to like the guy. A longtime activist for the legalization of marijuana, he’s even something

of a folk hero in Northern California. At his sentencing, the crowd (chanting “free Eddy!”) spilled out into

the courthouse hallways. The judge didn’t seem to mind the spectacle, and she went out of her way to say

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she didn’t want to hit him with ten years of jail time, but federal guidelines gave her no choice. Now

there’s talk of a pardon.

Like Bernie Madoff, Lepp was touched by cancer. Madoff’s son Andrew was stricken and so was Lepp’s

wife. She died. Also, like Madoff, Lepp was a businessman. Madoff made millions and lived in luxury

while robbing investors; Lepp made enough to scrape by from his ministry and farming enterprises.

What’s a Right?

One definition of a right in ethics is a justified claim against others. I have the right to launch a gardening

business or a church enterprise or both on my property, and you’re not allowed to simply storm in and

ruin things. You do have the right, however, to produce your own garden company and church on your

property. On my side, I have the right to free speech, to say whatever I want no matter how outrageous

and you can’t stop me. You can, however, say whatever you want, too; you can respond to my words with

whatever comes into your head or just ignore me completely. A right, in sum, is something you may do if

you wish, and others are morally obligated to permit your action.

Duties tend to be protective in nature; they’re about assuring that people aren’t mistreated. Rights are the

flip side; they’re liberating in nature, they’re about assuring that you’re as free as possible.

Because rights theory maximizes choices in the name of ethics, it’s not surprising that Lepp built his court

defense on that ground. Lepp fought the law by maintaining that his medical gardens business and church

operations involved his land and his religion. It wasn’t that he had a right to grow pot or pray to a specific

God; that had nothing to do with it. The point is he had a right to do whatever he wanted on that land,

and believe in whatever he wanted in his mind. That’s what rights are about. As opposed to duties that fix

on specific acts, rights ethics declares that there are places (like my land) where the acts don’t matter. As

long as no one else’s rights are being infringed on, I’m free.

Finally, duties tend to be community oriented: they’re about how we get along with others. Rights tend to

center on the individual and what he or she can do regardless of whether anyone else is around or not.

That explains why a duty-based ethics coheres more easily with a scene like the one Madoff provoked, a

situation that involves winners and losers, criminals and victims. On the other side, an ethics based on

rights is more convenient for Lepp and his gardening and religious enterprises. Though he ended up in

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jail, there were no obvious victims of his crimes; at least no one complained that they’d been mistreated or

victimized as individuals.

What Are the Characteristics of Rights?

English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) maintained that rights are

 Universal. The fundamental rights don’t transform as you move from place to place or change with the

years.

 Equal. They’re the same for all, men and women, young and old.

 Inalienable. They can’t be taken, they can’t be sold, and they can’t be given away. We can’t not have

them. This leads to a curious paradox at the heart of rights theory. Freedom is a bedrock right, but

we’re not free to sell ourselves into slavery. We can’t because freedom is the way we are; since freedom is

part of my essence, it can’t go away without me disappearing too.

What Rights Do I Have?

The right to life is just what it sounds like: Lepp, you, and I should be able to go through our days without

worrying about someone terminating our existence. This right is so deeply embedded in our culture that it

almost seems unnecessary to state, but we don’t need to stretch too far away from our time and place to

find scenes of the right’s trampling. Between the world wars, Ukraine struggled for independence from

Joseph Stalin’s neighboring Russia. Stalin sealed the borders and sent troops to destroy all food in the

country. Millions died from starvation. Less dramatically but more contemporaneously, the right to life

has been cited as an argument against capital punishment.

The right to freedom guarantees individuals that they may do as they please, assuming their actions don’t

encroach on the freedom of others. In a business environment, this assures entrepreneurs like Lepp and

Madoff that they may mount whatever business operation they choose. Lepp’s garden and ministry were

surely unorthodox, but that can’t be a reason for its prohibition.

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Similarly, within a company, the right to freedom protects individuals against abuse. No boss can demand

more from an employee than what that employee has freely agreed—frequently through a signed

contract—to provide.

On the other side, however, there are questions about how deeply this basic right extends through day-to-

day working life. For example, the freewheeling Lepp probably wasn’t too concerned about the clothes his

volunteer workers chose to wear out in the garden, but what about clothes in Madoff’s investment house?

He was serving wealthy, urban clients in suits and ties. What would their reaction be to a junior

investment advisor just out of college who shows up for a meeting in a tie-dye and jeans? Some clients, it’s

safe to say, would head for the exit. Now, what recourse does boss Madoff have when the casual employee

says, “Look, it’s a free country; I can wear whatever I want”? Within a rights theory of ethics, it must be

conceded that the employee is correct. It’s also true, however, that Madoff has rights too—specifically, the

freedom to fire the guy. What can be taken from this is that, as a general rule, the enabling side of a right

ethics is that you can do whatever you want, but the limiting and controlling side is that the same goes for

everyone else.

From the right to freedom, other rights seem to derive naturally. The right to free speech is tremendously

important in the commercial world. Lepp’s messages to his Rasta flock may have provoked skepticism in

some listeners, but no one doubts that he had a right to voice his ideas. The same goes for Madoff’s

exuberant claims concerning his investing strategy. Crucially, the same also goes for those on the other

side of Madoff’s claims; the same freedom Madoff enjoyed also allowed whistle-blowers to answer back

that it’s impossible to legitimately realize such constant and high profits. In fact, in the case of Madoff’s

investment company, whistle-blowers did say that, repeatedly. No one listened, though. The right of free

speech doesn’t guarantee a hearing.

The right to religious expression also follows from basic freedom. It guaranteed Lepp the space he needed

to pioneer his particular brand of gardening Rastafarianism in Northern California. His is, obviously, a

weird case, but the right works in more traditional workplaces, too. USA Today [2]

reported a case where

Muslim workers were fired from their jobs in several meatpacking plants in the Midwest because they left

the production line in the middle of the day without authorization to go outside and pray. The workers’

response? They filed a lawsuit claiming their right to religious expression had been violated.

No doubt it had been.

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But the company’s response is also weighty. According to the article, “The problem with the Muslim

prayer request is that it’s not one day or annual, it’s every day and multiple times. Further, those times

shift over the course of the year based on the sun’s position.”

The result, according to the company, is that scheduling becomes very difficult, and those who aren’t

Muslim find it nearly impossible to keep working when they’re getting abandoned so frequently during

the day. Here we’re confronted with a very basic conflict of rights. While no one doubts that freedom

exists to practice a religion, isn’t it also true that the company—or the company owners if we want to cast

this in personal terms—have a right to set up a business in whatever manner they choose, with breaks

scheduled for certain times and worker responsibilities strictly defined? In the end, the question about

Muslim workers leaving the work floor to pray isn’t about one kind of religion or another; it’s not

Christians against Muslims or something similar. The question is about which right takes precedence: the

owners’ right to set up and run a company as they wish or the employees’ right to express their beliefs how

and when they choose.

From an ethical perspective—which doesn’t necessarily correlate with a legal one—the resolution to this

dilemma and any clash about conflicting rights runs through the question of whether there’s a way to

protect the basic rights of both groups. It runs that way because rights are fundamentally about that,

about maximizing freedom. In this case, it seems that firing the workers does achieve that goal. The

owners’ initiative inside their company is protected, and the workers are now able to pray when they

desire.

To be sure, other ethical approaches will yield different outcomes, but in the midst of rights theory where

individual liberty is the guiding rule and the maximization of freedom is the overriding goal, it’s difficult

for other concerns to get traction. So it may be that the community as a whole is better served by looking

for a solution that allows Muslims to maintain their prayer schedule while also allowing the plant to

continue functioning in a normal way. Even if that’s true, however, it’s not going to affect a rights-theory

resolution very much because this kind of ethics privileges what you and I can do over what we can do

together. It’s an ethics of individualism.

The right to pursue happiness sits beside the right to life and the right to freedom at the foundation of

rights ethics. The pursuit gives final direction and meaning to the broad theory. Here’s how: it doesn’t do

much good to be alive if you’re not free, so freedom orients the right to life. It also doesn’t do much good

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to be free if you can’t pursue happiness, so the right to pursue happiness orients freedom. That’s the

organizing reasoning of ethical rights; it’s how the theory holds together. This reasoning leaves behind,

however, the difficult question as to exactly where the pursuit of happiness leads.

In an economic context, one way of concretizing the pursuit of happiness is quite important: it’s

our right to possessions and the fruits of our work. What’s ours, along with what we make or earn, we

have a right to keep and use as we wish. Among rights theorists, this particular right attracts a staunch

group of advocates. Called libertarians, they understand liberty as especially reflected in the right to

dominion over what’s ours.

Libertarianism is arguably the most muscular area of rights theory, and it’s the one where most conflicts—

and most stands in the name of personal rights and the pursuit of happiness—take place. This is definitely

where Lepp made his stand. A frequently viewed YouTube video reveals exactly what standing up for

libertarian rights looks like. In the clip, police have been called to Lepp’s Medicinal Gardens. The squad

car pulls up the long dirt road, and Lepp goes out to stop it. This is their conversation:

Lepp:

I am demanding that if you do not have a warrant that you leave. You are illegally on my

property and I am demanding that you leave!

Police

officer: (Into his radio) Can I get some help up here?

Lepp: This is private property. This is a church function. Again, I am asking, if you do not—

Police

officer: You can ask all you want, Mr. Lepp, but I’m not leaving.

Lepp:

Please leave my property! Under what authority are you standing here? Sir, I am demanding

that you tell me under what authority are you violating my rights!

Police

officer:

Under no authority, Mr. Lepp. As soon as my sergeant gets here, he’ll advise you of whatever he

wants to advise you of.

Lepp: Fine, then I suggests you go down and wait for him at the bottom of my property!

The officer stands there silently.

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This is the kind of scene that makes libertarians’ blood boil. Lepp, decked out in a t-shirt emblazoned with

a marijuana leaf, actually stays fairly mellow, but he makes his point. He makes two points actually, and

they need to be distinguished. The first is a legal point; it’s the question about whether the officer has a

warrant. The officer doesn’t, but the second point—“under what authority are you violating my rights”—

goes beyond the legal and into the ethical. Lepp believes the land is his and he’s not infringing on anyone

else’s freedoms, and therefore, he can do what he wants and the police should leave him alone.

The officer isn’t quite sure how to reply to this, which is understandable. It is because this case displays a

clear separation between the law on one side and an ethical reality on the other. Moreover, the two appear

not only separate but also incompatible; it’s difficult to see any way to bring them together. With respect

to the law, the case is clear: Lepp was growing massive amounts of marijuana on his farm and growing it

for distribution. Federal law explicitly prohibits both the growing and the distributing. It’s unambiguous.

It’s also clear that Lepp was doing it since you could see the crop from the public highway passing by his

fields. Everyone saw that marijuana was growing, that people were harvesting it, and that they were

planting more. As far as the law goes, Lepp really had no leg to stand on. Once the DEA found out about

him, they didn’t have any choice but to bring him in. But ethically—and in terms of rights theory—there

seems to be equal clarity going in the other direction. There were few complaints about Lepp’s activities.

No one was hurt, and it was his land. It’s hard to see within a libertarian perspective any way to justify the

police harassment, the legal proceedings, or the jail term Lepp ended up getting. This doesn’t mean Lepp

was treated unjustly; it only means that whatever justice was served on him, it wasn’t libertarian.

Libertarianism in the Economic World

Lepp wasn’t a big-time businessman. His medicinal garden enterprise produced enough income to get

him through the day and little more. When he went to court, he needed a public assistance attorney (not

that it would’ve made any difference). But the issues he brings forward reverberate through the business

world. Here are a few hypothetical scenarios where libertarian ethics comes into play:

 A massive brewery is constructed upstream from farmland and soaks up most of the water to make beer,

leaving the downstream farms with almost nothing for irrigation. It’s the brewery’s land, so can’t the

owners do what they want with the water running through it?

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A strong libertarian argument offers a reason to say yes. Even though it’s true that others will be severely

harmed by the act, an ethics that begins with the freedom to have what’s mine doesn’t buckle before the

demands of others. Now, compare this outcome with the guidance offered by Kant’s categorical

imperative, the idea that any act must be universalized. Within this framework the opposite conclusion is

reached because if everyone just dammed up the water channeling through his or her land, then the

brewer wouldn’t even have the choice: no water would be flowing across the land in the first place. So a

duty-oriented ethics leads toward a solution that is more favorable for the larger community, where a

rights-based perspective leaves more room for individuality but at the cost of the interests of others.

 Bernie Madoff didn’t start off rich. His father was a plumber in Queens. Even before launching his Ponzi

scheme, he became wealthy by working hard, being smart, and investing wisely. He grew an investment

house from scratch to being among the most prominent in New York. His annual income hit the millions

even without the Ponzi stuff. Possibly, there was an administrative assistant of some kind there with him

from the beginning. She was hired at, say, $32,000 annually. Years later, Madoff is rich, and she’s at

$36,000. She still arrives at work in her beater car while Madoff gets the limousine treatment. Is this fair?

A strong libertarian position gives Madoff a reason to say yes. The wealth did accumulate from his efforts,

not hers. If Madoff hadn’t been there the money wouldn’t have come in, but, if she’d quit on the first day,

he would’ve hired someone else and the end result probably wouldn’t have been much different. The

money, in other words, grew because of Madoff’s efforts, therefore it’s his, and therefore there’s no ethical

obligation to spread it around.

On the other hand, a duty-based orientation would generate concerns about gratitude and respect. These

perennial duties leave room for wealth redistribution. The argument is that Madoff owes the assistant a

higher wage not because of her work performance but as a show of gratitude for her contribution over the

years. Similarly, the duty of respect for others doesn’t demand that everyone be treated equally. It doesn’t

mean everyone should get the same wage, but it does demand that people be respected as equals. This

implies taking into account that the assistant’s efforts were prolonged and significant, just like Madoff’s,

and therefore she should receive a salary more commensurate with his.

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Negative and Positive Rights

The ethics of rights can be categorized as negative rights and positive rights. Negative rights are

fundamental. They require others to not interfere with me and whatever I’m doing. The right to life is the

requirement that others not harm me, the right to freedom is the requirement that others not interfere

with me, the right to speech requires that others not silence me, the right to my possessions and the fruits

of my labors require that others let me keep and use what’s mine.

Positive rights, by contrast, are closer to traditional duties. They’re obligations others have to help protect

and preserve my basic, negative rights. For example, the right to life doesn’t only require (negatively) that

people not harm me, but it also requires (positively) that they come to my aid in life-threatening

situations. If I’m in a car wreck, my right to life requires bystanders to call an ambulance. So if an

individual with a rights-based philosophy and an individual with a duty-based philosophy both arrive on a

crash scene, they’ll do the same thing—just for different reasons. The rights person calls for help to protect

the victim’s right to life; the duties person calls to fulfill the duty to beneficence, the duty to look out for

the welfare of others.

Positive rights can be drawn out to great lengths. For example, the argument is sometimes made that my

basic right to freedom is worthless if I don’t have my health and basic abilities to operate in the world.

This may lead a rights theorist to claim that society owes its member’s health care, education, housing,

and even money in the case of unemployment. Typically, these positive rights are called welfare rights.

Welfare, in this context, doesn’t mean government handouts but minimal social conditions that allow the

members to fully use their intrinsic liberty and pursue happiness with some reasonable hope for success.

The hard question accompanying positive rights is: where’s the line? At what point does my responsibility

to promote the rights of others impinge on my own freedom, my own pursuit of happiness, and my own

life projects?

Rights in Conflict

The deepest internal problems with rights ethics arise when rights conflict. Abortion is a quick, hot-button

example. On one side (pro-life), support comes from the initial principle: a human being, born or not, has

a right to life, which may not be breached. On the other side (pro-choice), every person’s original freedom

over themselves and their bodies ends all discussion. Now, one of the reasons this debate is so intractable

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is that both sides find equally strong support within the same basic ethical framework. There’s no way to

decide without infringing on one right or the other.

A complementary case arose around Lepp’s Rasta religious gatherings. Though many of his neighbors

didn’t care, there were a few who objected to having what was essentially mini-Woodstock on the land

next door. It was impossible, of course, for Lepp to entirely contain the noise, the smoke from fires, the

traffic congestion, and the rest entirely on his property. The question is when does my right to do what I

want on my land need to be curtailed so that your right to dominion over yours isn’t soiled?

Broadening further, there’s the question about Lepp growing marijuana for medicinal purposes. On one

side, a rights theory supports his inclination to grow what he wants on his land and sell the fruits of his

labors to other adults for their consenting use. His is a farming business like any other. But on the other

side, a theory of rights can extend into the realm of positive requirements. The right to the pursuit of

happiness implies a right to health, and this may require government oversight of medical products so

that society as a whole may be protected from fraudulent claims or harmful substances. The question of

marijuana shoots up right here. What happens when socially sanctioned entities like the US Food and

Drug Administration decide that marijuana is harmful and should therefore be prohibited? Which rights

trump the others, the negative right to freedom or the positive right to oversee medical substances?

A similar question comes up between Madoff and his investors. A pure libertarian may say that

individuals have the unfettered right to do as they choose, so if Bernie Madoff lies about investing

strategies and his clients go along with it, well, that’s their problem. As long as they weren’t forced, they’re

free to do whatever they wish with their money, even if that means turning it over to a charlatan. Again

here, however, a broader view of rights theory answers that in the complex world of finance and

investment, the right to the pursuit of happiness is also a right to some governmental oversight designed

to make sure that everyone involved in the financial industry is playing by a single set of rules, ones

prohibiting Ponzi schemes and similar frauds.

Examples multiply easily. I have the right to free speech, but if I falsely yell “fire!” in a crowded theater

and set off a life-threatening stampede, what’s happening to everyone else’s negative right to life and

positive right to health? Leaving the specifics aside, the conclusion is that, in general, problems with

rights theory occur in one of two places:

1. I have negative rights to life, freedom, and my possessions but they infringe on your rights to the same.

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2. I have a right to freedom and to do what I want but that right clashes with larger, society-level protections

put into place to assure everyone a reasonable shot at pursuing their happiness.

What Justifies a Right?

One justification for an ethics of rights is comparable with the earlier-noted idea about duties being part

of the logic of the universe. Both duties and rights exist because that’s the way things are in the moral

world. Just like the laws of physics tell us how far a ball will fly when thrown at a certain speed, so too the

rules of rights tell us what ought to happen and not happen in ethical reality. The English philosopher

John Locke subscribed to this view when he called our rights “natural.” He meant that they’re part of who

we are and what we do and just by living we incarnate them.

Another justification for an ethics of rights is to derive them from the idea of duties. Kant reappears here,

especially his imperative to treat others as ends and not as means to ends. If we are ends in ourselves, if

we possess basic dignity, then that dignity must be reflected somehow: it must have some content, some

meaning, and the case can be made that the content is our possession of certain autonomous rights.

Advantages and Drawbacks of an Ethics Based on Rights

Because of its emphasis on individual liberties, rights theory is very attractive to open-roaders and

individualists. One of the central advantages of a rights ethics is that it clears a broad space for you and

me and everyone else to be ourselves or make ourselves in any way we choose. On the other side of that

strength, however, there’s a disadvantage: centering ethics on the individual leaves little space of

agreement about how we can live together. An ethics of rights doesn’t do a lot to help us resolve our

differences, it does little to promote tolerance, and it offers few guarantees that if I do something

beneficial for you now, you’ll do something beneficial for me later on.

Another strong advantage associated with an ethics of rights is simplicity in the sense that basic rights are

fairly easy to understand and apply. The problem, however, with these blunt and comprehensible rights

comes when two or more of them conflict. In those circumstances it’s hard to know which rights trump

the others. In the case of Lepp’s business—the Medicinal Gardens—it’s hard to be sure when his use of his

land infringed on the rights of neighbors to enjoy their land, and it’s difficult to know when the health

product he offered—marijuana—should be prohibited in the name of the larger right to health for all

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individuals in a society. Most generally, it’s difficult to adjudicate between claims of freedom: where does

mine stop and yours begin?

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Rights are universal and inalienable.

 Basic rights include those to life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness.

 Rights theory divides negative from positive rights.

 Ethical rights provide for individual freedom but allow few guidelines for individuals living and working

together in a business or in society

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. How does the right to pursue happiness license Lepp’s Medicinal Gardens?

2. What is a libertarian argument against imprisoning Lepp?

3. One justification Lepp cited for his farm was the health benefits marijuana could provide. Assuming Lepp

was right about those benefits, how could they be combined with a rights-based ethics to justify his

activities?

4. How could the rights to freedom and the pursuit of happiness be set against Lepp’s business?

5. What are positive rights and how could they be mustered against Lepp’s farm?

6. If someone drives away from Lepp’s farm high as a kite and soon after drives off the road and into a tree,

does Lepp bear any ethical responsibility for this within a rights ethics?

[1] Elizabeth Larson, “Lepp Sentenced to 10 Years in Federal Prison for Marijuana Case, “Lake County News, May

18, 2009, accessed May 11, 2011,http://lakeconews.com/content/view/8703/764/; Bob Egelko, “Medical Pot

Grower Eddy Lepp Gets 10 Years,” Cannabis Culture Magazine, May 18, 2009, accessed May 11,

2011,http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/medical-pot-grower-eddy-lepp-gets-10-years.

[2] Emily Bazar, “Prayer Leads to Work Disputes,” USA Today, October 16, 2008, accessed May 11,

2011, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-15-Muslim_N.htm.

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2.5 Case Studies

Skin and Money

Source: Leslie Adams, http://www.ugo.com/the-goods/calculator-tattoo.

In the mid-1980s in Los Angeles, Somen “Steve” Banerjee and his friend Nick DeNoia pooled money to

start a new kind of strip club: men baring it for women. Since they had no idea what they were doing, it

didn’t go well. What finally helped were a couple of showmen from Las Vegas. Steve Merrit and his

partner (professional and romantic) Mark Donnelly came aboard and hatched the idea of a Vegas-type

song-and-dance show wrapped around the disrobing.

To find performers, they cruised the muscle beaches outside LA. They brought the guys back to a studio,

applied some Village People–style outfits (policeman, fireman, construction worker, and so on), and ran

the group through a line-dancing routine.

Their idea was simple but innovative: sex sells; but instead of making the show lustful, they made it

entertaining. Drawing on their Las Vegas experience, Merrit and Donnelly understood how to do it, how

to produce a fun theatrical fantasy instead of a crude flesh show. The general concept made sense and the

execution was professional, but on opening night, no one knew what would happen.

Chippendales exploded. Women went crazy for the performances, first in the United States, then Europe,

and then everywhere as Banerjee and DeNoia rushed to form multiple traveling versions of their

production. The time they didn’t spend together mounting the shows they spent in court fighting over who

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was entitled to how much of the profits and who really owned the suddenly very valuable Chippendales

name and concept. The dispute ended in 1987 after DeNoia was shot dead in his office.

One major problem Chippendales faced is that it wasn’t a hard show to copy. Get some muscled guys,

some uniform-store costumes, a pop music soundtrack, and pound it all together into a dance routine

with a little teasing; you don’t need a genius to do it. So others started.

Michael Fullington was a junior choreographer for Chippendales. He struck up a friendship with some of

the show guys, and they split away into a group called Club Adonis. The original choreographers—Merrit

and Donnelly—also got in on the act, forming their own traveling revue called Night Dreams.

Unhappy with these copycat acts, Banerjee hired a hit man to go around killing the whole bunch. The hit

man, it turned out, was an FBI informant. Banerjee ended up in jail. The ensuing investigation led to more

charges. There was arson (he’d burned down one of his own clubs for the insurance money some time

back) and also another count of conspiracy to murder since it was Banerjee who’d arranged to have his

original partner shot.

The case never got to trial. Banerjee agreed to plead guilty, absorb a twenty-six-year sentence, and give up

his rights to Chippendales along with nearly all his money and real estate holdings.

While the lawyers worked out the details, Banerjee’s wife Irene worked feverishly to organize a group of

character witnesses. By bringing a parade of people to testify about her husband’s good side at the

sentencing hearing, she was hoping to get the jail time reduced a little bit. Or maybe she was hoping to

hold on to more of the money and real estate they’d accumulated.

No one got the chance to testify. On the morning of the hearing, Banerjee hung himself in his cell.

Because the trial was never completed, the plea deal never went into effect. And because the guilty man

was dead, there was no one left to charge with any crime. Chippendales and all the money and property

associated with it went to Banerjee’s wife Irene.

Q U E S T I O N S

1. Is being a Chippendale’s dancer honorable work?

o How could the perennial ethical duties to the self—develop our abilities and talents and do

ourselves no harm—be mustered to support the idea that these men should be proud of what

they do?

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o Ethically, how does this job compare with working for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, an

outfit that calls itself “a vibrant home for the world’s most creative and talented artists working in

opera”?

2. Is hiring and training a Chippendale’s dancer honorable? Imagine you were one of the original

choreographers cruising California beaches in search of beefcake and dance talent. You bring the

guys in, choreograph their routine, and send them up on stage.

o Thinking just of the perennial duties to the self is hiring and training them honorable? Under what

conditions?

o Thinking just of the perennial duties to others—avoiding wrongful actions toward others, honesty,

respect, beneficence (promoting the welfare of others), gratitude, fidelity (keeping promises,

honor agreements), and reparation (compensating others when we harm them)—is hiring and

training them honorable? Why or why not?

3. With respect to the ethics of duties, is Chippendales a respectable company in terms of how it treats its

clients? How does this company compare with the Metropolitan Opera’s treatment of its clients (note that

the Met occasionally replaces the word clients with the more flattering patrons)?

4. Leaving aside the legal issues and using only the perennial duties, what ethical case could be made

in favor of Banerjee getting a hit man to eliminate the people who were copying his show?

o Should he have hired someone or done the job himself? Explain.

o What’s the difference between hiring a hit man and hiring a beefcake dancer?

o How would Kant respond to these questions?

5. The Club Adonis group worked for Chippendales before splitting to do the same thing elsewhere. Use

Kant’s categorical imperative to show that their action was wrong.

6. According to the perennial duties, did Banerjee do the right thing hanging him in the end?

7. According to Kant, did Banerjee do the right thing hanging him?

8. When Banerjee hung himself, he lost his life, but he did manage to preserves his life’s property and wealth

for his wife. Can a libertarian ethics be used to show that Banerjee did the right thing?

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Two at the Same Time

Source: Photo courtesy of Robert Fairchild, http://www.flickr.com/photos/coffeego/3545289824.

On a real estate discussion board, [1]

someone with the sign-in name BriGuy23 asks, “Does anyone on here

find any issue with submitting two offers to buy two different apartments at the same time? My friend

thinks that it’s unfair due to the fact that one of the offers is definitely going to not go through which

means they’re tying up the seller’s time (and money in a way). From a seller’s standpoint I think I would

be annoyed but I really don’t see anything wrong with it from a buyer’s perspective. Thoughts?”

A response comes from middle-aged mom: “Sellers can negotiate multiple offers so there is no reason why

a buyer could not make multiple offers on different places. Assuming you are represented by a buyer’s

agent, I would use the same agent to make both offers. Make certain that your contract gives you an out in

the unlikely event both are accepted.”

Q U E S T I O N S

1. What does BriGuy23 suspect might be unethical about submitting two offers to buy two different

apartments at the same time? Can you wrap this suspicion in the language of the duties?

2. Is middle-aged mom appealing to the concept of fairness to justify making multiple offers at the same

time? If she is, then how? If she isn’t, what is her reasoning?

3. If Kant decided to make a contribution to this discussion board, what do you think he would write?

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4. Middle-aged mom writes, “Make certain that your contract gives you an out in the unlikely event both are

accepted.” She means that when you make an offer to buy, you actually offer a signed contract to buy the

apartment; but there’s a catch, an escape clause that lets you pull out if you choose. Is that ethical,

offering a signed contract offering to buy a property that includes an “out”?

5. You need a date for Saturday night.

o Would you have any problem with inviting two different people at the same time (by, say, leaving

a message on both their phones)? Why or why not?

o Would you leave yourself an out in case both answers were yes? If not, why not? If so, what would

it be and how could it be justified ethically?

Working at American Apparel

Photo courtesy of Natalia Rivera, http://www.flickr.com/photos/96952704@N00/317531326/.

Dov Charney is an American immigrant success story, but he’s not exactly a “Give me your tired, your

poor” kind of immigrant. He’s a Canadian who came to America to attend an expensive private university.

He ended up founding American Apparel (AA), a clothing manufacturer producing trendy t-shirts and

basics selling mainly to a young, edgy crowd.

Based in Los Angeles, their factory is among the biggest clothes-making operations in the nation. It

employs almost five thousand workers. Those workers are well known for a number of reasons:

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 Just having workers sets AA apart. Nearly all US clothing manufacturers outsource their cutting and

sewing to poor countries. From Mexico to China, you can find factories paying locals fifty cents an hour to

do the same kind of work they do at AA. The difference is the sewers working in Los Angeles typically get

around fifteen dollars an hour. That’s not a lot in Southern California, but it’s enough to make them—

according to AA—the best paid garment workers in the world.

 The workers don’t report to bosses so much as each other. They organize as independent teams paid a

base wage of eight dollars an hour. On top of that they receive a bonus depending on how much they

produce. So they get together, set their own targets, and go for them. This liberating of the workforce led

to nearly a tripling of output and was matched by about a doubling of wages.

 The company features a generous stock options program to help workers buy shares in the enterprise.

 On its own initiative, the company provides basic health-care services through a clinic tucked into a

factory corner. It provides bikes to employees, helping them zip through the downtown traffic morass

without adding pollution to the infamous city smog. There are free telephones in the factory for employees

to use to call family members at home.

 Many of those employees’ family members are in other countries; AA has a very large immigrant

workforce.

 Many of those immigrants are in the country illegally, which partially explains why the company has been

on the forefront of amnesty campaigns, organizing public rallies and media events of all kinds for the

undocumented. Called Legalize LA, the campaign’s title references the fact that a tremendous number of

Southern Californians outside AA are also illegal immigrants.

 In 2009, the federal government indicated to AA that 1,800 of its workers were using Social Security

numbers and other identifying documents that had been purchased, stolen, or just plain invented. In any

case, they didn’t match up. The company was forced to fire the employees.

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Q U E S T I O N S

1. Workers at Charney’s America Apparel are the highest-paid mass-production sewers in the world.

o In terms of Charney’s duties to the self, what ethical case can be made in favor of this high pay?

o In terms of Charney’s duties to others, what ethical case can be made in favor of this high pay?

o Are these wages fair? Why or why not?

2. In terms of duties—either the perennial duties or Kant’s categorical imperative—which is more

recommendable: keeping the AA plant where and how it is, or moving it to Mexico and cutting the

workers’ wages in half? Why is the decision you’ve made the better of the two?

A few factors to consider:

o In Mexico, the workers’ real pay in terms of local buying power would be much higher, even

though the actual amount is less than what they receive here.

o Many of the workers are illegal immigrants from Mexico; their legal situation would obviously be

remedied and proximity to family would increase.

o The national Mexican economy would benefit more from AA’s presence than does the US

economy.

3. Kant’s categorical imperative requires that others be treated as ends and never as means.

o In what way could the argument be made that the employees at AA are being treated as means,

and therefore Charney’s plant is unethical no matter how high his salaries may be?

o Besides high pay, the company provides workers with considerable freedom to set their own work

pace and schedule. The company also provides a stock purchase program. Do either or both of

these factors alleviate the charge that the workers are treated as means and not end? Why or why

not?

4. Eighteen hundreds of AA’s five thousand workers were using false papers and Social Security

numbers to get their job. Charney knew all about that but chose to overlook it.

o Leaving the law aside, how can that overlooking be justified ethically?

o Leaving the law aside, how can Kant are used to cast that action as ethically wrong in terms of

lying? In terms of stealing? In terms of using people as means instead of ends?

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o Charney and AA support illegal immigrants in two ways: by giving them jobs and by organizing

popular protests in favor of their legalization. Ethically, are these two activities recommendable or

not? Or is one recommendable and the other not?

5. Assuming it’s wrong for illegal immigrants to be working in America, who deserves the sterner ethical

reprobation, Charney or the illegal workers? Explain in ethical terms.

6. The basic and natural rights of mainstream rights theory include the following:

o Life

o Freedom

o Free speech

o Religious expression

o The pursuit of happiness

o Possessions and the fruits of our work

o How can these rights be mustered to support Charney’s hiring and keeping workers he knows are

in the country illegally?

o How can these rights be mustered to ethically denounce Charney for hiring and keeping workers

he knows are in the country illegally?

o Thinking about those workers, do these rights give them an ethical license to use false Social

Security numbers and identifying documents? Why or why not?

7. Eddy Lepp ended up in jail for his medicinal marijuana garden, yet Charney sleeps in a million-dollar beach

house. Is this fair?

Pirates

Source: Photo courtesy of Marco Gomes, http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcogomes/1346283989.

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The following is from an online discussion: [2]

overstand:

I’ve been having problems with copying cds and trying to burn them…when the copy process

gets to 4% the used read buffer will go down to zero and continue fluctuating…will someone

let me know the procedures on fixing this.

Retarded

chicken:

May I ask what CDs are you copying? Usually big companies put copy protection on their CDs

so people don’t ILLEGALLY copy their CDs.

-=iNsAnE=-:

why do people post worthless crap like this? its none of your business what cd’s he’s

copying…don’t accuse him of making illegal copies of cd’s…maybe try posting something

useful next time

Flipside:

It’s not worthless crap mongloid…Copyright protection does prevent the copying of some

disks especially in main-stream programs such as Nero. Try using Clone CD—you may have

better luck with a pure duplication program (No fuss).

Q U E S T I O N S

1. The unanswered question here is whether the CD being copied is copyright protected, in other words,

whether this is a piracy case. Assume it is. If retarded chicken had to fill out an ethical argument against CD

piracy that relied on either the perennial duties or Kant, what could he say?

2. While overstand may be pirating, no one doubts that the original disc is legitimately his. Maybe he bought

it or maybe someone gave it to him; either way, what’s the libertarian argument against retarded chicken?

How could a libertarian justify overstand’s copying?

3. Would a libertarian believe that the company producing the disc has a right to lace it with code that makes

duplication impossible? Explain.

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4. It sounds like Clone CD is specifically made to help pirates get around the copyright protections

manufacturers put on their discs.

o What’s the Kantian case for condemning Clone CD for their project?

o What’s the libertarian case for congratulating them?

Which of the two cases is stronger? Why?

5. Retarded chicken implies that overstand is a thief and -=iNsAnE=- calls retarded chicken’s post

“worthless crap.” Flipside calls -=iNsAnE=- a “mongloid.”

o Is there an ethical case that can be made against the tone of this discussion?

o Does online interaction foster this tone? If so, can an ethical case be made against the existence of

Internet discussion boards?

Gun Shop under Attack

Source: Photo courtesy of jaqian, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaqian/478574894/.

The headline from a local Oakland newspaper reported that a gun shop is closing due to unfair

taxes. [3]

The gun shop’s name was Siegle’s Guns. Closing was inevitable, according to owner Mara Siegle,

after Oakland residents passed Measure D, which levied a huge tax on gun dealers. They had to pay $24

for every $1,000 earned, in comparison to the $1.20 per $1,000 that all the other retailers in Oakland fork

over. “No one can stay in business paying that kind of tax,” Siegle said while preparing her going-out-of-

business sale. “And that’s exactly what Oakland wanted.”

No one disputes the point.

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The disputes are about whether Oakland should want that and whether it’s fair for the city to use taxes as

a weapon.

 Tracy Salkowitz says yes to both. “Except for hunting rifles, the sole purpose of weapons is to kill people.”

Getting rid of gun shops, the logic follows, is a public welfare concern. And about the taxes that brought

the store down? She’s “delighted” by them.

 Mara Siegle’s opinion is that people who don’t hunt and shoot for recreation don’t understand that guns

are a legitimate pastime. “They don’t see this side,” she says, “because they don’t try to.” Further, she

asserts, over the years gun owners have told her that they own guns to defend themselves.

 Outside the store, mingling customers agreed with Siegle. They said closing gun stores was the wrong way

to fight crime and then cursed the city for the unjust taxes.

Amid the winners and losers, Mara Siegle certainly got the rottenest part of the deal. She has two sons,

fifteen and seventeen, and she doesn’t know what she’ll do for income. “I need a job,” she said.

A hand-lettered sign posted in the store’s backroom for the benefit of Siegle’s five full-time employees

displayed the phone number of the unemployment office. The sign said, “You paid for it, use it.”

Q U E S T I O N S

1. With an eye on the concept of fairness, form an argument in favor of the drastically higher taxes imposed

on gun shops.

2. Kant’s categorical imperative prohibits killing. Can it be transformed into an argument against a gun shop

in Oakland?

3. Would an ethics of duties or an ethics of rights work better for Siegle as she defends her business? Why?

What might her argument look like?

4. Unemployment benefits are the result of unemployment insurance, which is not optional.

Workers are forced to pay a bit out of each paycheck to the federal government, and if they lose

their job, they get a biweekly check partially covering lost wages.

o Would a libertarian approve of the unemployment insurance program?

o Would it be right for a libertarian gun shop owner—someone defending her business on

libertarian grounds—to accept unemployment benefits after her shop is forced out of business by

extreme taxes? Explain.

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[1] “Ethical dilemma with submitting two offers at once? (contingency, clause, agent),” City-Data, accessed May

11, 2011, http://www.city-data.com/forum/real-estate/710433-ethical-dilemma-submitting-two-offers-once.html.

[2] “My cd-burner won’t let me copy the cd...why...,” Hard forum, accessed May 11,

2011,http://www.hardforum.com/archive/index.php/t-711331.html.

[3] Alexandra J. Wall, “Jewish Gun shop Owner Closing Store; Cites Unfair Taxes,” Jweekly, July 21, 2000, accessed

May 11, 2011,http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/13657/jewish-gunshop-owner-closing-store-cites-unfair-taxes.

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Chapter 3

Theories of Consequence Ethics: Traditional Tools for Making Decisions in Business when the Ends Justify

the Means

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Chapter Overview

Chapter 3 "Theories of Consequence Ethics: Traditional Tools for Making Decisions in Business when the

Ends Justify the Means" examines some theories guiding ethical decisions in business. It considers ethics

that focuses on the consequences of what is done instead of prohibiting or allowing specific acts.

3.1 What Is Consequentialism?

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E

1. Define consequentialism in ethics.

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Consequentialism Defined

What’s more important in ethics—what you do or what happens afterward because of what you did?

People who believe ethics should be about what happens afterward are labeled consequentialists. They

don’t care so much about your act; they want to know about the consequences.

If someone asks, “Should I lie?,” one answer is, “No, lying’s wrong. We all have a duty not to lie and

therefore you shouldn’t do it, no matter what.” That’s not the consequentialist answer, though.

Consequentialists will want to know about the effects. If the lie is about Bernie Madoff assuring everyone

that he’s investing clients’ money in stocks when really he plans to steal it, that’s wrong. But if a

defrauded, livid, and pistol-waving client tracks Madoff down on a crowded street and demands to know

whether he’s Bernie Madoff, the ethically recommendable response might be, “People say I look like him,

but really I’m Bill Martin.” The question, finally, for a consequentialist isn’t whether or not I should lie,

it’s what happens if I do and if I don’t?

Since consequentialists are more worried about the outcome than the action, the central ethical concern

is what kind of outcome should I want? Traditionally, there are three kinds of answers: the utilitarian,

the altruist, and the egoist. Each one will be considered in this chapter.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y

 Consequentialist ethicists focus on the results of what you do, not what you do.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. Under what scenario could a consequentialist defend the act of stealing?

2. Could a consequentialist recommend that a toy company lie about the age level a toy is designed for?

What would be an example?

3.2 Utilitarianism: The Greater Good

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define utilitarian ethics.

2. Show how utilitarianism works in business.

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3. Distinguish forms of utilitarianism.

4. Consider advantages and drawbacks of utilitarianism.

The College Board and Karen Dillard

“Have you seen,” the blog post reads, “their parking lot on a Saturday?” [1]

Its packed. The lot belongs to

Karen Dillard College Prep (KDCP), a test-preparation company in Dallas. Like the Princeton Review,

they offer high schoolers courses designed to boost performance on the SAT. Very little real learning goes

on in these classrooms; they’re more about techniques and tricks for maximizing scores. Test takers

should know, for example, whether a test penalizes incorrect answers. If it doesn’t, you should take a few

minutes at each section’s end to go through and just fill in a random bubble for all the questions you

couldn’t reach so you’ll get some cheap points. If there is a penalty, though, then you should use your time

to patiently work forward as far as you can go. Knowing the right strategy here can significantly boost

your score. It’s a waste of brain space, though, for anything else in your life.

Some participants in KDCP—who paid as much as $2,300 for the lessons—definitely got some score

boosting for their money. It was unfair boosting, however; at least that’s the charge of the College Board,

the company that produces and administers the SAT.

Here’s what happened. A KDCP employee’s brother was a high school principal, and he was there when

the SATs were administered. At the end of those tests, everyone knows what test takers are instructed to

do: stack the bubble sheets in one pile and the test booklets in the other and leave. The administrators

then wrap everything up and send both the answer sheets and the booklets back to the College Board for

scoring. The principal, though, was pulling a few test booklets out of the stack and sending them over to

his brother’s company, KDCP. As it turns out, some of these pilfered tests were “live”—that is, sections of

them were going to be used again in future tests. Now, you can see how getting a look at those booklets

would be helpful for someone taking those future tests.

Other stolen booklets had been “retired,” meaning the specific questions inside were on their final

application the day the principal grabbed them. So at least in these cases, students taking the test-prep

course couldn’t count on seeing the very same questions come exam day. Even so, the College Board

didn’t like this theft much better because they sell those retired tests to prep companies for good money.

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When the College Board discovered the light-fingered principal and the KDCP advantage, they launched a

lawsuit for infringement of copyright. Probably figuring they had nothing to lose, KDCP sued back. [2]

College Board also threatened—and this is what produced headlines in the local newspaper—to cancel the

scores of the students who they determined had received an unfair advantage from the KDCP course.

As Denton Record-Chronicle reported (and as you can imagine), the students and their families freaked

out. [3]

The scores and full application packages had already been delivered to colleges across the country,

and score cancellation would have amounted to application cancellation. And since many of the students

applied only to schools requiring the SAT, the threat amounted to at least temporary college cancellation.

“I hope the College Board thinks this through,” said David Miller, a Plano attorney whose son was

apparently on the blacklist. “If they have a problem with Karen Dillard, that’s one thing. But I hope they

don’t punish kids who wanted to work hard.”

Predictably, the episode crescendo with everyone lawyered up and suits threatened in all directions. In the

end, the scores weren’t canceled. KDCP accepted a settlement calling for them to pay $600,000 directly to

the College Board and provide $400,000 in free classes for high schoolers who’d otherwise be unable to

afford the service. As for the principal who’d been lifting the test booklets, he got to keep his job, which

pays about $87,000 a year. The CEO of College Board, by the way, gets around $830,000. [4]

KDCP is a

private company, so we don’t know how much Karen Dillard or her employees make. We do know they

could absorb a million-dollar lawsuit without going into bankruptcy. Finally, the Plano school district in

Texas—a well-to-do suburb north of Dallas—continues to produce some of the nation’s highest SAT score

averages.

One Thief, Three Verdicts

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethics—the outcome matters, not the act. Among those who focus on

outcomes, the utilitarian’s distinguishing belief is that we should pursue the greatest good for the

greatest number. So we can act in whatever way we choose—we can be generous or miserly, honest or

dishonest—but whatever we do, to get the utilitarian’s approval, the result should be more people happier.

If that is the result, then the utilitarian needs to know nothing more to label the act ethically

recommendable. (Note: Utility is a general term for usefulness and benefit, thus the theory’s name. In

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everyday language, however, we don’t talk about creating a greater utility but instead a greater good or

happiness.)

In rudimentary terms, utilitarianism is a happiness calculation. When you’re considering doing

something, you take each person who’ll be affected and ask whether they’ll end up happier, sadder, or it

won’t make any difference. Now, those who won’t change don’t need to be counted. Next, for each person

who’s happier, ask, how much happier? Put that amount on one side. For each who’s sadder, ask, how

much sadder? That amount goes on the other side. Finally, add up each column and the greater sum

indicates the ethically recommendable decision.

Utilitarian ethics function especially well in cases like this: You’re on the way to take the SAT, which will

determine how the college application process goes (and, it feels like, more or less your entire life). Your

car breaks down and you get there very late and the monitor is closing the door and you remember

that…you forgot your required number 2 pencils. On a desk in the hall you notice a pencil. It’s gnawed and

abandoned but not yours. Do you steal it? Someone who believes it’s an ethical duty to not steal will

hesitate. But if you’re a utilitarian you’ll ask: Does taking it serve the greater good? It definitely helps you

a lot, so there’s positive happiness accumulated on that side. What about the victim? Probably whoever

owns it doesn’t care too much. Might not even notice it’s gone. Regardless, if you put your increased

happiness on one side and weigh it against the victim’s hurt on the other, the end result is almost certainly

a net happiness gain. So with a clean conscience you grab it and dash into the testing room. According to

utilitarian reasoning, you’ve done the right thing ethically (assuming the pencil’s true owner isn’t coming

up behind you in the same predicament).

Pushing this theory into the KDCP case, one tense ethical location is the principal lifting test booklets and

sending them over to his brother at the test-prep center. Everything begins with a theft. The booklets do

in fact belong to the College Board; they’re sent around for schools to use during testing and are meant to

be returned afterward. So here there’s already the possibility of stopping and concluding that the

principal’s act is wrong simply because stealing is wrong. Utilitarian’s, however, don’t want to move so

quickly. They want to see the outcome before making an ethical judgment. On that front, there are two

distinct outcomes: one covering the live tests, and the other the retired ones.

Live tests were those with sections that may appear again. When students at KDCP received them for

practice, they were essentially receiving cheat sheets. Now for a utilitarian, the question is, does the

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situation serve the general good? When the testing’s done, the scores are reported, and the college

admissions decisions made, will there be more overall happiness then there would’ve been had the tests

not been stolen? It seems like the answer has to be no. Obviously those with great scores will be smiling,

but many, many others will see their scores drop (since SATs are graded on a curve or as a percentile). So

there’s some major happiness for a few on one side balanced by unhappiness for many on the other. Then

things get worse. When the cheating gets revealed, the vast majority of test takers who didn’t get the edge

are going to be irritated, mad, or furious. Their parents too. Remember, it’s not only admission that’s at

stake here but also financial aid, so the students who didn’t get the KDCP edge worry not only that maybe

they should’ve gotten into a better school but also that they end up paying more too. Finally, the colleges

will register a net loss: all their work in trying to admit students on the basis of fair, equal evaluations gets

thrown into question.

Conclusion. The theft of live tests fails the utilitarian test. While a few students may come out better off

and happier, the vast majority more than balances the effect with disappointment and anger. The greater

good isn’t served.

In the case of the theft of “retired” tests where the principal forwarded to KDCP test questions that won’t

reappear on future exams, it remains true that the tests were lifted from the College Board and it remains

true that students who took the KDCP prep course will receive an advantage because they’re practicing the

SAT. But the advantage doesn’t seem any greater than the one enjoyed by students all around the nation

who purchased prep materials directly from the College Board and practiced for the exam by taking old

tests. More—and this was a point KDCP made in their countersuit against the College Board—stealing the

exams was the ethically right thing to do because it assured that students taking the KDCP prep course

got the same level of practice and expertise as those using official College Board materials. If the tests

hadn’t been stolen, then wouldn’t KDCP kids be at an unfair disadvantage when compared with others

because their test practices hadn’t been as close to the real thing as others got? In the end, the argument

goes, stealing the tests assured that as many people as possible who took prep courses got to practice on

real exams.

Conclusion. The theft of the exams by the high school principal may conceivably be congratulated by a

utilitarian because it increases general happiness. The students who practiced on old exams purchased

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from the College Board can’t complain. And as for those students at KDCP, their happiness increases since

they can be confident that they’ve prepared as well as possible for the SAT.

The fact that a utilitarian argument can be used to justify the theft of test booklets, at least retired ones,

doesn’t end the debate, however. Since the focus is on outcomes, all of them have to be considered. And

one outcome that might occur if the theft is allowed is, obviously, that maybe other people will start

thinking stealing exam books isn’t such a bad idea. If they do—if everyone decides to start stealing—it’s

hard to see how anything could follow but chaos, anger, and definitely not happiness.

This discussion could continue as more people and consequences are factored in, but what won’t change is

the basic utilitarian rule. What ought to be done is determined by looking at the big picture and deciding

which acts increase total happiness at the end of the day when everyone is taken into account.

Should the Scores Be Canceled?

After it was discovered that KDCP students got to practice for the SATs with live exams, the hardest

question facing the College Board was, should their scores be canceled? The utilitarian argument

for not canceling is straightforward. Those with no scores may not go to college at all next year. This is

real suffering, and if your aim is to increase happiness, then counting the exams is one step in that

direction. It’s not the last step, though, because utilitarian’s at the College Board need to ask

about everyone else’s happiness too: what’s the situation for all the others who took the exam but has

never heard of KDCP? Unfortunately, letting the scores be counted is going to subtract from their

happiness because the SAT is graded comparatively: one person doing well means everyone getting fewer

correct answers sees their score drop, along with college choices and financial aid possibilities. Certainly

it’s true that each of these decreases will be small since there were only a handful of suspect tests. Still, a

descent, no matter how tiny, is a descent, and all the little bits add up.

What’s most notable, finally, about this decision is the imbalance. Including the scores of KDCP students

will weigh a tremendous increase in happiness for a very few against a slight decrease for very many.

Conversely, a few will be left very sad, and many slightly happier. So for a utilitarian, which is it? It’s hard

to say. It is clear, however, that this uncertainty represents a serious practical problem with the ethical

theory. In some situations you can imagine yourself in the shoes of the different people involved and,

using your own experience and knowledge, estimate which decision will yield the most total happiness. In

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this situation, though, it seems almost impossible because there are so many people mixed up in the

question.

Then things get still more difficult. For the utilitarian, it’s not enough to just decide what brings the most

happiness to the most individuals right now; the future needs to be accounted for too. Utilitarianism is a

true global ethics; you’re required to weigh everyone’s happiness and weigh it as best as you can as far into

the future as possible. So if the deciders at the College Board follow a utilitarian route in opting to include

(or cancel) the scores, they need to ask themselves—if we do, how will things be in ten years? In fifty?

Again, these are hard questions but they don’t change anything fundamental. For the utilitarian, making

the right decision continues to be about attempting to predict which choice will maximize happiness.

Utilitarianism and the Ethics of Salaries

When he wasn’t stealing test booklets and passing them on to KDCP, the principal in the elite Plano

school district was dedicated to his main job: making sure students in his building receive an education

qualifying them to do college-level work. Over at the College Board, the company’s CEO leads a

complementary effort: producing tests to measure the quality of that preparation and consequently

determine students’ scholastic aptitude. The principal, in other words, is paid to make sure high schoolers

get an excellent education, and the CEO is paid to measure how excellent (or not) the education is.

Just from the job descriptions, who should get the higher salary? It’s tempting to say the principal.

Doesn’t educating children have to be more important than measuring how well they’re educated?

Wouldn’t we all rather be well educated and not know it than poorly educated and painfully aware of the

fact?

Regardless, what’s striking about the salary that each of these two actually receives isn’t who gets more;

it’s how much. The difference is almost ten times: $87,000 for the principal versus the CEO’s $830,000.

Within the doctrine of utilitarianism, can such a divergence be justified?

Yes, but only if we can show that this particular salary structure brings about the greatest good, the

highest level of happiness for everyone considered as a collective. It may be, for example, that objectively

measuring student ability, even though it’s less important than instilling ability, is also much harder. In

that case, a dramatically higher salary may be necessary in order to lure high-quality measuring talent.

From there, it’s not difficult to fill out a utilitarian justification for the pay divergence. It could be that

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inaccurate testing would cause large amounts of unhappiness: students who worked hard for years would

be frustrated when they were bettered by slackers who really didn’t know much but managed to score well

on a test.

To broaden the point, if tremendous disparities in salary end up making people happier, then the

disparities are ethical. Period. If they don’t, however, then they can no longer be defended. This differs

from what a libertarian rights theorist might say here. For a libertarian—someone who believes

individuals have an undeniable right to make and keep whatever they can in the world, regardless of how

rich or poor anyone else may be—the response to the CEO’s mammoth salary is that he found a way to

earn it fair and square, and everyone should quit complaining about it. Generalized happiness doesn’t

matter, only the individual’s right to try to earn and keep as much as he or she can.

Can Money Buy Utilitarian Happiness? The Ford Pinto Case

Basic questions in business tend to be quantitative, and money is frequently the bottom line: How many

dollars is it worth? What’s my salary? What’s the company’s profit? The basic question of utilitarianism

is qualitative: how much happiness and sadness is there? Inevitably, it’s going to be difficult when

businesses accustomed to bottom-line number decisions are forced to cross over and decide about general

happiness. One of the most famous attempts to make the transition easier occurred back in the 1970s.

With gas prices on the rise, American car buyers were looking for smaller, more efficient models than

Detroit was manufacturing. Japanese automakers were experts in just those kinds of vehicles and they

were seizing market share at an alarming rate. Lee Iacocca, Ford’s president, wanted to rush a car into

production to compete. His model was the Pinto. [5]

A gas sipper slated to cost $2,000 (about $12,000 today); Ford rushed the machine through early

production and testing. Along the way, unfortunately, they noticed a design problem: the gas tank’s

positioning in the car’s rump left it vulnerable to rear-end collisions. In fact, when the rear-end hit came

faster than twenty miles per hour, not only might the tank break, but gasoline could be splattered all the

way up to the driver’s compartment. Fire, that meant, ignited by sparks or anything else could engulf

those inside.

No car is perfectly safe, but this very scary vulnerability raised eyebrows. At Ford, a debate erupted about

going ahead with the vehicle. On the legal end, the company stood on solid ground: government

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regulation at the time only required gas tanks to remain intact at collisions under twenty miles per hour.

What about the ethics, though? The question about whether it was right to charge forward was

unavoidable because rear-end accidents at speeds greater than twenty miles per hour happen—every day.

The decision was finally made in utilitarian terms. On one side, the company totaled up the dollar cost of

redesigning the car’s gas tank. They calculated

 12.5 million automobiles would eventually be sold,

 eleven dollars would be the final cost per car to implement the redesign.

Added up, that’s $137 million total, with the money coming out of Pinto buyers’ pockets since the added

production costs would get tacked onto the price tag. It’s a big number but it’s not that much per person:

$11 is about $70 today. In this way, the Pinto situation faced by Ford executives is similar to the test

cancellation question for the College Board: one option means only a little bit of suffering for specific

individuals, but there are a lot of them.

On the other side of the Pinto question—and, again, this resembles the College Board predicament—if the

decision is made to go ahead without the fix, there’s going to be a lot of suffering but only for a very few

people. Ford predicted the damage done to those few people in the following ways:

 Death by burning for 180 buyers

 Serious burn injuries for another 180 buyers

 Twenty-one hundred vehicles burned beyond all repair

That’s a lot of damage, but how do you measure it? How do you compare it with the hike in the price tag?

More generally, from a utilitarian perspective, is it better for a lot of people to suffer a little or for a few

people to suffer a lot?

Ford answered both questions by directly attaching monetary values to each of the injuries and damages

suffered:

 At the time, 1970, US Government regulatory agencies officially valued a human life at $200,000. (That

would be about $1.2 million today if the government still kept this problematic measure.)

 Insurance companies valued a serious burn at $67,000.

 The average resale value on subcompacts like the Pinto was $700, which set that as the amount lost after a

complete burnout.

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The math coming out from this is (180 deaths × $200,000) + (180 injuries × $67,000) + (2,100 burned-

out cars × $700) = $49 million. The result here is $137 million worth of suffering for Pinto drivers if the

car is redesigned and only $49 million if it goes to the streets as is.

Ford sent the Pinto out. Over the next decade, according to Ford estimates, at least 60 people died in fiery

accidents and at least 120 got seriously burned (skin-graft-level burns). No attempt was made to calculate

the total number of burned vehicles. Shortly thereafter, the Pinto was phased out. No one has final

numbers, but if the first decade is any indication, then the total cost came in under the original $49

million estimate. According to a utilitarian argument, and assuming the premises concerning dollar

values are accepted, Ford made the right decision back in 1970.

If every Pinto purchaser had been approached the day after buying the car, told the whole Ford story, and

been offered to change their car along with eleven dollars for another one without the gas tank problem,

how many would’ve handed the money over to avoid the long-shot risk? The number might’ve been very

high, but that doesn’t sway a utilitarian conclusion. The theory demands that decision makers stubbornly

keep their eye on overall happiness no matter how much pain a decision might cause certain individuals.

Versions of Utilitarian Happiness

Monetized utilitarianism attempts to measure happiness, to the extent possible, in terms of money. As the

Ford Pinto case demonstrated, the advantage here is that it allows decisions about the greater good to be

made in clear, objective terms. You add up the money on one side and the money on the other and the

decision follows automatically. This is a very attractive benefit, especially when you’re dealing with large

numbers of individuals or complex situations. Monetized utilitarianism allows you to keep your happiness

calculations straight.

Two further varieties of utilitarianism are hedonistic and idealistic. Both seek to maximize human

happiness, but their definitions of happiness differ. Hedonistic utilitarian’s trace back to Jeremy Bentham

(England, around 1800). Bentham was a wealthy and odd man who left his fortune to the University

College of London along with the stipulation that his mummified body be dressed and present at the

institution. It remains there today. He sits in a wooden cabinet in the main building, though his head has

been replaced by a wax model after pranking students repeatedly stole the real one. Bentham believed

that pleasure and happiness are ultimately synonymous. Ethics, this means, seeks to maximize the

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pleasures—just about any sensation of pleasure—felt by individuals. But before dropping everything and

heading out to the bars, it should be remembered that even the most hedonistic of the utilitarian’s believe

that getting pleasure right now is good but not as good as maximizing the feeling over the long term.

(Going out for drinks, in others words, instead of going to the library isn’t recommendable on the evening

before midterms.)

A contemporary of Bentham, John Stuart Mill, basically agreed that ethics is about maximizing pleasure,

but his more idealistic utilitarianism distinguished low and highbrow sensations. The kinds of raw, good

feelings that both we and animals can find, according to Mill, are second-rate pleasures. Pleasures with

higher and more real value include learning and learnedness. These aren’t physical joys so much as the

delights of the mind and the imagination. For Mill, consequently, libraries and museums are scenes of

abundant pleasure, much more than any bar.

This idealistic notion of utilitarianism fits quite well with the College Board’s response to the KDCP

episode. First, deciding against canceling student scores seems like a way of keeping people on track to

college and headed toward the kind of learning that rewards our cerebral inclinations. Further, awarding

free prep classes to those unable to pay seems like another step in that direction, at least if it helps get

them into college.

Versions of Utilitarian Regulation

A narrow distinction with far-reaching effects divides soft from hard utilitarianism. Soft utilitarianism is

the standard version; when people talk about a utilitarian ethics, that’s generally what they mean. As a

theory, soft utilitarianism is pretty laid back: an act is good if the outcome is more happiness in the world

than we had before. Hard utilitarianism, on the other hand, demands more: an act is ethically

recommendable only if the total benefits for everyone are greater than those produced by any other act.

According to the hard version, it’s not enough to do well; you must do the most good possible. As an

example, think about the test-prep company KDCP under the microscope of utilitarian examination.

 When a soft utilitarian looks at KDCP, the company comes out just fine. High schoolers are learning test-

taking skills and tricks that they’ll only use once but will help in achieving a better score and leave behind

a sense that they’ve done all they can to reach their college goals. That means the general happiness level

probably goes up—or at worst holds steady—because places like KDCP are out there.

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 When a hard utilitarian looks at KDCP, however, the company doesn’t come off so well. Can we really say

that this enterprise’s educational subject—test taking—is the very best use of teaching resources in terms

of general welfare and happiness? And what about the money? Is SAT prep really the best way for society

to spend its dollars? Wouldn’t a hard utilitarian have to recommend that the tuition money collected by

the test-prep company get siphoned off to pay for, say, college tuition for students who otherwise wouldn’t

be able to continue their studies at all?

If decisions about businesses are totally governed by the need to create the most happiness possible, then

companies like KDCP that don’t contribute much to social well-being will quickly become endangered.

The demands of hard utilitarianism can be layered onto the ethical decision faced by the College Board in

their courtroom battle with KDCP. Ultimately, the College Board opted to penalize the test-prep company

by forcing it to offer some free classes for underprivileged students. Probably, the result was a bit more

happiness in the world. The result wasn’t, however, the most happiness possible. If hard utilitarianism

had driven the decision, then the College Board would’ve been forced to go for the jugular against KDCP,

strip away all the money they could, and then use it to do the most good possible, which might have meant

setting up a scholarship fund or something similar. That’s just a start, though. Next, to be true to hard

utilitarianism, the College Board would need to focus on itself with hard questions. The costs of creating

and applying tests including the SAT are tremendous, which makes it difficult to avoid this question:

wouldn’t society as a whole be better off if the College Board were to be canceled and all their resources

dedicated to, for example, creating a new university for students with learning disabilities?

Going beyond KDCP and the College Board, wouldn’t almost any private company fall under the threat of

appropriation if hard utilitarian’s ran the world? While it’s true, for example, that the money spent on

steak and wine at expensive Las Vegas restaurants probably increases happiness a bit, couldn’t that same

cash do a lot more for the general welfare of people whose income makes Las Vegas an impossibly

expensive dream? If it could, then the hard utilitarian will propose zipping up Las Vegas and rededicating

the money.

Finally, since utilitarianism is about everyone’s total happiness, don’t hard questions start coming up

about world conditions? Is it possible to defend the existence of McDonald’s in the United States while

people are starving in other countries?

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Conclusion. In theory, there’s not much divergence between soft and hard utilitarianism. But in terms of

what actually happens out in the world when the theory gets applied, that’s a big difference. For private

companies, it’s also a dangerous one.

Two further versions of utilitarian regulation are act and rule. Act utilitarianism affirms that a specific

action is recommended if it increases happiness. This is the default form of utilitarianism, and what

people usually mean when they talk about the theory. The separate rule-based version asserts that an

action is morally right if it follows a rule that, when applied to everyone, increases general happiness.

The rule utilitarian asks whether we’d all be benefitted if everyone obeyed a rule such as “don’t steal.” If

we would—if the general happiness level increases because the rule is there—then the rule utilitarian

proposes that we all adhere to it. It’s important to note that rule utilitarian’s aren’t against stealing

because it’s intrinsically wrong, as duty theorists may propose. The rule utilitarian is only against stealing

if it makes the world less happy. If tomorrow it turns out that mass stealing serves the general good, then

theft becomes the ethically right thing to do.

The sticky point for rule utilitarian’s involves special cases. If we make the rule that theft is wrong,

consider what happens in the case from the chapter’s beginning: You forgot your pencil on SAT test day,

and you spot one lying on an abandoned desk. If you don’t take it, no one’s going to be any happier, but

you’ll be a lot sadder. So it seems like rule utilitarianism verges on defeating its own purpose, which is

maximizing happiness no matter what.

On the other hand, there are also sticky points for act utilitarian’s. For example, if I go to Wal-Mart

tonight and steal a six-pack of beer, I’ll be pretty happy. And assuming I don’t get caught, no one will be

any sadder. The loss to the company—a few dollars—will disappear in a balance sheet so huge that it’s

hard to count the zeros. Of course if everyone starts stealing beers, that will cause a problem, but in

practical terms, if one person does it once and gets away with it, it seems like an act utilitarian would have

to approve. The world would be a happier place.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Utilitarian Ethics in Business

Basic utilitarianism is the soft, act version. These are the theory’s central advantages:

 Clarity and simplicity. In general terms, it’s easy to understand the idea that we should all act to

increase the general welfare.

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 Acceptability. The idea of bringing the greatest good to the greatest number coheres with common and

popular ideas about what ethical guidance is supposed to provide.

 Flexibility. The weighing of individual actions in terms of their consequences allows for meaningful and

firm ethical rules without requiring that everyone be treated identically no matter how different the

particular situation. So the students whose scores were suspended by the College Board could see them

reinstated, but that doesn’t mean the College Board will take the same action in the future (if, say, large

numbers of people start stealing test booklets).

 Breadth. The focus on outcomes as registered by society overall makes the theory attractive for those

interested in public policy. Utilitarianism provides a foundation and guidance for business regulation by

government.

The central difficulties and disadvantages of utilitarianism include the following:

 Subjectivity. It can be hard to make the theory work because it’s difficult to know what makes happiness

and unhappiness for specific individuals. When the College Board demanded that KDCP give free classes

to underprivileged high schoolers, some paying students were probably happy to hear the news, but

others probably fretted about paying for what others received free. And among those who received the

classes, probably the amount of resulting happiness varied between them.

 Quantification. Happiness can’t be measured with a ruler or weighed on a scale; it’s hard to know

exactly how much happiness and unhappiness any particular act produces. This translates into confusion

at decision time. (Monetized utilitarianism, like that exhibited in the case of the Ford Pinto, responds to

this confusion.)

 Apparent injustices. Utilitarian principles can produce specific decisions that seem wrong. A quick

example is the dying grandmother who informs her son that she’s got $200,000 stuffed into her mattress.

She asks the son to divide the money with his brother. This brother, however, is a gambling alcoholic

who’ll quickly fritter away his share. In that case, the utilitarian would recommend that the other

brother—the responsible one with children to put through college—just keep all the money. That would

produce the most happiness, but do we really want to deny grandma her last wish?

 The utilitarian monster is a hypothetical individual who really knows how to feel good. Imagine that

someone or a certain group of people were found to have a much greater capacity to experience happiness

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than others. In that case, the strict utilitarian would have no choice but to put everyone else to work

producing luxuries and other pleasures for these select individuals. In this hypothetical situation, there

could even be an argument for forced labor as long as it could be shown that the servants’ suffering was

minor compared to the great joy celebrated by those few who were served. Shifting this into economic and

business terms, there’s a potential utilitarian argument here for vast wage disparities in the workplace.

 The utilitarian sacrifice is the selection of one person to suffer terribly so that others may be pleasured.

Think of gladiatorial games in which a few contestants suffer miserably, but a tremendous number of

spectators enjoy the thrill of the contest. Moving the same point from entertainment into the business of

medical research, there’s a utilitarian argument here for drafting individuals—even against their will—to

endure horrifying medical experiments if it could be shown that the experiments would, say, cure cancer,

and so create tremendous happiness in the future.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Utilitarianism judges specific decisions by examining the decision’s consequences.

 Utilitarianism defines right and wrong in terms of the happiness of a society’s members.

 Utilitarian ethics defines an act as good when its consequences bring the greatest good or happiness to

the greatest number of people.

 There are a variety of specific forms of utilitarianism.

 Theoretically, utilitarianism is straightforward, but in practical terms it can be difficult to measure the

happiness of individuals.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. What is a utilitarian argument in favor of a college education? How does it differ from other reasons you

might want to go to college or graduate school?

2. How could a utilitarian justify cheating on an exam?

3. What is a “global ethics”?

4. What practical problem with utilitarianism is (to some degree) resolved by monetized utilitarianism?

5. What are two advantages of a utilitarian ethics when compared with an ethics of duties?

6. What are two disadvantages of a utilitarian ethics when compared with an ethics of duties?

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7. What’s an example from today’s world of a utilitarian monster?

8. What’s an example from today’s world of a utilitarian sacrifice?

[1] “CB-Karen Dillard Case Settled-No Cancelled Scores,” College Confidential, accessed May 15,

2011, http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/501843-cb-karen-dillard-case-settled-no-cancelled-

scores.html.

[2] Paulina Mis, “College Board Sues Test-Prep Company, Countersuit Filed,” Scholarships.com, February 26, 2008,

accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.scholarships.com/blog/high-school/college-board-sues-test-prep-company-

countersuit-filed/161.

[3] Staci Hupp, “SAT Scores for Students Who Used Test Prep Firm May Be Thrown Out, “Denton Record Chronicle,

February 22, 2008, accessed May 15, 2011.

[4] “AETR Report Card,” Americans for Educational Testing Reform, accessed May 15,

2011, http://www.aetr.org/college-board.php.

[5] Case facts taken from Manuel Velasquez, Business Ethics, Concepts and Cases, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006), 60–61.

3.3 Altruism: Everyone Else

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define altruistic ethics.

2. Show how altruism works in and with business.

3. Consider advantages and drawbacks of altruism.

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TOMS Shoes

There is no Tom at TOMS Shoes. The company’s name actually came from the title for its social cause:

Shoes for Tomorrow. Tomorrow shoes—TOMS Shoes. The shoes are given away to needy children in

Argentina at a one-to-one rate: for every pair bought in the United States, TOMS delivers a pair down

there.

They’re needed in Argentina’s poverty-stricken regions to prevent the spread of an infectious disease, one

that flourishes in the local soil and rises up through the feet. A pair of shoes is all that’s needed to block

the problem.

The project started when young Texan entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie vacationed in Argentina. Not the type

to luxuriate in the hotel pool, he got out and learned about the country, good and bad, the food, the

sweeping geography, the poverty and diseases. The foot infection, he discovered, was so devastating yet so

easy to block that, according to his company’s website, he decided he had to do something about

it. [1]

Initially, he contemplated a charitable fund to buy shoes for the needy children, but that left his

project subject to the ebb and flow of others’ generosity. It’d be better and more reliable, he determined,

to link the community-service project with private enterprise and use revenues from a company to fund

the charity. Quickly, Mycoskie determined that he could make the whole machine work most efficiently by

starting a shoe company. Simultaneously, he could produce shoes for donation and shoes for sale to

finance the effort. So we have TOMS Shoes.

Next, a kind of shoe to produce and sell was required. Mycoskie found inspiration in Argentina’s

traditional alpargata. This is a cheap, workingman’s shoe, a slip-on made from canvas with rope

soles. [2]

For the American adaptation, Mycoskie strengthened the sole, styled and colored the canvas, and

added a brand label. The price also got jacked up. The originals cost a few dollars in Argentina; the

adaptations cost about forty dollars here.

They’re a splashy hit. You find TOMS Shoes at trendy footwear shops, at Whole Foods grocery stores, and

all over the Internet. At last check, about half a million pairs have been sold and an equal number

donated. Total sales in seven figures aren’t far off, and the company was recently featured on a CNBC

segment as an American business success story. Notably, TOMS achieved recognition on national TV

sooner after its inception than almost any other enterprise in the program’s history. It all happened in

fewer than four years.

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Question: how did it get so big so fast? How did some guy transform from a wandering tourist to a captain

of the shoe industry in less time than it takes to get a college degree? Answer: celebrities.

Blake Mycoskie’s got a warm, round face and a perfect smile. He’s got money from his pre-shoe projects

and he’s smart too. He’s also got that contemporary bohemian look down with his bead necklace and

wavy, shoulder-length hair. There’s no letdown beneath the chin line either; he’s fit (he was a tennis pro

until nineteen). You get the idea. He commands attention from even Hollywood women, and he ended up

coupled with the midrange star Maggie Grace. He introduced her to his TOMS Shoes concept, gave her a

few pairs to wear around and show friends, and the ball started rolling. [3]

A few parties later, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire, Sienna Miller, and

Karl Lagerfeld were parading around in TOMS Shoes. There was no stopping it. [4]

Today, when Blake Mycoskie introduces himself, it’s not as the CEO of his company; he says he’s the Chief

Shoe Giver at TOMS Shoes, reflecting the idea that charity drives the thriving business, not the other way

around.

Is TOMS Shoes Altruistic?

An action is morally right according to the altruist, and to the ethical theory of altruism, if the action’s

consequences are more beneficial than unfavorable for everyone except the person who acts. That means

the actor’s interests aren’t considered: the altruist does whatever can be done so that others will be

happier.

It’s common to imagine the altruist as poverty stricken and self-sacrificing. When you live for everyone

else as the altruist does, it’s no surprise that you can end up in pretty bad shape. You might get lucky and

run into another altruist like yourself, but if you don’t, there’s not going to be anyone particularly

dedicated to your well-being. On the positive side there’s nobility to the idea of dedicating everything to

everyone else, but the plain truth is not many of us would choose to live like Gandhi or Mother Teresa.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. A suffering life may be an effect of altruism, but it’s not a

requirement. Living for others doesn’t mean you live poorly, only that there’s no guarantee you’ll live well.

You might, however, live well. Blake Mycoskie demonstrates this critical element at the heart of altruism:

it’s not about suffering or sacrificing; it’s about making clear-eyed decisions about the best way to make as

many others as happy as possible. If you happen to live the good life along the way—partying with Maggie

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Grace, Sienna Miller, and friends because that’s the fastest route to publicize the TOMS Shoes

enterprise—that doesn’t count against the project. It doesn’t count in favor either. All that matters, all that

gets tallied up when the question gets asked about whether the altruist did good, is how things ended up

for everyone else.

In the case of TOMS Shoes, the tallying is easy. The relatively wealthy shoe buyers in the United States

come off well; they get cool, politically correct footwear to show friends along with a psychological lift

from knowing they’re helping the less fortunate. On the other side, the rural Argentines obviously benefit

also.

Some Rules of Altruism

Altruism is a consequentialist ethics. Like utilitarianism, no specific acts are prohibited or required; only

outcomes matter. That explains why there aren’t lifestyle requirements for the altruist. Some live stoically

like Gandhi while others like Mycoskie get the high life, but they’re both altruists as long as the goal of

their lives and the reason for their actions is bringing happiness to others. Similarly, the altruist might be

a criminal (Robin Hood) or a liar (see Socrates’ noble lie).

Like the utilitarian, most of the hard questions altruists face concern happiness. They include:

 The happiness definition. Exactly what counts as happiness? In the case of TOMS donating shoes to rural

Argentines, the critical benefit is alleviation of disease and the suffering coming with it. Happiness, in

other words, is defined here as a release from real, physical pain. On the other hand, with respect to the

shoes sold in the States, the happiness is completely different; it’s a vague, good feeling that purchasers

receive knowing their shopping is serving a social cause. How do we define happiness in a way that ropes

in both these distinct experiences?

 Once happiness has been at least loosely defined, another question altruist’s face is the happiness

measure: how do we know which is worth more, the alleviation of suffering from a disease or the warm

happiness of serving a good cause? And even if the answer to that question is clear, how great is the

difference, how can it be measured?

 Another altruism difficulty is happiness foresight. Even if donating shoes helps in the short term, are the

recipients’ lives really going to be happier overall? Conditions are hard in the abandoned regions of the

third world, and alleviation of one problem may just clear the way for another. So TOMS Shoes saves

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poverty-stricken Argentines from suffering a debilitating foot disease, but how much good are you really

doing if you save people only so that they’re free to suffer aching hunger, miserable sickness in places

lacking antibiotics, and hard manual labor because there’s no other work?

Altruism is a variety of selflessness, but it’s not the same thing; people may deny themselves or they may

sacrifice themselves for all kinds of other reasons. For example, a soldier may die in combat, but that’s not

altruism; that’s loyalty: it’s not sacrificing for everyone else but for a particular nation. The same may go

for the political protestor who ends up jailed and forgotten forever. That’s self-sacrifice, but she did it for

the cause and not for all the others. The fireman may lose his life rescuing a victim, but this is because he’s

doing his job, not because he’s decided to live for the sake of others. All altruists, finally, are selfless, but

not all those who sacrifice themselves are altruists.

Personal versus impersonal altruism distinguishes two kinds of altruists: those who practice altruism on

their own and leave everyone else alone and those who believe that everyone should act only to benefit

others and without regard to their own well-being.

The Altruist in Business and the Business That Is Altruistic

TOMS Shoes shows that a business can be mounted to serve the welfare of others. A company aiming to

serve an altruistic purpose doesn’t have to be organized altruistically, however. An individual truly

dedicated to everyone else could start a more traditional company (a real estate firm, for example), work

like a dog, turn massive profits, and in the end, donate everything to charity. It may even be that during

the profit-making phase the altruist CEO is ruthless, exploiting workers and consumers to the maximum.

All that’s fine as long as the general welfare is served in the end when all the suffering is toted up on one

side and the happiness on the other. A business operation that isn’t at all altruistic, in other words, can be

bent in that direction by an altruistic owner.

Going the other way, the business operation itself may be altruistic. For example, this comes from the

College Board’s website, the About Us page: The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association

whose mission is to connect students to college success and opportunity. [5]

That sounds like a good cause. The company doesn’t exist to make money but to implement testing that

matches students with their best-fit colleges. It is, in other words, an altruistic enterprise, and the world,

the argument could be made, is a better place because the College Board exists. But—and this is the

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important distinction—that doesn’t mean everyone who works at the College Board is selfless. Far from it,

the CEO takes home $830,000 a year. That money would buy a lot of shoes for the poverty-stricken in

Argentina. So, there can be altruistic business organizations driven by workers who aren’t altruists.

A church is also a business organization with cash flows, budgets, and red and black ink. The same goes

for Goodwill. Here’s their mission statement: “Goodwill Industries International enhances the dignity and

quality of life of individuals, families and communities by eliminating barriers to opportunity and helping

people in need reach their fullest potential through the power of work.” [6]

So, the Salvation Army fits into

the group of altruistic enterprises, of organizations that exist, like the College Board, to do public good.

It’s distinct from the College Board, however, in that a very healthy percentage of those working inside the

organization are themselves altruists—they’re working for the cause, not their own welfare. Think of the

Salvation Army red kettle bell ringers around Christmas time.

Conclusion. Altruism connects with business in three basic ways. There are altruists who use normal,

profit-driven business operations to do well. There are altruistic companies that do good by employing no

altruistic workers. And there are altruistic organizations composed of altruistic individuals.

Advocating and Challenging Ethical Altruism

The arguments for and against an altruistic ethics overlap to a considerable extent with those listed under

utilitarianism. The advantages include:

 Clarity and simplicity. People may disagree about exactly how much good a company like TOMS Shoes

is really doing, but the overall idea that the founder is working so that others can be happier is easy to

grasp.

 Acceptability. The idea of working for others grants an ethical sheen. No matter what you might think of

someone as a person, it’s very difficult to criticize them in ethical terms if they really are dedicating

themselves to the well-being of everyone else.

 Flexibility. Altruists have many ways of executing their beliefs.

The disadvantages of altruism include:

 Uncertainty about the happiness of others. Even if individuals decide to sacrifice their own welfare

for the good of others, how do they know for sure what makes others happy?

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 Shortchanging yourself. Even though altruism doesn’t require that the altruist live a miserable life,

there doesn’t seem to be any clear reason why the altruist shouldn’t get an at least equal claim to

happiness as everyone else (as in a utilitarian approach). Also, some critics suspect that altruism can be a

way of escaping your own life: if you spend all your time volunteering, could it be that deep down you’re

not a good soul so much as just afraid of going out into the competitive world and trying to win a good

place for yourself?

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Altruism defines ethically good as any act that ends up increasing net happiness (or decreasing net

unhappiness) when everything is taken into account except the actor’s increased or diminished happiness.

 Altruism doesn’t require living a miserable life.

 Altruism intersects with the business world in various ways.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. Theoretically, could the most devoted altruist in a society also be its richest and happiest member? How?

2. Does Blake Mycoskie have to be an altruist for TOMS Shoes to be considered an altruistic enterprise?

3. Does TOMS Shoes have to be an altruistic enterprise for Mycoskie to be considered an altruist?

4. What are some other motives that may lead someone to live the life of an altruist?

[1] TOMS Shoes, “One for One Movement,” accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.toms.com/our-movement.

[2] TOMS Shoes, accessed May 15, 2011,http://cdn2.tomsshoes.com/images/uploads/2006-oct-vogue.jpg.

[3] Sharon_b, December 14, 2008 (5:24 p.m.), “Blake Mycoskie—he’s handsome, rich and helps children in the

Third World,” Gossip Rocks, accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.gossiprocks.com/forum/news/90958-blake-

mycoskie-hes-handsome-rich-helps-children-third-world.html.

[4] Lesley M. M. Blume, “You Are What You Wear,” Huffington Post, July 30, 2008, accessed May 15,

2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lesley-m-m-blume/you-are-what-you-wear_b_65967.html.

[5] “About Us,” College Board accessed May 15, 2011, http://about.collegeboard.org.

[6] “Our Mission,” Goodwill Industries International, Inc., accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.goodwill.org/about-

us/our-mission.

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3.4 Egoism: Just Me

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define ethical egoism.

2. Show how egoism works in and with business.

3. Consider advantages and drawbacks of egoism.

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Ethical Egoism

Ethical egoism: whatever action serves my self-interest is also the morally right action. What’s good for

me in the sense that it gives me pleasure and happiness is also good in the sense that it’s the morally right

thing to do.

Ethical egoism mirrors altruism: If I’m an altruist, I believe that actions ought to heighten the happiness

of others in the world, and what happens to me is irrelevant. If I’m an egoist, I believe that actions ought

to heighten my happiness, and what happens to others is irrelevant.

Could someone like Blake Mycoskie—someone widely recognized as an altruistic, social-cause hero—

actually is an egoist? Yes. Consider things this way. Here’s a young guy and he’s out looking for money,

celebrity, good parties, and a jaw-dropping girlfriend. It wouldn’t be the first time there was a guy like

that.

Put yourself in his shoes and imagine you’re an ethical egoist: whatever’s good for you is good. Your

situation is pretty clear, your moral responsibility lists what you should be trying to get, and the only

question is how can I get it all?

That’s a tall order. Becoming a rock star would probably work, but there are a lot of people already out

there going for it that way. The same goes for becoming a famous actor. Sports are another possibility;

Mycoskie, in fact, made a run at pro tennis as a younger man, but like most who try, he couldn’t break into

the upper echelon. So there are paths that may work, but they’re hard ones, it’s a real fight for every step

forward.

If you’re smart—and Mycoskie obviously is—then you might look for a way to get what you want that

doesn’t force you to compete so brutally with so many others. Even better, maybe you’ll look for a way that

doesn’t present any competition at all, a brand new path to the wish list. The idea of a celebrity-driven

shoe company that makes a profit but that also makes its founder a star in the eyes of the Hollywood stars

is a pretty good strategy.

Obviously, no one can look deep into Mycoskie’s mind and determine exactly what drove him to found his

enterprise. He may be an altruist or an egoist or something else, but what’s important is to outline how

egoism can actually work in the world. It can work—though of course it doesn’t work this way every time—

just like TOMS Shoes.

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Egoism and Selfishness

When we hear the word egoist, an ugly profile typically comes to mind: self-centered, untrustworthy,

pitiless, and callous with respect to others. Some egoists really are like that, but they don’t have to be that

way. If you’re out to maximize your own happiness in the world, you might find that helping others is the

shortest and fastest path to what you want. This is a very important point. Egoists aren’t against other

people, they’re for themselves, and if helping others work for them, that’s what they’ll do. The case of

TOMS Shoes fits right here. The company improves the lives of many; it raises the level of happiness in

the world. And because it does that, the organization has had tremendous success, and because of that

success, the Blake Mycoskie we’re imagining as an egoist is getting what he wants: money, great parties,

and everyone loving him. In short, sometimes the best way to one’s own happiness is by helping others be

happier.

That’s not always the way it works. Bernie Madoff destroyed families, stole people’s last dimes, and lived

the high life all the way through. For an ethical egoist, the only blemish on his record is that he got caught.

Madoff did get caught, though, and this too needs to be factored into any consideration of egoists and how

they relate to others. Just as egoists may help others because that serves their own interests, so too they

may obey social customs and laws. It’s only important to note that they obey not out of deference to others

or because it’s the morally right thing to do; they play by the rules because it’s the smart thing to do. They

don’t want to end up rotting in jail.

A useful contrast can be drawn in this context between egoism and selfishness. Where egoism means

putting your welfare above others’, selfishness is the refusal to see beyond yourself. Selfishness is the

inability (or unwillingness) to recognize that there are others sharing the world, so it’s the selfish person,

finally, who’s callous and insensitive to the wants and needs of others. For egoists, on the other hand,

because working with others cooperatively can be an excellent way to satisfy their own desires, they may

not be at all selfish; they may be just the opposite.

Enlightened Egoism, Cause Egoism, and the Invisible Hand

Enlightened egoism is the conviction that benefitting others—acting to increase their happiness—can

serve the egoist’s self-interest just as much as the egoist’s acts directly in favor of him or herself. As

opposed to altruism, which claims that it’s our ethical responsibility to serve others, the enlightened

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egoist’s generosity is a rational strategy, not a moral imperative. We don’t help others because we ought

to: we help them because it can make sense when, ultimately, we only want to help ourselves.

One simple and generic manifestation of enlightened egoism is a social contract. For example, I agree not

to steal from you as long as you agree not to steal from me. It’s not that I don’t take your things because I

believe stealing is morally wrong; I leave you alone because it’s a good way to get you to leave me alone.

On a less dramatic level, all of us form mini social contracts all the time. Just think of leading a group of

people through one of those building exits that makes you cross two distinct banks of doors. If you’re first

out, you’ll hold the door for those coming after, but then expect someone to hold the next door for you.

Sure, some people hold the door because it’s good manners or something like that, but for most of us, if no

one else ever held a door open for us, pretty soon we’d stop doing them the favor. It’s a trivial thing, of

course, but in the real world people generally hold doors open for others because they’ve agreed to a social

contract: everyone else does it for me; I’ll do it for them. That’s enlightened egoism, and it frequently

works pretty well.

TOMS Shoes can be understood as a more sophisticated version of the same mentality. It’s hard to discern

exactly what the contract would look like if someone tried to write it down, but it’s not hard to see the

larger notion of enlightened egoism. Shoes are donated to others not because of a moral obligation but

because serving the interests of others helps Blake Mycoskie serve his own. As long as shoe buyers keep

holding up their end of the bargain by buying his product, Mycoskie will continue to help them be

generous and feel good about themselves by donating pairs to people who need them.

Cause egoism is similar to, but also distinct from, enlightened egoism. Enlightened egoism works from the

idea that helping others is a good way of helping me. Cause egoism works from the idea that giving

the appearance of helping others is a promising way to advance my own interests in business. As opposed

to the enlightened egoist who will admit that he is out for himself but happy to benefit others along the

way, the cause egoist claims to be mainly or only interested in benefiting others and then leverages that

good publicity to help him. Stated slightly differently, enlightened egoists respect others while pursuing

their own interests, while cause egoists just fake it.

Adam Smith (1723–90) is known for making a connected point on the level of broad economic trade and

capitalism. In the end, it usually doesn’t matter whether people actually care about the well-being of

others, Smith maintains, because there exists an invisible hand at work in the marketplace. It leads

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individuals who are trying to get rich to enrich their society as well, and that enrichment happens

regardless of whether serving the general welfare was part of the original plan. According to Smith, the

person in business generally

Intends only his own gain, but is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of

the original intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society and

does so more effectively than when he directly intends to promote it. [1]

What’s the invisible hand? It’s the force of marketplace competition, which encourages or even requires

individuals who want to make money to make the lives of others better in the process.

The invisible hand is a central point defenders of egoism in business often make when talking about the

virtues of a me-first ethics. Egoism is good for me, but it frequently ends up being good for everyone else,

too. If that’s right, then even those who believe the utilitarian ideal of the general welfare should guide

business decisions may be forced to concede that we should all just become egoists.

Here’s a quick example. If you open a little takeout pizza shack near campus and your idea is to clear the

maximum amount of money possible to pay your tuition, what kind of business are you going to run?

Does it make sense to take a customer’s twelve dollars and then hand over an oily pie with cheap plastic

cheese and only three pepperonis? No, in the name of pursuing your own happiness, you’re going to try to

charge a bit less than Domino’s and give your customers something slightly better—maybe you’ll spread

richer cheese, or toss on a few extra pepperonis. Regardless, you’re not doing this for the reason an

altruist would; you’re not doing it because you sense an ethical obligation to make others’ lives better. As

an egoist, you don’t care whether your customers are happier or not. But if you want your business to

grow, you better care. And because you’re ethically required to help your business grow in order to make

tuition money and so make yourself happier, you’re going to end up improving the pizza-eating

experience at your school. Better food, less money. Everyone wins. We’re not talking Mother Teresa here,

but if ethical goodness is defined as more happiness for more people, then the pizza place is ethically

good. Further, anybody who wants to start up a successful pizza restaurant is, very likely, going to end up

doing good. If you don’t, if you can’t offer some advantage, then no one’s going to buy your slices.

Going beyond the quality-of-life benefits of businesses in society, Smith leaned toward a second claim

that’s far more controversial. He wrote that the entrepreneur trying to do well actually promotes society’s

well-being more effectively than when directly intending to promote it. This is startling. In essence, it’s

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the claim that for the most dedicated altruist the most effective strategy for life in business is…to act like

an egoist. Within the economic world at least, the best way for someone who cares only about the well-

being of others to implement that conviction is to go out and run a successful profit-making enterprise.

Clearly, this is a very powerful argument for defenders of ethical egoism. If it’s true that egoists beat

altruists at their own game (increasing the happiness of everyone else), then egoism wins the debate by

default; we should all become egoists. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to prove this claim one way or the

other. One thing is clear, however: Smith’s implicit criticism of do-gooders can be illustrated. Sometimes

individuals who decide to act for the good of others (instead of seeking profit for themselves) really do end

up making the world a worse place. Dr. Loretta Napoleoni has shown how attempts by Bono of U2 to help

the destitute in Africa have actually brought them more misery. [2]

Bono threw a benefit concert and

dedicated the proceeds to Africa are most needy. The intention was good, but the plan wasn’t thought all

the way through and the money ended up getting diverted to warlords who used it to buy guns and bullets.

Still, the fact that some altruistic endeavors actually make things worse doesn’t mean they’re all doomed.

Just as surely as some fail, others succeed.

The same mixed success can be attributed to businesses acting only for their own welfare, only for profit.

If it’s true that the pizza sellers help improve campus life, what about the entrepreneurial honor student

who volunteers to write your term paper for a price? It’s hard to see how a pay-for-grades scheme benefits

students in general, even though the writer may make a tidy profit, and that one student who paid for the

work may come out pretty well.

The invisible hand is the belief that businesses out in the world trying to do well for themselves tend to do

good for others too. It may even be that they do more good than generous altruists. It’s hard to know for

sure, but it can be concluded that there’s a distance between ethical egoism in reality and the image of the

egoist as a ruthless destroyer of broad social happiness.

Some Rules of Egoism

Egoism, like altruism, is a consequentialist ethics: the ends justify the means. If an egoist were at the helm

of TOMS Shoes and he cared only about meeting beautiful people and making huge money, he’d have no

scruples about lying all day long. There’d be no problem with smiling and insisting that the reason TOMS

Shoes exists is to generate charitable shoe donations to the poor. All that matters for the egoist is that the

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lie works, that it serves the goal of making TOMS as attractive and profitable as possible. If it does, then

deviating from the truth becomes the ethically recommendable route to follow.

Personal egoism versus impersonal egoism distinguishes these two views: the personal egoist in the

business world does whatever’s necessary to maximize his or her own happiness. What others do,

however, is considered their business. The impersonal egoist believes everyone should get up in the

morning and do what’s best for themselves and without concern for the welfare of others.

An impersonal egoist may find comfort in the invisible hand argument that the best way for me to do right

with respect to society in general is to get rich. Of course it’s true that there’s something crude in

shameless money grubbing, but when you look at things with rational eyes, it is hard to avoid noticing

that the kinds of advances that make lives better—cars affordably produced on assembly lines; drugs from

Lipitor to Chap Stick; cell phones; spill-proof pens; whatever—often trace back to someone saying, “I want

to make some money for myself.”

Rational egoism versus psychological egoism distinguishes two reasons for being an ethical egoist. The

rational version stands on the idea that egoism makes sense. In the world as it is, and given a choice

between the many ethical orientations available, egoism is the most reasonable. The psychological egoist

believes that, for each of us, putting our own interests in front of everyone else isn’t a choice; it’s a reality.

We’re made that way. Maybe it’s something written into our genes or it’s part of the way our minds are

wired, but regardless, according to the psychological egoist, we all care about ourselves before anyone else

and at their expense if necessary.

Why would I rationally choose to be an egoist? Maybe because I figure that if I don’t look out for myself,

no one will. Or maybe I think almost everyone else is that way, too, so I better play along or I’m going to

get played. (The Mexicans have a pithy phrase of common wisdom for this, “O te chingas, o te chingan,”

which means “either you screw everyone else, or they’ll screw you.”) Maybe I believe that doing well for

myself helps me do well for others too. The list could be drawn out, but the point is that there are

numerous reasons why an intelligent person may accept ethical egoism as the way to go.

As for those who subscribe to the theory of psychological egoism, obviously there’s no end of examples in

business and history to support the idea that no matter how much we may want things to be otherwise,

the plain truth is we’re made to look out for number one. On the other hand, one problem for

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psychological egoists is that there do seem to be examples of people doing things that are irreconcilable

with the idea that we’re all only trying to make ourselves happier:

 Parents sacrificing for children. Any mom or dad who works overtime at some grinding job for cash to pay

their children’s college tuition seems to be breaking the me-first rule. Here, the psychological egoist

responds that, when you really think about it, there may be something there for the parents after all: it

could be the pride in telling friends that their children are getting their degrees.

 Mother Teresa or similar religious-based advocates for the needy. Anyone spending their time and energy

making things better for others, while living painfully modestly, seems like a good candidate to break the

rule of psychological egoism. Here, the psychological egoist responds that perhaps they see a different

reward for themselves than earthly pleasures. They may believe, for example, that their suffering on this

earth will be more than compensated by paradise in heaven.

The Four Relations between Egoism and Business

Structurally, there are four possible relations between ethical egoism and business life:

1. You can have egoists in egoist organizations. This is mercenary capitalism. Individuals do whatever work

is required so long as it benefits them to the maximum. Naturally, this kind of person might find a good

home at a company entirely dedicated to maximizing its own health and success, which can mean one

looking to maximize profits without other considerations. A good example is executives at the

Countrywide mortgage firm. They OK’ed thousands of mortgages to clients who had no way to repay the

money. Then they bundled and sold these mortgages to banks and other financial institutions, making a

quick profit. When the loans later collapsed, those institutions fell into bankruptcy. The Countrywide

executives quickly formed a new company to buy those same loans back at pennies on the dollar, thus

once again turning millions in profits. [3]

2. You can have egoists in nonegoist organizations. Possibly, the CEO of the College Board fits into this

category. His salary of just under a million dollars annually sounds pretty good, especially when you

consider that he gets it working for a nonprofit company that exists to help high school students find the

college best fitted to them. It’s also possible that Blake Mycoskie of TOMS Shoes fits this profile: he lives

an extremely enviable life in the middle of a company set up to help people who almost no one envies.

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3. You can have nonegoists in egoist organizations. Somewhere in the Countrywide mortgage company we

could surely find someone who purchased shoes from TOMS because they wanted to participate in the

project of helping the rural poor in Argentina.

4. You can have nonegoists in nonegoist organizations. Think of the red kettle bell ringers popping up

outside malls around the holiday season.

Advocating and Challenging Ethical Egoism

The arguments for an egoistic ethics include the following:

 Clarity and simplicity. Everybody understands what it means to look out for them first.

 Practicality. Many ethical theories claim to protect our individual interests, but each of us knows

ourselves and our own interest’s best. So doesn’t it make sense that we as individuals take the lead?

Further, with respect to creating happiness for ourselves, there’s no one closer to the action than us. So,

again, doesn’t it make sense that each of us should be assigned that responsibility?

 Sincerity. For those subscribing to psychological egoism, there’s a certain amount of honesty in this

ethics not found in others. If our real motive beneath everything else is to provide for our own happiness

first, then shouldn’t we just recognize and say that? It’s better to be sincere and admit that the reason we

don’t steal is so that others don’t steal from us instead of inventing some other explanations which sound

nice but are ultimately bogus.

 Unintended consequences. In the business world, the concept of the invisible hand allows egoists to

claim that their actions end up actually helping others and may help them more than direct charity or

similar altruistic actions.

 Finally, there’s a broad argument in favor of egoism that concerns dignity. If you’re out in the world being

altruistic, it’s natural to assume that those benefiting from your generosity will be grateful. Sometimes

they’re not, though. Sometimes the people we try to help repay us with spite and resentment. They do

because there’s something condescending about helping others; there’s a message wrapped up in the aid

that those who receive it are incapable of taking care of them and need someone superior to look out for

them. This is especially palpable in the case of panhandlers. If you drop a dollar into their hat, it’s hard to

not also send along the accusation that their existence is base and shameful (you refuse to look them in

the eye; you drop the money and hurry away). To the extent that’s right, an egoism that expects people to

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look out for themselves and spurns charity may actually be the best way to demonstrate respect for others

and to acknowledge their dignity.

Arguments against ethical egoism include the following:

 Egoism isn’t ethics. The reason we have ethics is because there are so many people in the world and in

business who care only about themselves. The entire idea of ethics, the reasoning goes, is to set up some

rules for acting that rescue us from a cruel reality where everyone’s just looking out for number one.

 Egoism ignores blatant wrongs. Stealing candy from a baby—or running a company selling crappy

baby food—strikes most of us as unacceptable, but the rules of egoism dictate that those are

recommendable actions as long as you can be assured that they’ll serve your interests.

 Psychological egoism is not true. The idea that we have no choice but to pursue our own welfare

before anything else is demonstrated to be false millions of times every day; it’s wrong every time

someone makes an anonymous contribution to a cause or goes out of their way to help another without

expecting anything in return.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Egoism defines ethically good as any act that raises the actor’s overall happiness (or decreases

unhappiness) without counting anyone else’s increased or diminished happiness.

 Egoism does not mean ignoring the existence and welfare of others, though they are not necessarily

advocated either.

 Though egoists act in the name of their own happiness, others may benefit.

 Egoism intersects with the business world in various ways.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. What’s the difference between egoism and selfishness?

2. In what situation would an egoist decide that a lie is morally wrong?

3. In the real world, is there any way to distinguish an enlightened egoist from a cause egoist?

4. What are some reasons someone may become a rational egoist?

5. What is the invisible hand?

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6. If you were starting a small business, would you prefer that your partner is a utilitarian, an altruist, or an

egoist? Why?

[1] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: Strahan and Cadell,

1776), bk. 4, chap. 2.

[2] Can Tran, “Celebrities Raising Funds for Africa End Up Making Things ‘Worse,’” Ground Report, May 14, 2008,

accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.groundreport.com/World/Celebrities-Raising-Funds-For-Africa-End-Up-

Making/2861070.

[3] Eric Lipton, “Ex-Leaders of Countrywide Profit from Bad Loans,” New York Times, March 3, 2009, accessed May

15, 2011,http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/business/04penny.html.

3.5 Case Studies

Cheaters

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Source: Photo courtesy of S. Brusseau.

KDCP is Karen Dillard’s company specialized in preparing students to ace the Scholastic Aptitude Test. At

least some of the paying students received a solid testing-day advantage: besides teaching the typical tips

and pointers, KDCP acquired stolen SAT tests and used them in their training sessions. It’s unclear how

many of the questions that students practiced on subsequently turned up on the SATs they took, but some

certainly did. The company that produces the SAT, the College Board, cried foul and took KDCP to court.

The lawsuit fell into the category of copyright infringement, but the real meat of the claim was that KDCP

helped kids cheat, they got caught, and now they should pay.

The College Board’s case was very strong. After KDCP accepted the cold reality that they were going to get

hammered, they agreed to a settlement offer from the College Board that included this provision: KDCP

would provide $400,000 worth of free SAT prep classes to high schoolers who couldn’t afford to pay the

bill themselves. [1]

Q U E S T I O N S

1. Can you form a quick list of people who’d benefit because of this decision and others who’d end up on the

losing side? Then, considering the situation globally and from a utilitarian perspective, what would need to

be true for the settlement offer to be ethically recommendable?

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2. As for those receiving the course for free—it’s probably safe to assume that their happiness

increases. Something for nothing is good. But what about the students who still have to pay for

the course? Some may be gladdened to hear that more students get the opportunity, but others

will see things differently; they’ll focus on the fact that their parents are working and saving

money to pay for the course, while others get it for nothing. Some of those who paid probably

actually earned the money themselves at some disagreeable, minimum wage McJob. Maybe they

served popcorn in the movie theater to one of those others who later on applied and got a

hardship exemption.

o Starting from this frustration and unhappiness on the part of those who pay full price, can you

form a utilitarian case against the settlement’s free classes?

o From a utilitarian perspective, could the College Board have improved the settlement by adding

the stipulation that the settlement’s terms (and therefore the free classes) not be publicly

disclosed?

o Once word got out, could a utilitarian recommend that the College Board lie or that it release a

statement saying, “No free classes were part of the settlement”?

3. There was talk about canceling the scores of those students who took the SAT after benefitting from the

KDCP classes that offered access to the stolen exam booklets. The students and their parents protested

vigorously, pointing out that they’d simply signed up for test prep, just like students all across the nation.

They knew nothing about the theft and they presumably didn’t know they were practicing on questions

that might actually appear on their exam day. From the perspective of rule utilitarianism, what’s the case

for canceling their scores? From the perspective of act utilitarianism, what’s the case for reinstating the

scores?

4. The College Board CEO makes around $830,000 a year.

o What is a utilitarian case for radically lowering his salary?

o If you were a utilitarian and you had the chance—and you were sure you wouldn’t get caught—

would you steal the money from the guy’s bank account? Why or why not?

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5. It could be that part of what the College Board hoped to gain through this settlement requiring

free classes for the underprivileged was some positive publicity, some burnishing of their image as

the good guys, the socially responsible company, the ones who do the right thing.

o Outline the case for this being an act of an altruistic company.

o Outline the case for this being an act of an egoistic company.

UFC

Source: Photo courtesy of Kaloozer, http://www.flickr.com/photos/kalooz/3942634378/.

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) got off to a crushing start. In one of the earliest matches, Tank

Abbott, a six-footer weighing 280 pounds, faced John Matua, who was two inches taller and weighed a

whopping four hundred pounds. Their combat styles were as different as their sizes. Abbott called himself

a pit fighter. Matua was an expert in more refined techniques: he’d honed the skills of wrestling and

applying pressure holds. His skill—which was also a noble and ancient Hawaiian tradition—was the

martial art called Kuialua.

The evening went poorly for the artist. Abbott nailed him with two roundhouses before applying a skull-

cracking head butt. The match was only seconds old and Matua was down and so knocked out that his

eyes weren’t even closed, just glazed and staring absently at the ceiling. The rest of his body was

convulsing. The referee charged toward the defenseless fighter, but Abbott was closer and slammed an

elbow down on Matua’s pale face. Abbott tried to stand up and ram another, but the referee was now close

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enough to pull him away. As blood spurted everywhere and medics rushed to save the loser, Abbott stood

above Matua and ridiculed him for being fat. [2]

The tape of Abbott’s brutal skills and pitiless attitude shot through the Internet. He became—briefly—

famous and omnipresent, even getting a guest appearance on the goofy, family-friendly sitcom Friends.

A US senator also saw the tape but reacted differently. Calling it barbaric and a human form of

cockfighting, he initiated a crusade to get the UFC banned. Media executives were pressured to not beam

the matches onto public TVs, and doctors were drafted to report that UFC fighters (like professional

boxers) would likely suffer long-term brain damage. In the heat of the offensive, even diehard advocates

agreed the sport might be a bit raw, and the UFC’s original motto—“There are no rules!”—got slightly

modified. Head butting, eye-gouging, and fish-hooking (sticking your finger into an opponent’s orifice and

ripping it open) were banned.

No matter what anyone thinks of UFC, it convincingly demonstrates that blood resembles sex. Both sell

and people like to watch. The proof is that today UFC events are among the most viewed in the world,

among the most profitable, and—this is the one part that hasn’t changed since the gritty beginning—

among the most brutal.

Q U E S T I O N S

1. Two of the common arguments against ultimate fighting—and the two main reasons the US

senator argued to get the events banned—are the following:

o They’re brutal; UFC celebrates violence and hatred and injury, and therefore, it’s immoral.

o Besides the bumps, bruises, and broken bones—which usually heal up—the fighters also suffer

long-term and incurable brain damage. Therefore, the sport is immoral even though it might be

true that in their prime, the fighters make enough money to compensate the physical suffering

endured in the octagon.

How could a utilitarian defend the UFC against these two criticisms?

2. How could the concept of the utilitarian sacrifice apply to John Matua?

3. How would a hedonistic utilitarian’s reaction to UFC differ from an idealistic utilitarian’s reaction? Is there

anything at all in UFC that might convince an idealistic utilitarian to promote the sport as ethically

positive?

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4. How could a proponent of monetized utilitarianism begin portioning up the experiences of Abbott, Matua,

the UFC sponsors, and the spectators in order to construct a mathematical formula (like Ford did with the

Pinto) to decide whether UFC should be banned?

5. Think of UFC as a business, one compared to a biotech company that pioneers cutting-edge, life-saving

drugs. Now, how would a utilitarian decide which one of these two companies was the more ethically

respectable?

6. Why might an altruist sign up to be a UFC fighter? Why might an egoist sign up to be a UFC fighter?

Lottery

Source: Photo courtesy of Alan Levine, http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/81199624.

In her blog Majikthise, Lindsay Beyerstein writes, “State lotteries are often justified on the grounds that

they raise money for social programs, especially those that target the neediest members of society.

However, the poorest members of society tend to spend (and, by design lose) the most on lottery tickets.

Some state lottery proceeds fund programs that benefit everyone, not just the poor. Often state lottery

money is being systematically redistributed upward—from lotto players to suburban schools, for

example.” [3]

Q U E S T I O N S

1. How is the lottery an example of the utilitarian monster?

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2. How can you set yourself up to argue in favor of or against the ethical existence of the lottery in terms of

monetized utilitarianism?

3. Lotteries are about money and about fun—that is, even for the losers, there’s a benefit in the thrill of

watching the numbers turn up. Could the case be made that, from a hedonistic utilitarian standpoint, the

lottery is ethically recommendable because it serves the welfare not only of the winner but also of the

millions of losers?

4. One of Lindsay Beyerstein’s concerns is that the lottery tends to redistribute money from the poor

toward the rich.

o Does a utilitarian necessarily consider this redistribution unethical?

o What kinds of things would a utilitarian have to look into to decide whether the inverse Robin

Hooding is necessarily a bad thing?

5. The lotteries under discussion here are run by states, and Lindsay Beyerstein is not a big fan. She calls

these lotteries “a tax on idiocy” meaning, presumably, that people are just throwing their money away

every time they buy a ticket. Now, one of the arguments in favor of egoism as an ethical stance is that no

one knows what makes each of us happy better than each of us. So, it follows, we should all just try to get

what we want and leave other people alone. How can this view of egoism be fashioned to respond to the

idea that the lottery is a tax on idiocy?

Honest Tea

Source: Photo courtesy of Arnold Gatilao, http://www.flickr.com/photos/arndog/1210077306/.

Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea in 1998. He calls himself the Tea EO (as opposed to CEO) and his

original product was a bottled tea drink with no additives beyond a bit of sugar. Crisp and natural—that

was the product’s main selling point. It wasn’t the only selling point, though. The others aren’t in the

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bottle; they’re in the company making it. Honest Tea is a small enterprise composed of good people. As

the company website relates, “A commitment to social responsibility is central to Honest Tea’s identity

and purpose. The company strives for authenticity, integrity and purity, in our products and in the way we

do business…Honest Tea seeks to create honest relationships with our employees, suppliers, customers

and with the communities in which we do business.” [4]

Buy Honest Tea, the message is, because the people behind it are trustworthy; they are the kind of

entrepreneurs you want to support.

The mission statement also relates that when Honest Tea gives business to suppliers, “we will attempt to

choose the option that better addresses the needs of economically disadvantaged communities.” [5]

They’ll

give the business, for example, to the company in a poverty-stricken area because, they figure, those

people really need the jobs. Also, and to round out this socially concerned image, the company promotes

ecological (“sustainability”) concerns and fair trade practices: “Honest Tea is committed to the well-being

of the folks along the value chain who help bring our products to market. We seek out suppliers that

practice sustainable farming and demonstrate respect for individual workers and their families.” [6]

Summing up, Honest Tea provides a natural product, helps the poor, treats people with respect, and saves

the planet. It’s a pretty striking corporate profile.

It’s also a profile that sells. It does because when you hand over your money for one of their bottles, you’re

confident that you’re not fattening the coffers of some money grubbing executive in a New York penthouse

who’d lace drinks with chemicals or anything else that served to raise profits. For many consumers, that’s

good to know.

Honest Tea started selling in Whole Foods and then spread all over, even to the White House fridges

because it’s a presidential favorite. Revenues are zooming up through the dozens of millions. In 2008, the

Coca-Cola Company bought a 40 percent share of Honest Tea for $43 million. It’s a rampantly successful

company.

Featured as part of a series in the Washington Post in 2009, the company’s founder, Seth Goldman, was

asked about his enterprise and his perspective on corporate philanthropy, meaning cash donations to

good causes. Goldman said, “Of course there’s nothing wrong with charity, but the best way for companies

to become good citizens is through the way they operate their business.” Here are two of his examples: [7]

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 Switching from Styrofoam to postconsumer waste might help a packaging company make a more

meaningful contribution to sustainability than a token donation to an environmental nonprofit.

 Investing in a local production facility or even a community bank could help support a local economy

more effectively than a donation to a nearby jobs program.

Organizations in the economic world, Goldman believes, can do the most good by doing good themselves

as opposed to doing well (making money) and then outsourcing their generosity and social responsibility

by donating part of their profits to charities. That may be true, or it may not be, but it’s certain that

Goldman is quite good at making the case. He’s had a lot of practice since he’s outlined his ideas not just

in the Post but in as many papers and magazines as he can find. Honest Tea’s drinks are always featured

prominently in these flattering articles, which are especially complimentary when you consider that

Honest Tea doesn’t have to pay a penny for them.

Q U E S T I O N S

1. Make the case that Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea as an expression of his utilitarian ethics.

o What kinds of people are affected by the Honest Tea organization? Which groups might benefit

from Honest Tea and how? Which groups might not benefit?

o Would this be a hedonistic or idealistic utilitarianism? Why?

o Would it be possible to construe Honest Tea within a framework of monetized utilitarianism?

o Would this be a soft or hard utilitarianism?

2. Make the case that Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea as an expression of his ethical altruism.

o Altruists serve the welfare of others. How does Honest Tea serve people’s welfare?

o What would have to be true about Goldman in terms of his particular abilities and skills for this

enterprise to fall under the heading of altruism?

o Does Goldman sound more like a personal or an impersonal altruist?

3. Make the case that Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea as an expression of his ethical egoism.

o What are some of the benefits Goldman could derive from Honest Tea?

o Before running Honest Tea, Goldman was a big-time mutual fund manager. What kind of benefits

could Honest Tea have offered that he couldn’t find in the world of finance?

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o Does Goldman sound more like a personal or an impersonal egoist?

o In the real world, does it make any difference whether Goldman does enlightened egoism or

cause egoism?

4. In this case study, two kinds of drink manufacturers are contrasted: Honest Tea and the hypothetical drink

company run by some mercenary businessman lacing drinks with bad chemicals to maximize profits.

Looking at this contrast, how could a defender of egoism claim that the best way for healthy drinks to

make their way into the general public’s hands (in the medium and long term, anyway) is for

Goldman and the mercenary businessman and everyone else to all be egoists?

5. Assume that Seth Goldman is a cause egoist, someone faking concern for the general welfare in order to

provide for his own happiness and pleasure. How could the concept of the invisible hand be introduced to

make the claim that Goldman is actually doing more good for the general welfare than he would if he were

a utilitarian or even an altruist?

Your Business

Source: Photo courtesy of Paul Sapiano, http://www.flickr.com/photos/peasap/935756569.

Think about something you do with passion or expertise—a dish you like to cook and eat, a sport you play,

any unique skill or ability you’ve developed—and figure out a way to turn it into a small business. For

example, you like baking cookies, so you open a bake shop, or you like hockey and could imagine an

improved stick to invent and market.

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Q U E S T I O N S

1. If your business is like most others, you’re going to need some money to get it up and going, more money

than you’ve got right now. That means you’ll need to find a partner for your venture, someone to help you

get the cash together and then run things afterward. Would you prefer a utilitarian, an altruist, or an

egoist for your partner? Why?

2. Do you think the invisible hand would be in effect for your business? Just by trying to make money, do you

imagine you’d end up improving people’s lives? If this business works, is it even possible that you’d help

others more than you would by volunteering time for a charity organization? Elaborate.

3. Assume that doing well in society and not just doing well (making money) is important to you.

Within the business you have in mind, with which of these three options do you suspect you’d

accomplish more general good?

o Just making money and trusting the invisible hand to take care of the rest

o Making money and donating part of it to charity—that is, to people specialized in serving the

general welfare

o Attempting to do good within your business by, for example, buying recycled materials or by

paying wages slightly above what people could get for the same work at other companies

4. Is there a potential cause egoism angle to your business? Could you set it up to make it seem like

the reason you’re running your enterprise is to help others when really you’re just trying to make money?

For a consequentialist, is there anything wrong with that?

[1] missypie, April 29, 2008 (2:22 p.m.), “CB-Karen Dillard case settled-no cancelled scores,” College Confidential,

accessed May 15, 2011,http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/501843-cb-karen-dillard-case-settled-

no-cancelled-scores.html.

[2] David Plotz, “Fight Clubbed,” Slate, November 17, 1999, accessed May 15,

2011,http://www.slate.com/id/46344.

[3] Lindsay Beyerstein, “Lotteries as Regressive Taxes,” Majikthise (blog), January 23, 2006, accessed May 15,

2011,http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2006/01/lotteries_as_re.html.

[4] “Our Mission,” Honest, accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.honesttea.com/mission/about/overview.

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[5] “Our Mission,” Honest, accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.honesttea.com/mission/about/overview.

[6] “Our Mission,” Honest, accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.honesttea.com/mission/about/overview.

[7] “On Leadership: Seth Goldman,” Washington Post, accessed May 15,

2011,http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/panelists/2009/11/the-biggest-dollars.html.

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Chapter 4

Theories Responding to the Challenge of Cultural Relativism

Chapter Overview

Chapter 4 "Theories Responding to the Challenge of Cultural Relativism" examines some theories guiding

ethical decisions in business. It considers reactions to the possibility that there are no universal

definitions of right and wrong, only different customs that change from one society to another.

4.1 What Is Cultural Relativism?

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

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1. Define cultural relativism.

2. Show how cultural relativism defies traditional ethics.

Nietzsche and the End of Traditional Ethics

“God is dead,” the declaration attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, stands along with “I think, therefore I

am” (René Descartes, 1641) as philosophy’s most popularized—and parodied—phrases. The t-shirt

proclaiming “Nietzsche is dead, signed, God” is funny, but it doesn’t quite answer what Nietzsche was

saying in the late 1800s. What Nietzsche meant to launch was not only an assault on a certain religion but

also a suspicion of the idea that there’s one source of final justice for all reality. Nietzsche proposed that

different cultures and people each produce their own moral recommendations and prohibitions, and

there’s no way to indisputably prove that one set is simply and universally preferable to another. The

suspicion that there’s no final appeal—and therefore the values and morality practiced by a community

can’t be dismissed as wrong or inferior to those practiced elsewhere—is called cultural relativism.

Example: For most of us, the killing of a newborn would be among the most heinous of immoral acts; a

perpetrator would need to be purely evil or completely mad. The Inuit Eskimos, however, regularly

practiced female infanticide during their prehistory, and it was neither evil nor insane. Their brutal living

conditions required a population imbalance tipped toward hunters (males). Without that gender

selecting, the plain fact was the entire group faced starvation. At another place and time, Bernal

Diaz’s The Conquest of New Spain recounts the Spanish invasion of the Americas and includes multiple

reports of newborns sacrificed in bloody ceremonies that made perfect sense to the locals, but left

Spaniards astonished and appalled. The ethics of infanticide, the point is, differ from one culture and time

to another. Further, these differences seem irreconcilable: it’s extremely difficult to see how we could

convince the Inuit of the past to adopt our morality or how they could convince us to adopt theirs. And if

that’s right, then maybe it no longer makes sense to talk about right and wrong in general terms as though

there’s a set of rules applying to everyone; instead, there are only rights and wrongs as defined within a

specific society.

Finally, if you accept the cultural relativist premise, then you’re rejecting the foundation of traditional

ethics. You’re rejecting the idea that if we think carefully and expertly enough, we’ll be able to formulate

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rules for action that everyone—people in all times, places, and communities—must obey if they want to

consider themselves ethically responsible.

Cultural Relativism in Business Ethics

In the world of international business, Entrepreneur magazine introduces the pitfalls of ethical variation

across cultures with this statement from Steve Veltkamp, president of Biz$hop, an American import-

export business: “Bribery is a common way of doing business in a lot of foreign places.” [1]

If that’s true, then US businesses trying to expand into markets abroad—and competing with local

businesses already established there—are probably going to consider doing what everyone else is doing,

which means getting in on the bribery action. As the Entrepreneur article points out, however, this leads

to a problem: “While bribes are expected in many countries, the United States’ 1977 Foreign Corrupt

Practices Act prohibits payments made with the aim of gaining or maintaining business.”

So American hands are tied. If a construction company is bidding on the contract to build an airport in a

foreign nation, one where the local politicians will be expecting to get their palms greased, they’re at a

distinct disadvantage since they’re not allowed to play by the local rules. Still there is (as there almost

always is) a loophole: “Not all payments are prohibited by the act. Some payments are acceptable if they

don’t violate local laws. Gifts, for instance, to officers working for foreign corporations are legal.”

There’s no bribing, but gifting, apparently, gets a green light. There’s a problem here, too, however: “It can

be difficult to determine the difference between a gift and a bribe in a given situation. ‘If you give a gift to

someone and it leads to a business deal, is that a bribe or a gift?’ asks Veltkamp. ‘In some cultures, gift-

giving is an entrenched part of doing business. If you look at it in a certain sense, maybe it’s a bribe, since

they won’t talk to you until you’ve made that gesture.’”

Now what? Over there, cash changes hands and it’s called an acceptable gift, while those watching from

back here see an illegal bribe.

There are two ways of looking at this dilemma. One is to say, well, this has to be one or the other, either a

gift or a bribe; it has to be either moral or immoral. Given that, we need to take out our traditional tools—

our basic duties, the utilitarian doctrine that we should act to serve the greater good, and so on—and

figure out which it is. Nietzsche went the other way, though. He said that situations like this don’t show

that we need to use ethics to figure out which side is right; instead, the situation shows what moral

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rules really are: just a set of opinions that a group of people share and nothing more. In the United States

we believe it’s wrong to grease palms, and so it is. In some other places they believe it’s honorable to hand

money under the table, and so it is.

If that’s true, then specific convictions of right and wrong in business ethics will never be anything but

cultural fashions, beliefs some community somewhere decides to hold up for a while until they decide to

believe something else. Anything, the reasoning goes, may be morally good or bad in the economic world;

it just depends on where you happen to be, at what time, and who else is around.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Cultural relativism is the suspicion that values and morality are culture specific—they’re just what the

community believes and not the result of universal reason.

 For cultural relativists, because all moral guidelines originate within specific cultures, there’s no way to

dismiss one set of rules as wrong or inferior to those developed in another culture.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. Why do you imagine the term cultural relativism was chosen to mean what it does?

2. Do you believe cultures are irreconcilably different? Or is it that deep down people are people and we’re

really all the same? How does this distinction relate to the difference between cultural relativism and

traditional theories of ethics?

[1] Moira Allen, “Here Comes the Bribe,” Entrepreneur, October 2000, accessed May 12,

2011, http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2000/october/32636.html.

4.2 Nietzsche’s Eternal Return of the Same

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

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1. Define Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same.

2. Show how the idea of the eternal return provides guidance for professional life.

3. Consider the advantages and a drawback of the eternal return.

Responding to Cultural Relativism by Leaving Common Morality Behind

If, along with cultural relativists, you accept that rules distinguishing right from wrong shift around from

place to place and time to time, it becomes difficult to keep faith in morality. It’s difficult because verdicts

seem flimsy and impermanent, and because this hard question seems inescapable: Why should I go out of

my way to do the right thing today if what counts as the right thing might change tomorrow?

One response to the question is to give up on morality, disrespect the whole idea by labeling all the

customary regulations—don’t lie, don’t steal, strive for the greatest good for the greatest number—a giant

sham. Then you can live without the inhibiting limits of moral codes. You can go beyond any idea of good

and evil and lead an unconstrained life exuberantly celebrating everything you want to do and be.

Wallace Souza: TV Reporter, Politician, and Dealer

Some careers are more vivid and alive than others. TV crime reporting is intense work, especially the

action-type shows where the reporter races to the scene, interviews witnesses, and tracks down shady

characters. Politics is another throbbing life; the adrenalin of crime chasing isn’t there, but you get the

brimming confidence and energy that comes with power, with deciding what others can and can’t do.

Drug dealing excites too, in its way, with thrilling danger and the pleasures of fast money. People, finally,

who want to live exuberantly, who prefer risk to caution and find it easy to say things like “you only go

around once” are probably going to find something attractive in these lines of work and may opt for one or

another.

Then there’s Wallace Souza. He opted for all three. At the same time. The most visible of his roles—TV

reporter—also yielded the most visible success. His program aired from the Brazilian state of Amazonas, a

jungley place far from cosmopolitan São Paulo and touristy Rio de Janeiro. Known as a haven for cocaine

cartels, and as a training ground for revolutionary militants charging into neighboring Columbia and

Venezuela, it’s a natural spot to bring cameras and look for dramatic action. A number of reporters were

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stationed in the region, but none seemed so uncannily skilled at reaching scenes first and getting video

over the airwaves than Mr. Souza. In fact, on occasion, he even reached scenes before the police.

The dogged TV reporting, along with Souza’s editorializing complaints about the region’s jaded criminals,

made him a popular hero and sealed his bid for a seat in the local congress. He didn’t allow his state

capital work to interfere with his TV role, however. Actually, the two jobs fit together well: one day he was

reporting on the deplorable free-for-all in the jungle and the next he was in the capital meeting with high-

ranking police officers, reviewing their strategies and proposing laws to fix things.

The perfect image began to crack, though, when it was revealed that the reason Souza so frequently

reached the best crime scenes first is that he was paying hit men to assassinate local drug dealers. He

wasn’t, it turned out, just the first to know about the crimes, he knew even before they happened. In an

especially brazen move, during one of his last TV programs, he put up pictures of several notorious

criminals and asked his viewers to phone in and votes on which one they’d like to see killed.

At this point, Souza seemed like an overzealous crusader: he was drawing vivid attention to the crime

plague and doing something about it with his hit men. You could doubt his methods, but his dedication to

his community’s welfare seemed noble—until it was revealed that he was actually also a major drug

dealer. And the criminals getting killed and shown on his program weren’t just random outlaws; they were

Souza’s drug-trade competitors. [1]

What Is the Eternal Return of the Same?

One report on Souza’s exploits included the suggestion that his willingness to cross every moral line—to

lie, traffic drugs, order killings, whatever—fit him for the title of the Antichrist. [2]

That title, as it turns out, was one Nietzsche enjoyed assigning to himself. It’s definitely also a fit for Souza

in the sense that he seemed to live without shame, fear, or regard for good and evil. What’s notable about

Souza’s business ventures is that they pay no heed to the very idea of morals. It’s not that they skirt some

rules or follow some guidelines while disobeying others; it’s not like he’s trying to get away with

something—it’s much more like morality doesn’t exist. Now, bringing this back to Nietzsche, who shared

the sentiments, the question Nietzsche asked himself was, if morality really is canceled, then what? How

should we live? The answer was a thought experiment called the eternal return of the same.

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Imagine, Nietzsche proposed, that every decision you make and everything you feel, say, and do will have

to be repeated forever—that is, at the end of your life, you die and are immediately reborn right back in

the same year and place where everything started the time before, and you do it all again in exactly the

same way. Existence becomes an infinite loop. With that disturbing idea established, Nietzsche converted

it into a proposal for life: we should always act as though the eternal return were real. Do, Nietzsche says,

what you would if you had to live with the choice over and over again forever. The eternal return, finally,

gives us a reason to do one thing and not another: it guides us in a world without morals.

How Does the Eternal Return Work?

Start with the eternal return as it could be applied to an altruist, to someone dedicating life to helping

others. One way to do altruism would be by working for a nonprofit international organization that goes

to poverty-wrecked places like Amazonas and helps coca farmers (the coca leaf is the base for cocaine)

shift their farms to less socially damaging crops. This would be difficult work. You might figure on doing it

though, getting through it, and feeling like you’ve done some good in the world. But would you do it

infinitely? Would you be willing to suffer through that existence once and again forever? Remember, the

world would never get better; every time you’d just go back to being born on earth just the way it was

before. Obviously, people can make their own decisions, but it seems fairly likely that under the condition

of the eternal return there’d be fewer people dedicating themselves—and sacrificing their own comfort

and interests—to social well-being.

What about some other lines of work? Would there be fewer snowplow operators, long-haul pilots,

teachers willing to work in troubled schools? What kind of professional lives, Nietzsche forces us to ask,

would be too hellish, bothersome, or exhausting to be repeated forever? Those lives, whatever they are,

get filtered by the eternal return; they get removed from consideration.

If certain careers and aspirations are out, then what’s in? What kind of existence in the economic world

does the eternal return recommend? One possibility is Wallace Souza. The question is, why

would his career trajectory fit the eternal return?

The job of a reporter is fast and dramatic, the kind of thing many imagine themselves doing if they weren’t

tied down by other commitments. People with children frequently feel an obligation to get into a safe and

conservative line of work, one producing a steady paycheck. Others feel a responsibility toward their aged

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parents and a corresponding obligation to not stray too far just in case something goes wrong. So trekking

off into the Brazilian jungle in search of drug operations may well be exciting—most of us would probably

concede that—but it’d be irreconcilable with many family responsibilities. One thing the eternal return

does, however, is seriously increase the burden of those responsibilities. When you sacrifice something

you want to do because of a sense of obligation, you may be able to swallow the loss once, but Nietzsche is

demanding that you take it down over and over again. Family responsibilities may count, but at what

point do you say “enough”? Can anyone oblige you to sacrifice doing what you really want forever?

Taking the next step into Souza’s amoral but dramatic career, assuming you do decide to become a crime

reporter, and you’re inside the eternal return where everything will recur infinitely, then aren’t you going

to go about making your reporting work as exciting and successful as possible? Probably, yes. So why not

hire some hit men to fire things up a bit? Normally, of course, our moral compass tells us that killing

others to get ahead isn’t really an option. But with all morality canceled, it becomes an option, one just

like any other. Be a banker, be a reporter, be a killer, there’s no real difference. Just choose the one you’d

most like to do repeatedly without end.

Souza also chose to be a drug dealer. Again, this is one of those jobs many would find exciting and

satisfying. Thrills and easy money are attractive; that’s part of the reason Hollywood produces so many

films about traffickers and their lives. Most of us wouldn’t actually do something like that, though, at least

partially because dealing drugs feels morally wrong. But inside the eternal return, that shame factor falls

away; when it does, the number of people entering this field of work might well increase.

It’s critical to note that Nietzsche’s eternal return is not the idea that you should go off and be a crime-

reporting, hit man–hiring drug dealer. Instead, Souza’s life just exemplifies one thing that could happen

in the world of your career if you accept Nietzsche’s proposal of living beyond any traditional moral limit.

Regardless, what the eternal return definitely does do is force you to make decisions about your

professional life in very different terms than those presented by traditional ethical theories. There’s no

consideration of sweeping duties; there’s just you and a simple decision: the life you choose now will be

repeated forever, so which will yours be?

What’s the Reward of Morality?

One of the strengths of Nietzsche’s idea is that it forces a very important question: Why should I want to

be morally responsible? Why should a salesman be honest when lying could win her a healthy

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commission? Why should a factory owner worry about pollution spewing from his plant when he lives in a

city five hundred miles away? Now, a full elaboration of this question would be handled in an airy

philosophy class, not an applied course in business ethics. Nietzsche, however, allows a taste of the

discussion by puncturing one of the basic motivations many feel for being virtuous: the conviction

that there’ll be a reward later for doing the right thing today.

The certainty of this reward is a critical element of many religious beliefs: when you die, there’ll be a final

judgment and you’ll enjoy heaven or suffer punishment at the other extreme, depending on how you

behaved on earth. A similar logic underwrites Hinduism’s concept of reincarnation: the life you are born

into next will be determined by the way you live now. This discussion could be drawn out in more

directions, but no matter what, Nietzsche spoils the idea that you take the moral high road because you’ll

be repaid for it later. Within the eternal return, there is no later; all that ever happens is exactly the same

thing again.

Advantages and a Drawback of the Eternal Return

One advantage of the eternal return is that it adds gravity to life. Forcing you to accept every decision you

make as one you’ll repeat forever is compelling you to take those decisions seriously, to think them

through. Another connected advantage of the eternal return is that it forces you to make your own

decisions. By getting rid of all guidelines proposed by ethics, and by making your reality the one that will

repeat forever, Nietzsche forces you to be whom you are.

The disadvantage of the eternal return is Wallace Souza. If everyone is just out there being themselves,

how are we going to live together? How can we make peaceful and harmonious societies when all anyone

ever thinks about is what’s best for themselves forever?

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 The eternal return is a thought experiment in which you imagine that the life you choose will repeat

forever.

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 According to the eternal return, when faced with a dilemma in the business world—what career should I

choose, should I kill (or maybe just lie or cheat) to get ahead?—you should imagine living the decision over

and over again forever.

 The eternal return maximizes individuality but does little to help individuals live together in a community.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. In your own words, what is the eternal return?

2. Why might the eternal return be considered a reasonable response to cultural relativism?

3. Write down some factors leading to a significant decision you’ve made. It could be about choosing a field

of study or a career path. Now, can you walk through each of the factors within the eternal return? Are

there any decisions you made that you’d take back and change?

4. If you knew the eternal return was true, could you still make the reasonable decision to choose an

altruistic profession? Why or why not?

[1] Dom Phillips, “Brazil Crime Show Host ‘Used Murder to Boost Ratings,’” Times, August 13, 2009, accessed May

12, 2011,http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6793072.ece.

[2] Danny Gallagher, “Brazilian Crime Show Host Kills for Ratings?,” TV Squad, August 14, 2009, accessed May 12,

2011, http://www.tvsquad.com/2009/08/14/brazilian-crime-show-host-kills-for-ratings.

4.3 Cultural Ethics

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

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1. Define cultural ethics.

2. Consider how cultural ethics works in the business world.

3. Examine the truth of cultural ethics.

4. Consider advantages and drawbacks of a culturist’s ethics.

What Is Cultural Ethics?

Culturists embrace the idea that moral doctrines are just the rules a community believes, and they accept

that there’s no way to prove one society’s values better than another. Culturists don’t, however, follow

Nietzsche in taking that as a reason to turn away from all traditional moral regulation; instead, it’s a

reason to accept and endorse whichever guidelines are currently in effect wherever you happen to be. The

old adage, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” isn’t too far from where we’re at here.

Gift or Bribe or Both?

The Entrepreneur magazine article posed a problem for Americans going overseas to do business. In

some places, passing money under the table is necessary to spark negotiations and win contracts.

However, bribery is illegal in the United States, and US law makes it illegal for Americans to do that kind

of thing abroad. Gifts, on the other hand, are allowed. But, according to the Entrepreneur article, it can be

difficult to determine the difference between a gift and a bribe. In some cultures, a gesture may be seen as

a gift, and in others it looks like a bribe.

Looking at this uncertainty, what a culturist sees is not ambiguity about whether handing the money over

to a potential client is a legal gift or an illegal bribe. That’s not it at all. A culturist sees it as both a gift and

a bribe. In one culture—a nation overseas where the payment is occurring and where similar payments

always occur when business is getting done—there are no moral qualms. It’s right to give a cash gift

because that’s the rule of the country; it’s the way things are commonly and properly done there. By

contrast, from the perspective of American business culture, the conclusion that’s drawn with equal force

is that it’s an immoral bribe because that’s what US customs and normal practices tell us.

Cultural Ethics and International Bribery

Culturists see moral rules as fixed onto specific societies, but that doesn’t help anyone know what to do

when confronted with an unfamiliar set of beliefs. How, the really important question is, does a

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culturist act when forced to make decisions in a place and among people whose beliefs are different and

unfamiliar? The Entrepreneur interview with Steve Veltkamp provides one answer.

What can you do if your overseas associate demands a bribe? Veltkamp doesn't recommend

asking embassies or consulates for assistance, as “they have to stick to the official line.” Instead,

he believes “the best resource in almost every country of the world is the U.S. Chamber of

Commerce, where you can find Americans who live in the country and understand how things

are done.” [1]

Immediately you can see how different the culturist approach is to moral dilemmas. The message is: get in

touch with the locals and try to do as they would in the same situation.

Most traditional ethical theories go in exactly the opposite direction. They say that it doesn’t necessarily

matter what people are actually doing. Stronger, the entire point of studying ethics has normally been

to escape conventional wisdom and ingrained habits; the idea of doing what we ought to do requires a

step away from those things and a cold, rational look at the situation. So, a morality based on duties sets

up guidelines including don’t lie, don’t steal and appeals to men and women in business to follow them.

Acting in an ethically responsible way in the world means obeying the dictates and refusing to be swayed

by what the guy in the next cubicle is up to. Handing someone money under the table, consequently, while

publicly insisting that everything’s on the up and up can’t be condoned no matter what anyone else does;

it can’t be right because it entails at least implicit lying.

More specifically for the culturist, Entrepreneur advises overseas business people to avoid seeking

guidance from embassies or consulates because those people have to stick to “the official line.” What’s the

official line? Presumably, it’s the set of practices delineated and approved by the State Department back in

Washington, DC. The strength of these practices is that they’re formed to be universal, to work at every

embassy everywhere in the world. A culturist, however, looks at that and says it’s silly. There are no

practices that work everywhere in the world. The advice government bureaucrats give is worthless; it’s

less than worthless because it departs from the error of conceiving ethics as a set of rules fitting a

transnational reality. What people in business should actually do is get in contact with people who really

know something about ethics, and that requires turning to the locals, including the chamber of commerce,

because they’re on the scene.

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Conclusion. The culturist deals with the question about whether a bribe is ethically respectable by

ignoring all dictates received from other places and obeying the customs and standard practices of those

who live and work where the decision is being made.

Cultural Ethics and the News Reporting of Wallace Souza

Another example of how culturist ethics works comes from the flamboyant TV reporter Wallace Souza.

Like many action crime reporters the world over, he raced to violent scenes hoping to get the first and best

video. What counts, however, as good video in Brazil is different from what typically gets shown in the

United States. Here’s a description of what Souza sent over the airwaves: “In one of Mr. Souza’s shows on

his Canal Livre programme, a reporter approached a still-smoldering body in a forest. ‘It smells like a

barbecue,’ he says. ‘It is a man. It has the smell of burning meat. The impression is that it was in the early

hours…it was an execution.’” [2]

This is not the kind of report we see in the US media, and one of the differences is the ethics. Typically in

the United States, a certain respect is accorded to the deceased, even if they’re criminals. It’s considered

an exploitation to directly show dead bodies, especially smoldering ones. There’s quite a bit of cultural

analysis that would go into this prohibition, but simplifying, it’s not just that reporters hold an ethical

responsibility to others to not exploit their deaths graphically; they also have a responsibility to viewers to

not show images that may be (or probably would be) disturbing. By contrast, and as the Souza report

shows, in Brazil the rules are different and this kind of visual makes it over the airwaves without raising

eyebrows or triggering moral objections.

More generally, the question about what you’re allowed to show on TV to boost the ratings and so make

more money is an extremely rich area of examples for cultural ethics. How graphic is the violence allowed

to be on CSI Miami? How far is the wardrobe malfunction allowed to go on the Real Housewives of

Orange County? These kinds of basic questions about decency and ratings (which means advertising

revenue) seem tailor made for those who believe the answers don’t depend on anything more than what

people in a certain culture will accept. They seem cut out for those believing that the value we call decency

is nothing more (or less) than the line drawn between the number of people who will watch and the

number who turn the TV off in disgust.

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Is Culturalist Ethics True?

If it’s true that there’s no ethics but the kind a culturalist proposes, then this book loses a good deal of its

usefulness. It’s lost because the main object is to help readers form and justify rules to guide their

professional lives. Conceding that the culturalists are right, however, is also admitting that there’s no

reason to carefully analyze problems: you’re far better served just checking around to see what most other

people are doing in similar situations. Ethics isn’t a test of your ability to think reasonably and

independently; it’s more a responsibility to follow the crowd.

Culturalism isn’t true, however, at least not necessarily. You can see that in the reasoning underneath the

cultural approach. The reasoning starts with an observation:

In certain societies, handing money under the table is commonly considered an appropriate,

ethically respectable part of business activity, and in others it’s considered both illegal and

unethical.

And moves quickly to a conclusion:

Right and wrong in the business world is nothing more than what’s commonly considered right

and wrong in a specific community.

On the surface, this argument looks all right, but thinking it through carefully leads to the conclusion that

it’s not valid. A valid argument is one where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. For

example, if you start from the definition that all unmarried men are bachelors, and then you observe that

your friend John is an unmarried man, you can, in fact, conclude that he’s a bachelor. You must conclude

that. But that’s not the situation with the culturalist argument because the conclusion doesn’t necessarily

follow from the premise. Just because no broad international agreement has been reached about what

counts as bribery doesn’t mean no agreement will ever be reached. Or making the same point more

generally, just because no trans-cultural theory based on universal reason has yet to conquer all local

beliefs and habits everywhere on the globe doesn’t mean no such theory will ever accomplish that goal.

Taking the same situation in the less ambiguous world of the physical sciences, there was a time when

some believed the earth centered the sun and planets, while others believed the sun was at the center, but

that didn’t mean the dispute would linger forever. Eventually, tools were found to convince everyone that

one side was right. So too in business ethics: one day an enterprising ethicist may find a way to

indisputably prove on the grounds of a universal and reasonable argument that greasing palms is a bribe

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and not a gift, and it’s immoral, not moral. We don’t know if that will happen, but it might. Consequently,

the fact that we’re unsure now as to whether any single ethics can deal with the whole world doesn’t

require shooting to the other extreme and saying there’ll never be anything but what people in specific

nations believe and that’s it. The culturalist argument, in other words, isn’t necessarily persuasive.

It is worrisome, though. And until someone can find a way to do for ethics what scientists did for the

question about the earth’s relation to the planets, there will always be individuals who suspect that no

such proof will ever come. Count Nietzsche among them. In the field of contemporary philosophy and

ethics, those who share the suspicion—those who doubt that no matter how hard we try we’ll never be able

to get beyond our basic cultural perspectives and disagreements—belong to a movement

named postmodernism.

What Are Some Advantages and Drawbacks of Culturalist Ethics?

One general advantage of a culturalist ethics is that it allows people to be respectful of others and their

culture. A deep component of any society’s existence, uniqueness, and dignity in the world is its signature

moral beliefs, what the people find right and wrong. A culturalist takes that identity seriously and makes

no attempt to change or interfere. More, a culturalist explicitly acknowledges that there’s no way to

compare one culture against another as better and worse. Though you can describe differences, you can’t

say one set of moral truths is better than another because all moral truths are nothing more than what a

society chooses to believe.

A more specific advantage of a culturalist ethics in the economic and business world is that it adapts well

to contemporary reality. Over the last decades we’ve seen an explosion of international commerce, of large

corporations tearing loose from specific nations and functioning globally. This economic surge has

outpaced the corresponding understanding surge: we have no trouble switching dollars for euros or for

yen, and we can buy Heineken beer from Germany and ride in a Honda made in Japan, but few of us

speak English, German, and Japanese. In that kind of situation, one where some dilemmas in business

ethics end up involving people we can’t really talk to, culturalism provides a reasonable way to manage

uncertainties. When we’re in the United States, we follow American customs. If we’re sent on an overseas

trade venture to Germany or Japan, we pretty much do as they normally do there. Just in practical terms,

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that may well be the easiest way to work and succeed in the world, and a culturalist ethics allows a

coherent justification for the strategy.

The Disadvantages

The major disadvantage of a culturalist ethics is that it doesn’t leave any clear path to making things

better. If a community’s recommended ethical compass is just their customs and normal practices, then

it’s difficult to see how certain ingrained habits—say business bribery—can be picked up, examined, and

then rejected as unethical. In fact, there’s no reason why bribery should be examined at all. Since moral

right and wrong is just what the locals do, it makes no sense to try to change anything.

This view stands in stark contrast with what we usually believe—or at least would like to believe—about

ethics: there can be progress; we can become better. In science, we know progress occurs all the time. Our

collective knowledge about the sun’s position relative to the planets went from wrong to right with time

and effort, and we’d like the same to happen for moral uncertainties. That’s why it’s so easy to imagine

that bribery is a dirty, third-world practice, and part of our responsibility as a wealthy and developed

nation is to lead the way in cleaning it up. We clean the moral world of bad business ethics just like our

scientists rid the physical world of misperceptions. More, that’s a central aim of America’s anti-bribery

legislation as it applies to overseas acts: it’s to cure other cultures of their bad habits. If you’re a

culturalist, however, then the bad habit isn’t bribery; it’s one nation trying to impose a morality on

another.

However you may come down on the question about whether nations should be trying to improve ethical

customs in other places, what’s inescapable is that if you’re a culturalist, you don’t have any ground to

stand on when it comes to criticizing the moral practices of businessmen and women in foreign countries.

You don’t because what’s going on elsewhere is an independent and legitimate ethical system and can’t be

judged inferior to our own.

Another problem with a culturalist ethics is that it provides few routes to resolving conflicts within a

society. For example, should I be allowed to go into business for myself on the land I bought in the middle

of a residential neighborhood by opening a motorcycle bar? In Houston, the answer’s yes. There’s a

community consensus there that owning a piece of land allows you to do (almost) whatever you want with

it. In legal terms, that translates into Houston being the only major American city without zoning

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regulations. Up the road in Dallas, however, there’s a similar community consensus that the rights of

landownership are curtailed by the rights of nearby landowners. The result is strict zoning laws likely

prohibiting Harley conventions in the middle of family neighborhoods. At this point, a culturalist has no

problem; people in Houston have their codes of right and wrong and people in Dallas have theirs. What

happens, though, in Austin, Texas, which is about midway between Houston and Dallas? What if about

half the population believes in landowner rights at all costs and the other half goes for a more community-

oriented approach? A cultural ethics provides few tools for resolving the dispute beyond sitting and

waiting for one side or the other to take control of the town. This means ethics isn’t helping us solve

disagreements; it only arrives when, really, it’s no longer needed.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Proponents of cultural ethics embrace the idea that moral doctrines are just the rules, beliefs, and

customs of specific communities.

 Doing the right thing within a culturalist framework relies less on traditional ethical reasoning and more on

detecting local habits.

 The culturalist view of ethics is neither true nor false. It’s a reaction to the world as it is: a place with vastly

divergent sets of moral codes.

 A culturalist ethics respects other societies and their practices but loses solid hope for ethical progress.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. If you’re doing business overseas as a cultural ethicist, why would it make sense to consult the local

chamber of commerce? Who else might you consult for moral guidance? Why?

2. You go abroad to win a contract and discover that a cash gift is necessary, so you hand it over and win the

business. On returning to the United States, you put the $200 gift on your expense report. The boss is

infuriated, calls your act an “unethical, wrongheaded bribe” and says she won’t reimburse you the $200.

What arguments could you use to convince her that you did the right thing and should be reimbursed?

3. Souza’s bloody TV program is popular in Brazil, especially the parts where he shows video of horridly dead

bodies. How could a culturalist argue that the episodes should not be shown on American TV?

4. A cultural ethics is neither true nor false. Explain.

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[1] Moira Allen, “Here Comes the Bribe,” Entrepreneur, October 2000, accessed May 12,

2011, http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2000/october/32636.html.

[2] Dom Phillips, “Brazil Crime Show Host ‘Used Murder to Boost Ratings,’” Times, August 13, 2009, accessed May

12, 2011,http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6793072.ece.

4.4 Virtue Theory

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

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1. Define virtue ethics.

2. Elaborate basic virtues and show how they work in business.

3. Indicate how virtue is acquired.

4. Note an advantage and drawback of the theory.

What Is Virtue Ethics?

Contemporary virtue ethics is an updated version of a theory first proposed in ancient Greece. Today’s

proponents acknowledge that it’s very difficult to set up a list of moral rules that are going to solve ethical

dilemmas across cultural lines. Typically, they don’t go quite so far as the culturalists; they don’t believe

that basic regulations of right and wrong are completely independent from one community to another. In

practical terms, however, there’s agreement that the world is too diverse and changing to be controlled by

lists of recommendations and prohibitions. So proponents of virtue suggest that we change the focus of

our moral investigations. Instead of trying to form specific rules for everyone to follow—don’t bribe, don’t

exploit the deceased on TV—they propose that we build virtuous character. The idea is that people

who are good will do the good and right thing, regardless of the circumstances: whether they’re at home

or abroad, whether they’re trying to win new clients or making a decision about what kind of images are

appropriate for public TV.

In a vague sense, we all know what it means to have a virtuous character; we all know people who can be

counted upon to do the right thing. Think of a business situation where true character shines through. A

local TV station has seen advertising revenue plummet and layoffs have to be made. Who should go?

Should Jim get to stay because his wife just had their first child? Should Jane get to stay because she’s

fifty-seven and probably won’t be able to find another job? Should John—who’s a tireless worker and the

station’s best film editor—be laid off because he was hired only two months ago? It’s a hard choice and

there’s no way to know for sure what’s right. It is certain, however, that there are better and worse ways of

handling the situation.

One strategy is to not think too much about it, to just know that two employees have to go, so you take the

names that happen to come to mind, you send them an e-mail, and you instruct security to make sure

they’re escorted from the building. Then you go hide in the bathroom until they’re gone. In other words,

you weasel out. In the same situation, another person will draw up criteria for making the decision and

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will stand up and inform those who are being let go why the decision was made. The thoughts

(complaints, regrets, excuses) of those being released will be honored and heard attentively, but the

decision will stand. From the person in charge of deciding, there’ll be honesty, respect, and firmness. This

is virtue. You can’t read it in a book, you can’t memorize principles, and you can’t just follow some

precooked decision-making process. You have to have certain qualities as a person to do the right thing in

a hard situation.

Virtue ethics is the idea that we can and should instill those qualities in people and then let them go out

into the complex business world confident that they’ll face dilemmas well. What decisions will they make?

What will they do when faced with questions about who should be laid off or, in another case, whether to

hand over a bribe in a place where everyone is bribing? We don’t know. But we rely on their good

character to be confident they’ll do right.

Under this conception, these are the primary tasks of ethics:

 Delineate what the virtues are.

 Provide experience using the virtues.

The experience is especially important because virtue isn’t so much a natural characteristic like height or

hair color; it’s more of an acquired skill: something you need to work at, practice, and hone. Also, like

many acquired skills, doing it—once a certain level of mastery has been reached—is rewarding or

satisfying. Typically, a person driven by virtue has nurtured a moral instinct for acting in consonance with

the virtues. Doing right feels right. Conversely, not acting in consonance with the virtues is discomforting;

it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. At the risk of trivializing the subject, there’s a very limited comparison

that can be made between learning virtue and learning more rudimentary activities like golf or dancing.

When someone has acquired the skill, hitting a good shot or taking the right steps in perfect time feels

good. Conversely, missing a putt or stepping on your partner’s foot leaves you consternated.

What Are the Virtues and Vices?

Every advocate of virtue ethics will present a constellation of virtues that they believe captures the essence

of what needs to be acquired to be virtuous. Typically, there’ll also be a set of anti-virtues or vices to be

avoided to fill out the picture. Here’s a set of virtues overlapping with what most proponents will offer:

 Wisdom (both theoretical and practical)

 Fairness

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 Courage

 Temperance

 Prudence

 Sincerity

 Civility

On the outer edges, here’s a common pair of vices to be avoided. Notice that what counts as a vice here

isn’t synonymous with the common use of the word, which implies a weakness of the physical body

manifested as the inability to resist drunkenness, drugs, and similar:

 Cowardice

 Insensibility

How Do the Virtues and Vices Work in a Business Environment?

Wisdom as a virtue is frequently divided into theoretical and practical variations. Theoretical wisdom is

what you get reading books and hearing college lectures. It’s the acquired ability to concentrate and

understand sentences like the one you’re reading now, even though it’s not very exciting and allows

almost no cheap thrills—words like sex and drugs don’t come up much. Those possessing theoretical

wisdom know the scholarly rules of the world in the abstract but not necessarily in practice. In the world

of business, for example, someone may be able to explain the fine points of Immanuel Kant’s complicated

and dense ethical ideas, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to apply the lessons when sitting in

someone’s office in a foreign country.

Practical wisdom (sometimes called prudence) is the learned ability to take a deep breath and respond to

situations thoughtfully. For example, everyone feels like exploding sometimes, especially at work after

you’ve had too much coffee and you didn’t get the raise you wanted. After that, some guy in a meeting

takes a cheap shot and jokes about how you didn’t win an overseas account because you didn’t bribe the

right person. What do you do? Scream the guy’s head off? Talk about it quietly after the meeting? Let it

pass like nothing happened? Practical wisdom doesn’t give an answer, but in the heat of the moment, it’s

the virtue of making the decision coolly, of doing something you won’t regret later. Frequently, an

association is set between practical wisdom and finding a spot between extremes. In this case, perhaps it

would be excessive to go off right there in the meeting room (because the outburst would tend to confirm

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that you’re not real smart), but it might also be excessive to let the jab go as though nothing had happened

(because the same guy may feel emboldened to keep poking at you). So practical wisdom would be the

ability to navigate a middle, prudent, route—perhaps one leading to the decision to discuss the matter

quietly but sternly after the meeting.

Fairness is the virtue of judging people’s acts dispassionately, evenhandedly, and from all points of view.

When forming judgments about a potential client who seems to be asking for a bribe, the verdict is going

to partially depend on where the client is. If he’s in the United States, that’s one thing; if he’s in a country

where clients customarily get cash under the table, that’s another. No one is saying the first is wrong and

the second right, but the different contexts need to be considered, and fairness is the ability to consider

them, to make evenhanded judgments even in very different situations.

Courage is the virtue of moderate boldness. If you’re an action crime reporter, you won’t hide in a bush

while pushing your cameraman out into the open to try to get some exciting footage. You won’t, in other

words, be a coward. At the same time, you won’t be rash either, you’ll know that sometimes you need to

take a risk to get a good story, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to stand up and film from the middle of a

gunfight.

Temperance is the virtue of self-control with respect to pleasure, especially the pleasures of the body and

the senses. Curiously, Wallace Souza stands as an embodiment of this skill. As a major league drug dealer,

he no doubt had constant access to good, cheap, feel-good substances. Even so, he managed to control his

intake, not letting it interfere with his day job as a TV reporter, and his other day job as a legislator.

More generally in the workplace, temperance mixes well with the learned ability to delay gratification. For

example, doing good work is frequently rewarded with a better job, but it’s hard to find someone who feels

as though they get everything they deserve every time. Temperance enters here as the ability to bear down

and keep trying. It’s also, on the other side, the ability to know when a larger change (perhaps looking for

work at another company) may be necessary to get ahead.

Sincerity is the ability to reveal yourself to others with confidence that you’ll be respected. It fits between

the extremes of frigidity and emoting. Souza or any TV reporter has to do more than just give cold facts;

some human, emotional component must be added to the mix. On the other hand, no one’s going to watch

a reporter who arrives at a crime scene, reports that he feels sad, and breaks down in tears. Similarly in

international business negotiations, to establish good contact across cultures, there has to be some

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sharing of humanity. You need to reveal what kind of food you like or something similar to the people on

the other side. You don’t want to go too far, though, and talk about how Japanese food reminds you of a

childhood vomiting episode (especially when doing business in Tokyo).

Civility is the virtue of showing consideration for others without humiliating yourself. As a virtue it

doesn’t mean eating with the right fork or remembering to say “thank you” to clients. Instead, it’s the

disposition to show others that you take them seriously while also respecting yourself. This means

establishing ground rules for behavior that are independent and neutral. In essence, the idea is, when

having lunch with your boss, you don’t eat like you’re sitting in front of the TV in your family room; you

respect her, and you expect the same from her. Civility is the virtue of habitually being and expressing

yourself in a way that establishes your presence solidly without threatening or impinging on others.

Vices

On the outside of the virtues, there are vices. Just as the accomplishment of a virtue—acting in harmony

with it—yields a sense of satisfaction and confidence that you’re living well, living a good life, so too the

vices produce a sensation of unease. It’s not exactly a sting of conscience (like a child feels when caught

stealing); it’s more a sense of weakness, deflation, and failure. Cowardice, for example, is a vice. It may

save your job if you mess up and don’t confess to the problem being your fault; but for the person trained

in virtue, the job will have lost its dignity. Insensibility is another vice. Had Souza understood that, he

may have thought twice about those people’s dead bodies he rolled out for television. He may have

thought of their living parents, their children. And even if he hadn’t, after he’d presented the images he

would’ve felt that he’d lapsed, that he hadn’t done as well as he could.

How Do I Become Virtuous?

Virtues aren’t a list of actions you can write on the back of your hand and refer to; they’re ways of living,

and the only route to becoming virtuous is to actually live those ways. Every society will have its own

institutions for instilling virtue, and within societies different institutions will seem more apt for some

than for others. In the United States, the kinds of groups that are sought out as instillers of virtue include

the family, churches, schools, sports teams, Boy and Girl Scouts, volunteer and community organizations,

the armed forces, AmeriCorps, and similar.

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Companies play a role, too. The virtuous organization will be led by individuals who are virtuous, and it

will reward workers—at least partially—based on their progress toward being good people. This kind of

organization won’t rely on employee handbooks and compliance rules to dictate behavior; instead, it will

devise strategies for nurturing the skills of a good life. They may include mentor programs, carefully

calibrated increases in responsibility and independence for employees, and job performance assessments

that not only measure numerical results but also try to gauge an individual’s moral contributions to the

organization’s undertaking.

Finally, when confronted with moral questions—“What kind of images should I broadcast on my TV

report?” or “Should I hand money under the table?”—the answer won’t be yes or no. It’s never a yes or no;

it’s always to do what my good character dictates.

An Advantage and Drawback of Virtue Ethics

The principal advantage of virtue ethics is its flexibility, the confidence that those who are virtuous will be

equipped to manage unforeseeable moral dilemmas in unfamiliar circumstances. The principal drawback

is the lack of specificity: the theory doesn’t allow clear, yes-or-no responses to specific problems like

whether I should offer a bribe.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Virtue ethics concentrates on forming good character and then trusting people to do the right thing. At the

heart of ethics, the formation of good character replaces the defining of specific guidelines for action.

 A society’s institutions play a key role in instilling virtue.

 The basic virtues tend to stress moderation, the ability to avoid taking extreme action in the face of

dilemmas.

 Virtue ethics grants flexibility insofar as those who are virtuous should manage any situation well.

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R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. Would you call Souza’s colorful professional life a profile of the virtue of courage? Why or why not?

2. How might the virtue of civility come forward in the case of international bribery, in the case that you’ve

gone abroad in pursuit of a contract and the prospective client demands some cash under the table?

3. What are some societal institutions you’ve come in contact with that could be understood as teaching

virtue? What virtue(s) do they instill, and how?

4.5 Discourse Ethics

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define discourse ethics.

2. Show how discourse ethics can function in a business context.

3. Note an advantage and drawbacks to the theory.

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What Is Discourse Ethics?

Proponents of discourse ethics reverse the order in which we normally address ethical uncertainties.

Instead of starting with one theory or another and then taking it out into the world to solve problems, they

start with a problem and try to create a moral structure to solve it. Ethical solutions become ad hoc,

custom generated to resolve specific conflicts. It doesn’t matter so much, therefore, that people come to an

issue like bribery from divergent moral terrains because that difference is erased by the key element of

discourse ethics: a foundational decision to cut away from old ideas and make new ones.

How Does Discourse Ethics Work?

When a dilemma is faced, those involved gather and try to talk it out. The discussion is constrained by two

basic limits: conversation must be reasonable and civil, and the goal is a peaceful and consensual

resolution. As long as these ideals control what we say, we can call the result ethically respectable.

Take the dilemma of international bribery: you’ve left your home office in New Jersey and gone to

Somalia seeking to win construction business on a new airport. As the recent Transparency

International Corruption Perception Index shows, [1]

you’re going to discover that its customary to pass

some cash to a prospective client before he’ll be willing to do serious business. Company policy, however,

prohibits bribes.

What do you do? If you’re playing by hometown, American rules, your responsibility to company policy

and to broad honesty and fairness requires you to walk away. But if you’re playing Somali rules where

greasing a palm seems fair and acceptable, your obligation to win contracts for the company that’s paying

your salary requires you to pass some cash. Discourse ethics comes in here with this: instead of trying to

impose one side’s convictions on the other, the effort will be to overcome the divide by constructing a new

and encompassing moral framework through common agreement. American rules and Somali rules are

both thrown out, and new ones get sought. Here are steps on the way:

1. Define the immediate stakeholders—that is, those who’re most affected by the dilemma and may be

gathered to resolve it. In this case, they include you and your client. Since your responsibilities to the

company are reported through your supervisor, she too could be included.

2. Establish a language for discussion. In the international world this is actually a real problem. Sensibilities

must be respected, and if you’re in Somalia, just assuming that everyone will speak English might be a

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step backward. On the other hand, you probably don’t speak Somali. This step then becomes a rehearsal

for the larger problem—just as you’re separated by moral codes, so too you’re separated by languages—

and you’re going to have to find a solution. You may choose a third language, you may hire an interpreter,

or maybe your client will be able to speak English. In any case, an agreement must be reached.

3. Establish the goal, which in discourse ethics is always the peaceful and consensual resolution to the

dilemma.

4. Define the problem. Here, it’s that when cash passes from you to the client, you feel like you’re handing

over an illegitimate bribe, but he feels like he’s receiving a typical and acceptable gift. This stage of the

process would require fairly lengthy elaborations by all those involved of exactly what they understand

their obligations and interests to be. Your supervisor would need to explain the company policy, why it

exists and how she’s responsible for upholding it. Your client might point out that his salary is quite low,

and the reason for that is simple: everyone accepts that his income will be supplemented by gifts. (Here,

he might sound something like a waitress in New York City explaining to a foreign diner that her salary is

absurdly small, but everyone expects there’ll be some tipping, and it’ll be more than two shiny quarters.)

You, finally, explain how you’re being stretched between two obligations: the one to respect company

policy and the other to do the job of winning contracts.

5. Propose solutions. Discourse ethics is open, a kind of ethical brainstorming: those involved offer

solutions, modify each other’s’ proposals, and try to discern whether a common ground can be mapped. In

this case, someone may propose that the prospective client offer substantial evidence that money is

expected and customary for someone in his position in Somalia. If the evidence can be produced, if it

shows that payments are nearly universal, and it shows about how much they normally are, then perhaps

all parties can be satisfied. Your supervisor, seeing that the amount actually forms part of a normal salary

and isn’t some extraordinary payment, may be able to reason that the money isn’t a bribe because it’s not

doing what bribes typically do, which is afford an unfair advantage. In this case, if everyone’s paying, then

no advantage will be had. It’s important to note here that the logic isn’t if everyone does it then it’s all

right, because discourse ethics doesn’t generalize like that. All conversations and solutions are about

getting agreement on this one case. So your supervisor feels like handing cash over isn’t a bribe any more

than tipping a waitress is. Your client, having received the money, will obviously be satisfied. You, finally,

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will be free to fulfill your professional obligation to win the client without sacrificing your obligation to

respect company policy and your obligation to yourself to work in a way that’s honest.

If this—or any—solution is reached, then discourse ethics will have done what it promised: open a way for

concerned parties to reach agreements alleviating conflicts. Whatever the agreement is, it’s an ethically

recommendable solution because the definition of what’s ethically recommendable is just agreements

reached through discussion.

An Advantage and Drawbacks to Discourse Ethics

The main advantage of discourse ethics is that the search for solutions opens the door all the way.

Everything’s on the table. That gives those involved just about the best hope possible for a resolution

benefitting everyone joined in the discussion.

There are two main drawbacks to discourse ethics. The first is that everything’s on the table. If what’s

morally acceptable can be as broad as anything a group agrees to, there’s the potential for ugly solutions.

On the face of it, the international bribery resolution—hand some money over because it’s not really a

bribe and it’s more like tipping a waiter—seems pretty harmless. But it doesn’t take much to see a

slippery slope developing. If this kind of gifting is OK in Somalia where salaries are low, then why not in

the United States too if it happens that a particular client has a low salary relative to others in that line of

work? Or why not every client because, really, pay in that line of work is substandard? This can go on and

on, and before you know it, the entire economy is corrupted. Obviously, that won’t necessarily happen,

but it could, and this is one of the reasons so many insist that any serious attempt to do ethics must begin

with some basic defining of inbounds and out-of-bounds, some dividing of right from wrong. Discourse

ethics doesn’t do that.

The second drawback to discourse ethics is that for every ethical dilemma faced, you have to start over.

Since the entire idea is to clear the deck and make a new solution, anyone facing a significant number of

ethical dilemmas in their line of work is going to be constantly clearing the deck and beginning anew. Of

course there may be some components of past discussions that could be carried forward—what you

learned on the trip to Somalia may be helpful in Uzbekistan—but that doesn’t change the fact that the

ethical recommendation to start from zero and talk problems out is going to lead to a lot of talking.

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K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Discourse ethics solves dilemmas by asking those involved to discuss the matter reasonably until they can

find a consensual and peaceful solution.

 Discourse ethics allows tremendous latitude in the search for solutions to conflicts, but it risks allowing

solutions that many would consider unethical.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. A five-step process was discussed to chart the advance of discourse ethics. Summarize each of these steps

in your own words.

2. Describe a business situation where discourse ethics might work well. Why might it succeed?

3. Describe a business situation where discourse ethics might not work well. Why might it fail?

[1] “Corruption Perceptions Index 2009,” Transparency International, accessed May 12,

2011,http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table.

4.6 Ethics of Care

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define the ethics of care.

2. Show how an ethics of care functions in a business context.

3. Note advantages and drawbacks to the theory.

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The Rules of an Ethics of Care

Sometimes advocated under the titles of community ethics or feminist ethics, an ethics of care switches

the focus of moral regulation from the individual to networks of social relationships. The basic question

isn’t about yourself; it’s not “What should I do?” Instead, it’s always about a larger us: “What should be

done to nurture the connections among those of us closest to each other?”

A quick example dilemma: There’s a flaming car wreck involving your sister and a Nobel Prize–winning

medical scientist, and you have the strength to rescue only one of the two. Which should you save? A strict

utilitarian—someone believing we should always act to bring the greatest good to the greatest number—

will go for the scientist. Saving him will likely produce future medical breakthroughs in turn saving many

others, which means the greater good will be served by dragging him out. But how many of us would

actually do that? Wouldn’t you go for your own sister before some scientist you’ve never met? And

wouldn’t most of the rest of us agree that we’d do the same thing? If the answer is yes, an ethics of care

provides a way of understanding and justifying the impulse, which is, before anything else, to protect

those bound to us.

There are three critical steps on the way to formalizing care as a coherent ethical orientation. Each is a

shift away from traditional ethics.

1. At the center of attention, independent actors are replaced by a web of interrelated individuals. (Ethics is

not about me and you; it’s about us.)

2. The impartial application of abstract principles is replaced by the maintenance and harmonizing of

human relationships. (Ethics is less about the fair imposition of rules and more about crafting social

integration.)

3. Tensions between the rights of individuals get replaced by conflicts of responsibility to others in

established relationships. (Ethical tensions aren’t my rights versus yours; it’s me being torn between those

I care for.)

In the international bribery example up to now, we’ve treated all those involved as anonymous

individuals: it hasn’t mattered whether or how long they’ve known each other. It’s only important to know

that there’s a supervisor X back at the US company headquarters, and there’s the person Y who’s gone

abroad to win a contract, and there’s the prospective client Z expecting a bribe. That’s it. Maybe the three

have never exchanged more than fifty words in a single conversation, or maybe they’re all cousins who

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meet for family blowouts every two months. We haven’t asked because it hasn’t mattered what their

personal relationships may be. That will have to change, however, within an ethics of care because there

are no anonymous, single individuals: everyone has a place—near or far, integral or accidental—within a

social network. For that reason, all morality resembles the car wreck. It’s charged with human

attachment, and because the ethics of care makes those attachments the center of deliberation, you have

to know how people are related to each other before beginning to know how they should treat each other.

Turning this perspective toward the bribery example, the overseas client, let’s say, is an old and loyal

client of the company, and also one who’s always gotten a little extra from one or another employee.

About the company, it’s not an anonymous multinational but a medium-sized, extended-family concern.

Brothers, uncles, nieces and nephews, and a hodgepodge of others all work there. For years, it can be

added, this overseas contract has been vital to the company’s success. Now all this counts for something

within an ethics of care. As opposed to the traditional idea that the best moral lessons show us how to

coldly, impersonally, and impartially apply abstract rules, here we’re checking to see who’s involved,

because the reason we have morality is to vitalize our human relationships.

An ethics geared to strengthen bonds isn’t necessarily easy to enact. Take a company like Oil-Dri, about

which Forbes recounts,

Oil-Dri now makes about $240 million a year in revenues. At the company’s 50th anniversary

party, the CEO asked anyone related to anyone else at the organization to stand up. Of the

company’s 700 or so employees, almost 500 rose. [1]

This is obviously an organization where relationships matter and where management is accounting for

human concerns and networks when hiring people. No doubt there’s a lot of camaraderie in this

workplace, but imagines how difficult it must be to dole out promotions when everyone knows everyone

else in that personal, almost familial way. Within a more traditional ethics, one of the first steps to making

a promotion decision is to clear away all the personal stuff before evaluating each employee directly and

simply assess his or her professional merits. Within an ethics of care, however, any promotion decision—

more or less any decision at all, for that matter—is going to require the subtle, complex, and difficult

balancing of many individual and highly emotional situations and circumstances.

Something similar happens within typical families. Most parents trot out the idea of treating all their

children identically—they all get their first car at the same age and so on—but if a sibling has special

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problems at one stage of their development, they’ll normally get special treatment in the name of

preserving the family unit. The other brothers and sisters probably complain, but if they’re old enough

they understand that protecting those who are vulnerable is one of the first imperatives of caring for each

other as a group. An ethics of care in essence takes that model from the family and extends it out into the

world of business. Applying it to the promotion question, if there’s a member of Oil-Dri saddled by, let’s

say, a difficulty with alcohol, then that might actually be a positive consideration within care-based

thought. Promoting someone who has had problems and reinforcing their attempt to get past them may

serve the general harmony of the entire group. As a result, someone who’s less qualified in purely

professional terms may get the promotion in the name of caring for the social web.

How Might the Case of International Bribery Be Managed within an Ethics of

Care?

Traditionally, ethics features questions about the competing rights of individuals. For example, when I

offer a bribe, am I impinging on the right of another to compete on a level playing field for the same

business? Starting from an ethics of care poses a different question: does giving a bribe reinforce or

weaken the bonds of human relationships defining my place in the world? The answer, obviously,

depends. If the company is Oil-Dri where everyone’s deeply connected, and it’s an old client, and a little

gift of cash has always been slid under the table, then the maintenance of that network’s vitality and

human health becomes a powerful argument in favor of continuing the practice.

Keeping the wheels turning isn’t the only solution, however. Discomfort with doing something that seems

underhanded may lead the overseas representative to try a different way of keeping the contract going,

one that’s based less on money under the table and more on aboveboard selling points. Quality of service

as proven by work performed in previous years may offer a way to keep the business and personal link

intact. There may be, in other words, a less controversial route to the same end of maintaining and

enforcing existing relationships.

Alternatively, a different client, one not demanding a bribe, may be sought to purchase the company’s

goods and services. Nothing in an ethics of care requires those participating to preserve every bond.

Sometimes it happens in families that a member becomes so toxic and damaging to the rest that the

connection needs to be severed in the name of maintaining the larger whole. The overseas bribery

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relationship may be one of those cases. It’s hard, of course, to break away, but there are other potential

clients out in the world and going after them may, in the final analysis, do more for the social health of the

core group than clinging to a problem at all costs.

Finally, enrolling in an ethics of care doesn’t mean going blind to what’s going on outside the circle of

care. One fact from the larger world that should be taken account of comes from a recent article in

the Washington Post about foreign business bribes: prosecutions of international bribery by the US

government are picking up. [2]

Ethical concerns should normally be distinguished from legal

considerations, but there’s no doubt that few events interrupt human relationships like a jail term. Cutting

the bribery relationship, therefore, may be necessary regardless of how important the particular client and

business are for the larger whole.

Conclusion. The activation of an ethics of care may justify continuing to pay money under the table. Or it

may lead toward a less controversial way of maintaining the business relationship. Or it may cause a break

between the company offering services and the overseas client demanding a bribe. There’s no way to know

for sure which path will be the right one, but in every case the choice will be made in the name of

preserving and nurturing the human relationships surrounding the decision.

Advantages and Drawbacks of an Ethics of Care

The advantages of a care-based ethics include the following:

 It can cohere with what we actually do and think we ought to do, at least in cases like the car accident

cited at this section’s beginning. In a certain sense, it corresponds with our natural instincts to act in favor

of and protect those under our care and those involved in our lives.

 It humanizes ethics by centering thought on real people instead of cold rules. Presumably, everyone

agrees that ethics is ultimately about people: unlike the hard sciences, the end results of morality are

tallied in human lives. To the extent that’s right, an emphasis on care seems well suited to the general

practice of ethics.

 It allows us to focus our energy and concern on those who are closest to us. Everyone knows that there’s

injustice in the world, just as we all know we can’t solve every problem. The ethics of care allows us to

focus our energy naturally on the most immediate human needs.

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 170

The main disadvantage of an ethics of care is that it threatens to devolve into tribalism: There’s my group,

and I take care of them. As for all the rest of you, you’re in your groups and in charge of yourselves. This

isn’t every man for himself, but it comes close to every social group for itself.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 An ethics of care makes the nurturing of our immediate communities and the protecting of those closest

to us the highest moral obligation.

 In business, an ethics of care asks us to review decisions not in terms of hard rules but in terms of how

they will affect the people with whom we share our lives.

 An ethics of care humanizes moral decisions, but it threatens tribalism.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. What are the three major steps an ethics of care takes away from most traditional theories? Can you put

each one in your own words?

2. An ethics of care is frequently compared to the morality guiding a family. Can you think of another

comparison that encapsulates how this ethics works?

3. Imagine that you had two parents and a sister working for Oil-Dri in the United States. The overseas client

you’ve been sent to do business with is a half-brother from your father’s first marriage. He demands a

bribe. How could the ethics of care be used to justify accepting or refusing?

[1] Klaus Kneale, “Is Nepotism So Bad?,” Forbes, June 20, 2009, accessed May 12,

2011,http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/19/ceo-executive-hiring-ceonewtork-leadership-nepotism.html.

[2] Carrie Johnson, “U.S. Sends a Message by Stepping Up Crackdown on Foreign Business Bribes,” Washington

Post, February 8, 2010, accessed May 12, 2011,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-

dyn/content/article/2010/02/07/AR2010020702506.html.

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4.7 The Cheat Sheet: Rules of Thumb in Applied Ethics

The following tables summarize the theories considered in this textbook. The first includes the

traditional theories and the second encapsulates the contemporary theories built to respond to

cultural relativism.

Table 4.1 The Traditional Theories

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 172

Name

Guidance

for ethical

action

Focus of our

efforts

Typical

questions

asked in

the effort

to fulfill

obligations

Conception

of the

person

implied by

the theory

Strengths and

weaknesses Type of theory

Duty

Learn the

basic duties

to ourselves

and others,

and obey

them. The duties.

 To whom do

I have

obligations?

 What are the

obligations?

 How do the

obligations

weigh

against each

other?

We are

rational

actors.

Gives clear

guidance in

many

situations but

is inflexible in

the face of

special cases.

Non-

consequentialist

Fairness

Treat

people

identically

unless they

differ in

ways

relevant to

the

situation.

(Treat

equals

equally and

un-equals

unequally.)

Resist

prejudice and

personal

feelings.

Does

everyone

get an

equal

chance? (If

they don’t,

how are

the

differences

justified?)

We are

rational

actors.

Promises

egalitarianism,

but can be

difficult to

implement in

complex

reality.

Non-

consequentialist

Kant

Learn the

basic duties

to ourselves

and others,

and obey

The categorical

imperative in

two

articulations:

actions must

 Is the act

I’m

considering

We are

rational

actors.

Gives clear

guidance in

many

situations but

is inflexible,

Non-

consequentialist

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 173

Name

Guidance

for ethical

action

Focus of our

efforts

Typical

questions

asked in

the effort

to fulfill

obligations

Conception

of the

person

implied by

the theory

Strengths and

weaknesses Type of theory

them. be

universalizable

and treat

others as ends

and never as

means.

universaliza

ble?

 Am I being

careful not

to treat

others as

means to an

end?

especially in

the face of

special cases.

Rights theory

Maximize

freedom.

Learn the

individual’s

basic rights,

live them, and

respect others’

right to live

them.

Does doing

what I want

impinge on

the basic

freedoms

of others?

We are

distinguished

by the

possession of

dignity.

Allows

individuality,

but does little

to resolve

conflicts

between

individuals.

Non-

consequentialist

Egoism

Increase my

well-being

and

happiness.

Learn about

my desires and

welfare, and

serve them

What

makes me

happy over

the long

term? How

can I get

that?

We are

driven

toward

pleasure and

away from

pain.

Good for me in

the short term,

but might not

help us live

together as a

society. Consequentialist

Altruism

Increase the

well-being

and

happiness

of others.

Learn about

others’ desires

and welfare,

and serve

them.

What

makes

others

happy over

the long

term? How

can I help

We are

driven

toward

pleasure and

away from

pain.

Others benefit,

but it may be

difficult to

justify

devaluing

yourself. Consequentialist

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 174

Name

Guidance

for ethical

action

Focus of our

efforts

Typical

questions

asked in

the effort

to fulfill

obligations

Conception

of the

person

implied by

the theory

Strengths and

weaknesses Type of theory

them get

that?

Utilitarianism

Increase the

well-being

and

happiness

of everyone

collectively.

Learn about

the desires and

welfare of

everyone,

understood as

an aggregate,

and serve

them.

What

brings the

greatest

happiness

and good

to the

greatest

number

over the

long term?

How can I

help us get

that?

We are

driven

toward

pleasure and

away from

pain.

The general

welfare is

served, but

injustices at

the individual

level may

persist. Consequentialist

Table 4.2 The Contemporary Theories Responding to Cultural Relativism

Guidance for

ethical action

Focus of our

efforts

Typical

questions asked

in the effort to

fulfill

obligations

Strengths and

weaknesses

Reaction to

cultural

relativism

Eternal Be myself.

Think through Would I do this if Maximizes individual Abandons

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Guidance for

ethical action

Focus of our

efforts

Typical

questions asked

in the effort to

fulfill

obligations

Strengths and

weaknesses

Reaction to

cultural

relativism

return of

the same

the eternal

return.

it had to be

repeated in the

same life, which

recurred

forever?

authenticity but

provides no specific

recommendations for

action.

morality

altogether.

Cultural

ethics

Follow local

customs and

practices.

Learn local

customs and

practices.

What do the

locals do?

Helps you fit in but

allows little hope for

ethical improvement.

Accepts the

proposal that

moral rules are

just a particular

community’s

beliefs.

Virtue

ethics

Develop good

moral

character.

Learn and

practice the

virtues.

Am I acting with

integrity and in

accordance with

values learned?

Allows flexibility but

provides little specific

guidance.

Tries to protect

against cultural

relativism by

developing an

adoptable but

consistently

moral character.

Discourse

ethics

Produce

solutions to

moral

dilemmas.

Talk it out: use

rational

conversation to

reach a

peaceful,

consensual

agreement.

What do you

think? How

about this

possibility?

Provides a broad

range of possible

solutions but every

conflict must be

addressed from

scratch.

Replaces a

culture’s moral

rules with the

attempt to

fabricate new

rules to function

in specific

situations.

Ethics of

care

Nurture and

protect

immediate

relationships.

Respond to the

needs of those

nearest us.

Which solution

preserves

healthy and

harmonious

relationships

among those

Humanizes morality

but risks tribalism.

Replaces a

culture’s moral

rules with loyalty

to those whose

lives touch our

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Guidance for

ethical action

Focus of our

efforts

Typical

questions asked

in the effort to

fulfill

obligations

Strengths and

weaknesses

Reaction to

cultural

relativism

involved? own.

4.8 Case Studies

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I Wouldn’t Change a Thing

Source: Photo courtesy of Patrick Hawks, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pathawks/796254651/.

Tamica Tanksley graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia in 2000. About a decade later she

worked her way into an important role in the office of Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Hughes: she’s

co-director of his community affairs outreach and efforts. Though not a celebrity or mightily important in

politics, what she’s done with her life up to now earned her a brief write-up and a chance to answer a few

interview questions in Temple’s Internet Alumni magazine. [1]

She describes her job responsibilities as linking the senator with “community leaders, educators, religious

organizations, constituents and various institutions within the public and private sector.” It all comes

naturally to her. As she puts it, “I didn’t choose politics, politics chose me. And if I had to do it all over

again, I wouldn’t change a thing…Working in the government sector where my daily responsibilities

afford me the opportunity to empower and inspire everyday people is a career that ignites my passion for

people.”

It’s not just heavy, public service trudging, though; Tanksley also finds the job “fun” because it allows her

“creative juices to flow into a sea of possibilities,” and in a different part of the interview she calls the

work, in a sense, victorious: “As a citizen and voter, I’ve learned that this game of life is not won by

standing on the sidelines. In order to provoke change and improve the quality of life for everyone, we

must get into the game because victories are won on the field.”

How’d she get the job? The way a lot of people start off in politics, by serving in that same office as a

volunteer worker.

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Finally, since it’s a Temple University website, the interviewer tries to get in a plug for the school and

succeeds with this memory Tanksley produces of Dr. Jean Brody’s public relations course and the prof’s

infamous (at least on the Temple campus) red pen: “While I was often saddened by my white paper being

flooded by red pen marks, I quickly learned that Dr. Brody and her red pen refined the best in me. With

each passing assignment, the red marks lessened and my knowledge and experience increased. Moreover,

it was the red that encouraged me to do my best work, which has ultimately contributed to the dedicated

worker I am today.”

Q U E S T I O N S

1. Tanksley reports about her young life up to this point that “if I had to do it all over again, I

wouldn’t change a thing.” Can you use this as a point of departure for

o defining Nietzsche’s eternal return and showing how it works?

o characterizing Tanksley’s professional life as one fit for approval by Nietzsche’s eternal return?

2. The values guiding Wallace Souza’s work as a news reporter in remote Brazil—especially the kinds of

images judged appropriate for TV there—are quite different from those guiding TV reporting in the United

States. Why does Nietzsche believe this kind of cultural clash is a reason to subscribe to the eternal return

and simultaneously abandon traditional ethical theories, which attempt to pertain universally?

3. Tanksley reports about her young life up to this point that “working in the government sector where my

daily responsibilities afford me the opportunity to empower and inspire everyday people is a career that

ignites my passion for people.” How might an advocate of the eternal return respond to this sentiment?

Explain.

4. Whose life seems more in tune with how you imagine yourself living the eternal return, Souza’s or

Tanksley’s? Why?

5. For virtue ethics, knowing what to do with your life—responding to its problems, choosing goals

to reach for—isn’t something you can just figure out no matter how intelligent you may be or how

many ethics classes you’ve taken. To succeed, you also need a good society, one that does two

things:

o Teaches the virtues through its institutions

o Provides a way to practice using the virtues

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How could Dr. Jean Brody be considered a teacher of virtue? What particular virtues did she teach

Tanksley, and how did she provide a way to practice using them?

Mordidas

Source: Photo courtesy of Myki Roventine, http://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine/847530903/.

In Mexico City, police salaries are extremely low. They live decently enough, though, by adding bribes

(mordidas in Spanish) to their wages. During a typical week they pull in bribe money that more or less

equals their monthly salary. All the locals know how it works, especially when it comes to the most avid

collectors, the traffic cops. In the standard procedure, the officer pulls a car over, takes out his codebook,

walks up, and hands it to the driver. Ostensibly, he’s allowing confirmation that the law actually prohibits

whatever was done. This is what actually happens: the driver slips about fifty pesos (a little under five

dollars) into the book, closes it, hands it back, and is free to go. [2]

The practice is so routine that frequently

the procedure is abbreviated and participants don’t even bother trying to hide the payoff or going through

the codebook pantomime. They may approach the officer’s patrol car and directly drop the money onto

the guy’s lap. [3]

Or they may stay in their own car and just hand cash out to be directly

pocketed. [4]

Regardless, the transaction is smooth and efficient.

Despite the bribery’s efficiency and its penetration to society’s core, not everyone in Mexico City is happy

with the constant mordidas. According to a story in the city’s largest circulation daily, a mayor in one of

the suburbs decided to take a lonely stand against the informal police action. Since all the police are in on

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it, he couldn’t resort to an Untouchables-styled internal affairs operation. And since all the citizens

considered the payoffs perfectly normal, he couldn’t appeal to them for help either. Really, he was left

with only one choice. To interrupt the habit, he made traffic tickets illegal. His suburb became a free

driving zone where anybody could do whatever they wanted in their car and the police couldn’t respond. A

lot happened after that, but there’s no doubt that the payoffs stopped. [5]

Q U E S T I O N S

1. About the bribery in Mexico City, not only is it the way things have been done as long as anyone

can remember, but the process actually makes a lot of sense; it’s even very economically efficient

because the middlemen are being cut out. Instead of having to pay an administrative staff to

process traffic tickets, then accept deposits into the city’s account, and then redistribute the

money back out as part of police salaries, here the money goes straight into the officer’s pocket.

o What is cultural relativism, and how does the vision of ethics associated with it diverge from the

traditional ethical theories?

o The Mexico City process of getting and paying off a traffic ticket is different from the US process.

What values and advantages can be associated with the process in Mexico City? How can it be

justified in ethical terms?

o The Mexico City process of getting and paying off a traffic ticket is different from the US process.

What values and advantages can be associated with the process in the United States? How can it

be justified in ethical terms?

o The Mexico City process of getting and paying off a traffic ticket is different from the US process.

How can that difference be converted into an argument in favor of the idea that cultural relativism

is the right way to look at things? Does the argument convince you? Why or why not?

o Your company, FedEx, has sent you to Mexico to open a branch in Mexico City. You’ll be there for

three months, with all expenses paid. Can you make the case with a culturalist ethics that FedEx

should reimburse not only your car rental and gas but also the two mordidas you had to pay even

though you obviously don’t have any receipts?

o After you return from your successful overseas experience, FedEx assigns you to train a set of

recruits to go to Mexico and open more branch offices. When you to talk about the police and

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mordidas, would you counsel a culturalist approach, or would you advise them to go by the book

(as that phrase is understood in the United States)? How would you justify your decision?

o For owners of office buildings in Mexico City, FedEx is a great client. They pay their rent every

month and they’re probably willing to negotiate an amount in dollars, which is extremely

attractive because the Mexican peso is prone to the occasional and steep devaluation. As a result,

if you’re opening up a new FedEx office, you’re going to have building owners lining up, trying to

rent you space. Does a decision to play by local rules and pay mordidas to cops also allow you to

play by local real estate rules, which allow you to take a generous cash gift in exchange for renting

in one building instead of the place across the street? Why or why not?

o You are sent to Mexico City to rent office space. You find two equally good spaces only

distinguished by the fact that one owner offers a larger bribe than the other. No one’s watching,

no one will ever know, you can do whatever you want. What do you do? Why?

2. Think of yourself as a virtue ethicist.

o Very quickly, what are some of the virtues you personally attempt to live by, and what social

institutions played a role in shaping your character?

o If you were sent to Mexico on a work assignment and found yourself in the situation typically

faced by local drivers after being caught driving a bit fast, how would you handle the situation?

Which virtues might come into play?

o Most advocates of virtue ethics believe companies—like other organizations including schools,

churches, and community associations—play a role in instilling virtue. If you were training FedEx

recruits destined to open branch offices in Mexico City and you wanted to prepare them for the

ethical challenges of bribery, what virtues would you seek to instill in them? Can you think of any

life experiences that some recruits may have had that may have formed their character to

respond well to the situation on the Mexican streets?

o The mayor in suburban Mexico City who decided to cancel traffic tickets was, in fact, fighting

against what he saw as corruption. Most advocates of virtue ethics believe government

organizations play a role in instilling virtue in its citizens. Could this action be considered part of

that effort? What virtues might it instill? How would it help people become better practitioners of

those virtues?

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3. The video Mordida in the Booklet (http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/C4.html) shows

a motorcycle officer getting paid off. One curious aspect is how long and intense the discussion

stretches between the officer and the pulled-over driver. What they’re doing is negotiating the

amount. The fifty peso price tag is a good average, but the number can drop or climb depending

on the give and take. [6]

o What is the five-step process of discourse ethics? How could this bribery negotiation be

understood within it?

o According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Mexico is a place where

people doing business make many informal agreements involving bribery, kickbacks, insider

dealing, and all sorts of similar practices. Except for the fact that those involved are wearing suits,

most of these scenes resemble the one between the motorcycle police officer and the driver:

people talk for a while, come to a mutually satisfying, peaceful conclusion, and some money

changes hands. Do you see this as an indictment of discourse ethics, a justification of the

approach, or something else? Justify.

4. In the newspaper article about the Mexico City suburb where the Mayor decided to ban traffic

tickets, the reporter interviewed a police officer described as “an old transit cop whose juicy

bribes had helped buy his gold necklaces and bracelets.” This was the old cop’s reaction to the

situation (translated from Spanish): “I got my buddies together and I told them, ‘This sucks, now

what’re we going to do for money?’”

An ethics of care shifts the focus of moral thought away from the fair imposition of rules and

toward the maintenance of immediate personal relationships. Ethics isn’t about treating everyone

equally so much as it is about keeping companions together.

o Listening to this officer, who do you suppose exists within his web of social responsibility?

o Assuming this officer practiced the ethics of care, would he treat these two drivers differently

after pulling them over: his nephew and some out-of-towner he’s never seen before? Why might

he (not) treat them differently? Are there circumstances under which he’d actually demand more

money from the nephew? What could those be?

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o According to the newspaper article, in the first two months of ticketless existence in the suburb,

about two hundred people were struck by moving vehicles, and twenty were killed. From the

perspective of the ethics of care, can these numbers be used to form an argument against this

policy and in favor of a return to the previous, corrupted reality?

Money for Nothing

Source: Photo courtesy of Richard Riley, http://www.flickr.com/photos/rileyroxx/2969244149/.

In his blog the z spot, author Z raises two questions about people receiving unemployment paychecks.

Both are laced with suspicion of fraud. First, people who are collecting unemployment checks are required

to show they’re at least trying to get a job, but Z writes that some are “showing up for interviews in jeans

and t-shirts.” Then he asks, “Do these people really want the job, or are they just showing up to say that

they are actively seeking work?” [7]

He goes from there to a second critical point. “Some people,” Z says, “are collecting unemployment checks

even though they’re actually working.” What they do is turn in their unemployment form listing the days

they worked, and those are deducted from the check they receive. That sounds OK in the abstract, but, he

adds, “The problem is that these people who are ‘on call’ are not taking shifts that are offered to them.

Those shifts don’t get deducted from their unemployment. So, while there are people who are actually

unemployed, struggling and looking to find work, there are Union employees sitting at home deciding

when they do and don’t want to come in. And collecting unemployment.”

From the posting’s response section, here are two contributions:

1. It’s not easy for me to swallow that my taxes are supporting people who could be working.

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2. I have a question. I live in Wisconsin and I know of somebody who is collecting unemployment but is not

actually going to any job interviews or is even applying for jobs. Is this illegal? If so, how can I report this

without them knowing?

Q U E S T I O N S

1. If you were using the eternal return to chart your way through life, would you have any problem “sitting at

home deciding when you do and don’t want to come in while collecting unemployment”? If you’re all right

with that, how would you respond to the complaint from the response section that someone is paying

taxes to support your lifestyle?

2. Thinking about the people showing up for job interviews in jeans and t-shirts, what might be lacking in

their character according to a virtue ethicist? If the government is one of those institutions proponents of

virtue look to for the instillation of good character, what might the government do in this situation in the

name of encouraging virtue?

3. The second cited response to Z is a question about how an unemployment cheat can be reported

“without them knowing.”

o About this silent reporting, why is this not what a proponent of discourse ethics would

recommend?

o How could the five-step process of discourse ethics be applied to the situation? Would the guy

complaining about paying taxes be included in the discussion? What kind of proposals might be

voiced to rectify the situation?

4. Starting from the ethics of care, is there a situation you could imagine that would justify the actions of

workers who take some shifts but decline others, and collect unemployment for those declined hours?

A Single Parent in the Army

Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org 185

Source: Photo courtesy of US Army Africa, http://www.flickr.com/photos/usarmyafrica/4034104565/.

The post of cook in the mess hall is probably one of the Army’s least dangerous assignments, the closest

you get to actual battle is a food fight, but it’s still a military job where you go and do what your orders

command. For Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a twenty-one-year-old Army cook, that meant catching a

flight to Afghanistan. She missed hers, though, intentionally. She regretted abandoning her unit, but felt

she had no choice. The single mother of a ten-month-old, she says she couldn’t find anyone to care for her

child during the absence; the only potential help, her mother, was already overwhelmed by caring for

three other relatives with health problems. Hutchinson’s fear, according to her lawyer, was that if she

showed up at the airport, the Army “would send her to Afghanistan and put her son with child protective

services.”

For its part, a military spokesman says, “the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to

care for a child.”

The situation is under review, but for the present, just like anyone else who refuses deployment, she’s

under military arrest on her base in Georgia. [8]

Q U E S T I O N S

1. Virtue ethics

o The military is cited by virtue ethicists as a potential character-building institution, one of the

places a society molds a good citizenry. What are some of the virtues the military could be

expected to instill? How are those reflected in this situation?

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o Families are a cited source of virtue. What values should we expect family life to instill? How are

those virtues reflected in this situation?

o Is there any way to bring the military virtues and the family virtues together for Hutchinson? If so,

what might it be? If not, why not and what should she do?

2. Proponents of discourse ethics walk through a five-step process on the way to reaching a negotiated

settlement to moral conflicts. What might the five steps look like here?

3. One of the objections to discourse ethics is that it can set up a slippery slope—that is, the people involved

can form a solution that bends the rules a little bit, and next someone else wants a little flexibility too, and

then someone wants a little more, and before long, the rules have completely disappeared and everyone’s

doing whatever they want. Could you sketch out how this process could happen here, with the end result

being the Army more or less losing the values at the core of its existence?

4. Ethics of care

o One of the key elements composing an ethics of care and distinguishing it from traditional ethical

theories is this: At the center of attention, independent actors are replaced by a web of

interrelated individuals. Ethics, in other words, isn’t about me and you, it’s about us. In

Hutchinson’s case, she finds herself in the midst of at least two networks of “us,” two

communities of people to whom she owes an allegiance and care. Describe these communities

and the links binding them.

o Another of the key elements composing an ethics of care and distinguishing it from traditional

ethical theories is this: The impartial application of abstract principles is replaced by the

maintenance and harmonizing of human relationships. Ethics, in other words, is less about the fair

imposition of rules and more about crafting social integration. Can you find an example of this

conflict between an ethics of rules on one side, and an ethics of relationships on the other, in

Hutchinson’s situation?

o Another of the key elements composing an ethics of care and distinguishing it from traditional

ethical theories is this: Tensions between the rights of individuals get replaced by conflicts of

responsibility to others in established relationships. Ethical tensions, in other words, aren’t my

rights versus yours, it’s me torn between those I care for. In the case of Hutchinson, how is she

torn?

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o In general, do you believe there’s a place for an ethics of care in the military? If so, where? If not,

why not?

[1] “Tamica Tanksley, SCT ’00,” Temple University, accessed May 12,

2011,http://www.myowlspace.com/s/705/index.aspx?sid=705&gid=1&pgid=1021&cid=1612&ecid=

1612&ciid=3725&crid=0.

[2] Business Ethics Workshop video, accessed May 12,

2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/Mordida%20in%20the% 20booklet.html.

[3] Business Ethics Workshop video, accessed May 12,

2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/How_to_purchase_a_police_ officer.html.

[4] Business Ethics Workshop video, accessed May 12,

2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/Quick_mordida.html.

[5] Alejandro Almazán, “Fin de la mordida,” El Universal, November 16, 2003, accessed May 12,

2011, http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota= 54910&tabla=ciudad.

[6] Business Ethics Workshop video, accessed May 12,

2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/Mordida%20in%20the% 20booklet.html.

[7] Business Ethics Workshop, accessed May 12,

2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/Unemployment_fraud.html.

[8] “Mother Refuses Deployment,” New York Times, November 16, 2009, accessed May 12,

2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17soldier.html.

Chapter 5

Employee’s Ethics: What’s the Right Job for Me?

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Chapter Overview

Chapter 5 "Employee’s Ethics: What’s the Right Job for Me?" examines some ethical decisions facing

employees. It considers the values that underlie and guide choices about the kind of work you choose to

pursue.

5.1 Finding Jobs to Want

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Delineate ethical dilemmas and considerations in job seeking.

2. Discuss how values guide the search for a job.

3. Define job sequencing.

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What Kind of Work Is Out There?

A question posed on a web discussion board: What Is Your Nightmare Job? Here are some answers:

 Lung gunner (in a poultry processing plant: ram a nozzle down the chopped neck of a chicken and suck

out the lungs)

 Roofer (Miami, summertime)

 Urinalysis monitor (watch guys pee for eight hours, making sure no one’s switching their own for some

friends who hasn’t been using drugs)

 Toll booth operator (apparently evil drivers heat quarters with cigarette lighters and drop them into the

hands of unsuspecting operators) [1]

That last part about hot coins may be urban legend, but no matter what, there are jobs on the list that are

going to make you cringe.

The Wall Street Journal has a similar list, but theirs includes both a top and bottom twenty—the best and

worst jobs you can try to get or struggle to avoid. [2]

Here are a few from one group:

 Child-care worker

 Lumberjack

 Butcher

 Seaman

 Nuclear decontamination tech

 Nurse

 Firefighter

And a few from the other group:

 Actuary

 Parole officer

 Accountant

 Medical laboratory technician

 Paralegal assistant

 Meteorologist

 Historian

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Can you tell which jobs belong in the twenty best and which are among the twenty worst? You might have

a fix on the answer, but probably there’s one or two on each list that don’t seem to fit. That’s because once

you get away from the extremes—the horribly bad and enviously good jobs—it’s difficult to define exactly

what counts as good work.

Let’s take a look at two jobs: child-care worker and actuary. It’s probably true that no one really likes

changing diapers at the day care center, and certainly it’s smellier and dirtier than being an actuary, which

is a statistical job. Actuaries take a calculator and reams of data and try to figure out how old people are

likely to be when they die. This is important information for companies selling life insurance since they’ve

got to make sure their clients live long enough—and pay long enough—to more than cover the lump sum

that gets doled out at the end. Now there’s a fair amount of money at stake here, and that’s why good

actuaries get paid big money. The money is one reason being an actuary gets ranked as one of the best

jobs by the Wall Street Journal. So the actuary advantages are the money, it’s not stinky work, and also

it’s worth noting that there’s not much stress since no one will know for sure whether your calculations

are right or wrong for decades. Add it all up and you’ve got a potentially desirable job and career path, the

kind you may want to put at the center of your working life.

Still, is it really better than a bottom-twenty job as a day care worker? If you do go the day care route, it’s

true that you’ve got to wash your hands constantly, but the rest of the day, being with excited children,

helping them take their first steps, recite the alphabet, and learn how to play with one another, that must

be worth something; there must be a human, emotional reward in it. Undeniably, when you punch out

from the day care center on Friday night you won’t have as much money to spend as your friend whose

charting future death rates, but it’s also true that when you come back on Monday you’ll be engaged with

young lives instead of death. You’ll be human for the day instead of a calculator.

On the other hand, no one likes poop under the fingernails. It’s hard to get away from that.

Finally, what’s really curious about that first list taken from the Internet discussion board is that for

almost all of them, there’s some lone voice speaking up in favor in the comments part of the web page. A

toll booth operator, for example, wrote in to say that he likes his job because there’s no boss staring over

his shoulder. And roads don’t go out of business, so he doesn’t have to worry too much about corporate

downsizing or economic recessions. Nearly every job, it seems, looks OK to someone. Even in the worlds

of lung gunners and urinalysis monitors, there are people who are decently happy with what they’re doing.

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Why Is a Career Decision Ethical Instead of Just a Personal Decision about Jobs?

Normally we think of ethics as providing guidelines for how to treat other people—don’t steal, don’t lie.

But ethics is also about how we treat ourselves and the responsibilities we have to ourselves. One of the

deepest of the responsibilities is making thoughtful and independent decisions about what’s worth doing

and what isn’t. Narrowing this to economic reality, the most tangible choice you’re going to have to make

is where am I going to go to work when I wake up in the morning? This decision—choosing a job and a

career path—is about value. Every time the alarm goes off, you affirm what definitely matters in your life

and what’s really not so important.

These value judgments are rehearsed in comparing the so-called bottom-twenty job in the day care center

with the so-called top-twenty job of an actuary. There are big advantages to being an actuary: money and

relatively fixed hours (no parents get stuck in traffic and leave you with a screeching three-year-old until

8:00 p.m.). But day care also has advantages: you work in a life-affirming profession while reaping the

human reward of helping children learn.

It’s true that on paper being an actuary probably looks better. But life doesn’t happen on paper. That’s

why, every day, people make the decision to go work at the day care center, despite everything. Or to be a

teacher at an inner-city junior high school. Or to be a lumberjack because the opportunity to work

outdoors outweighs the sore muscles. The possibilities are nearly endless.

In the end, you’re the only one who can decide what to do when the alarm goes off, and you have an

ethical responsibility to yourself to make the best decision you can.

Seven Values for Ranking Jobs

To start thinking about jobs in terms of the values they respond to, these questions are pivotal. For me,

how important is it that my work

1. is meaningful,

2. allows leisure time,

3. accumulates money,

4. bestows power,

5. radiates prestige,

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6. is comfortable,

7. provides security?

The question about meaningful work is the hardest to cleanly answer. Even defining exactly what counts

as “meaningful” isn’t easy. Definitely, its work that holds significance for you or the larger community

apart from how much you’re paid, how big your office is, how long your vacations stretch. Still, it’s

difficult to pin down exactly what counts as a meaningful job. Unlike money, which you can just add up,

meaning is more like a color: hard to describe, changes a bit depending on the light and people tend to

have their own palettes of good and bad.

On her blog, Kendra Kinnison writes that she “believes her purpose in life is to use her ability to discover

connections and present them in an innovative way to support the creation and building of healthy

businesses and to inspire others to accept Jesus Christ and to discover and utilize their gifts.” [3]

She’s got it down. There’s nothing about salary or how many employees she has working underneath her.

She does want to be in business; it’s not like her religion has led her off to be a missionary. But at the same

time she wants to work on her terms and within her priorities. Probably, there are career slots where she

wouldn’t fit too well (imagine her trying to help others and spread her faith while working at a used car

dealership), but maybe starting up a local day care center would suit her ideals. True, the Wall Street

Journal tells us that are a bad job, but it doesn’t sound like it would be a bad one for her.

Look at the Greenpeace recruitment page: http://greenpeace.org/international/about/jobs. Their job

openings read like anti-ads, like they’re trying to discourage your application. There are some uplifting

parts about “challenging work,” but nothing about the potential for huge, year-end bonuses, or rapid

advancement, or generous health insurance, or comfortable working conditions. In all those terms,

working for Greenpeace sounds pretty bleak. Which is part of the reason it’s so clear that this is a job for

people who want meaning in their professional lives, a purpose separate from their own comfort, and one

involving the environment?

Not all meaningful work has to be based on faith or tied to internationally known advocacy organizations.

Chances are there’s a woman not too far from where you live who’s in the music business at the grassroots

level: she offers piano lessons. Knock on her door and ask why she does it year after year; she may say she

believes in music, its beauty, and its contribution to what she considers a full life. Your college athletic

director might say something similar about sports. Or go to the nearest farmer’s market—you won’t find a

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lot of money changing hands; it’s definitely not big business, but you’ll probably run into someone eager

to discuss the virtues of organic food in terms that sound more like a crusade than a menu choice.

Actually, organic food is big business. Beyond seeds in the fields and the scattered crates of the farmers’

market, there’s a growing, and growingly profitable business in the massification of the organic. Anyone

walking through the local Whole Foods will see a lot of the color green. What won’t be seen—but what’s

definitely up above—is an impressive corporate structure with big-salary managers making million-dollar

stocking decisions every day. As far as money goes, they’re doing well for themselves—like any

multibillion-dollar corporation, Whole Foods pays its leading executives big money. [4]

But hunched over a

desk and tapping on a keypad, hasn’t their work been bleached of the meaning and devotion that abides

with the vegan wearing dirty overalls and trying to sell strawberries in an empty parking lot Saturday

mornings? Maybe. Or maybe not. Meaningful work doesn’t require that the only jobs you’ll accept are low

paying.

More jobs and kinds of work could be added here, but whatever you believe in, you should be able to find

some employment that lets you approach it. As for how close you can get to truly meaningful work that

will probably depend to some extent on trade-offs, on how much you’re willing to give up in terms of

leisure time, job security, and other comforts. Regardless, the real key is that meaningful work sets a

specific purpose before everything else. With respect to lining up a career path, you don’t start with a list

of jobs and then find one that suits your interests; it’s the opposite: you start with your deep interest and

then find a job that lets you pursue it.

Finally, two cautionary points: While it’s true that people devoted to meaningful work frequently sacrifice

money, leisure time, and job security, the logic doesn’t work the other way. Most of the time, low pay,

short vacations, and a constant threat of unemployment don’t mean you’ve chosen a noble career; they

just mean you’ve got a crappy job.

And on the other side, there are the holy grails out there. Probably, some higher-ups at Whole Foods got

into the line of work because they find the promotion of organic food meaningful, and they ended up with

enviable salaries as well (in other words, they’re in it for the organic cause more than the money, but

they’re happy to get the money). In a different direction, Michael Jordan loved basketball and also ended

up getting paid handsomely to play. The photographer Annie Leibovitz loves and is dedicated to

photography, but she’s not making many sacrifices to do it: traveling to exotic places, living well, and

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meeting interesting people. Former vice president Al Gore believes in saving the planet as much as any

sweating deckhand on the Greenpeace boat; the difference is he wrote a book about it that sold millions of

copies and made him millions of dollars.

Conclusion about meaningful work: dedicating your professional life to a cause or activity that you believe

in doesn’t mean low wages and long hours. A lot of times it does, but that’s not the point.

Another question shaping job seeking is leisure time. How important is it? In a sense, this is the mirror

image of meaningful work. If you believe in something like promoting organic food, playing basketball,

taking pictures, saving the planet, or even watching game shows on TV, it’s perfectly reasonable to find a

job in some other field that provides the income you need in the fewest hours possible and then lets you

get out and do what you really want with the rest of your time. More or less, what you say here is I’m just

going to X out that part of my life where I’m working. In the extreme case, the attitude is, “I don’t care

how bad it is, I just want to get through it.”

The Discovery Channel series The Deadliest Catch about crab fishing in the Arctic shows how cold, smelly,

and ugly work can be; but a few months of it and you get a year’s worth of wages and the free time to

spend it. One important concept here is instrumentalism, which means that work becomes an

instrument—a tool allowing you to get or do something else.

The third question about jobs and values involves money. Like sacrificing hours of work to get leisure,

punching the clock to accumulate cash makes your job an instrument. Money is also the easiest way to

organize your professional life. You can count it; if one job pays more than another, its better.

But this easiness can also be a trap. For anyone just out of college and facing a hazy and unclear world

where all the decisions seem so difficult, it’s easy to get tempted by the smoothest route: just check the

possibilities out there and go for whatever pays the most. At least that way you know you’re not messing

things up completely. So there’s something to be said for going that safe route, but this also needs to get

underlined. From the perspective of your responsibilities to yourself, the better-paying job is only the

better job if you’ve already made the decision to value career options in terms of how much they pay.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that decision. Of course the Hollywood movies and the Habitat for

Humanity volunteers hanging around campus looking for recruits are all going to tell you that you’ve got

to follow your heart, do meaningful work, and contribute to society. And if you face them up and flat out

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say you’re just in it for the money, there are always going to be whispers about greed and accusations like

being a sellout.

In defense of money, though, dedicating your career to getting it makes a lot of sense, and it can do a lot of

good, too:

 If you’ve got student loans, it’s good to be able to pay them back, as it’s the fulfillment of a duty to fidelity.

 If you do feel a need to support causes like protecting the planet, most advocacy organizations will be

happy to receive a cash donation. The truth is, they’d probably rather have the money than a few

volunteer hours.

 Making money means participating in an economy that’s getting richer, and doesn’t that end up making

life better for everyone? Faced with Habitat for Humanity volunteers who ask you to join them in building

shelter for the needy, couldn’t you even make the case that contributing to an economy that functions well

actually helps people more—at least in the long run—by producing jobs so they can purchase their own

home instead of relying on volunteers to build one?

 You may have children. Clothes are expensive. Summer camp is expensive. The holidays are expensive.

True, little ones might still be a long way off, but when they come, a new set of responsibilities arrive, too,

and just about the only way you can begin preparing for them now is by making sure that, on the money

side at least, the house is in order.

There’s more to this list, but when it comes to choosing a job with an eye on the salary factor, it’s

important to spend some time with this question: Why is it, exactly, that money has value for me?

If you’re looking for power, you could do a lot worse than being a judge. True, you spend your days

listening to lame excuses for shoplifting and the bogus assurances of repentance from drug dealers, but

with the pound of a (little wooden) hammer, you get a police officer to rumble over and haul people off to

jail. In court, even someone mouthing off is enough to slap them with contempt and assign them to a few

hours of lockup.

The military, politics, policing: all these fields will appeal to anyone who sets the possession of power as

one of the most valuable aspects of a job. Less directly, people in the news media can decide which issues

center popular attention by mentioning them on the radio broadcast, the TV news show, or the current

affairs blog. That’s serious influence, shaping what people are thinking and talking about in our shared

world.

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Obviously, bosses in most fields of work have power. Usually they like to say that they have

“responsibilities,” but frequently part of holding the responsibility to carry out a project is having the

ability to hire and fire the people participating. Advertising is also about power. It’s not as explicit as the

ability to get someone hauled off to jail or sent to the unemployment line, but masters of the craft can get

people to believe that they really need some electronic device that they didn’t even know existed thirty

seconds ago. There’s power in schools, too. If you’re in this class as a distribution requirement, that means

someone has decided for you what you’re supposed to know.

The bottom line is that power—and the various jobs that grant it—exist in many places, and some are

more transparent holders of force than others. So one of the keys to understanding power as a career

option is being sensitive to the different ways it works. Commanding a platoon of soldiers fits the bill, but

so does sending out an army of TV commercials.

Even more than money, power is vilified as a career goal. If you tell your friends that all you care about is

money, they might think you’re greedy, but they’ll probably keep in touch over the years, figuring you

could invite them to your Hamptons beach house for a great weekend. If you tell everyone that all you care

about is power, though, they’ll probably think you’re weird and drop you off their Facebook friends list.

The image we get from popular culture of a power-hungry careerist is a drooling madman with clenched

fists, too much caffeine, and maybe a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince on the nightstand. And it’s not just

the movies. Deborah Gruenfeld, a professor in the Stanford Graduate School of Business and expert in the

psychology of power in the workplace believes: “Those in positions of power can be observed to act in a

manner that is peculiar and that often has no connection to reality.” [5]

Ouch.

There must be something there, though. If power were really so bad, we wouldn’t have to worry about it

since no one would want it. But people do want it; it’s just that hardly anyone wants to admit it.

In a sense, prestige is the opposite of power. Almost everyone says they’d love a job granting prestige, but

not many are willing to give up much for it. Going all the way back to the Wall Street Journal article,

“historian” is on the top-twenty list of desirable jobs, and “philosopher” is there, too, on the longer, uncut

version of the story. Salary isn’t the reason they’re included among the twenty best, and there’s not much

direct power to those jobs either. (Despite what you think, professors don’t get any rush out of failing

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people. Only rarely, anyway.) There is job security if you’re a tenured university professor, but the main

benefit of a prestigious job is the “wow” factor:

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a historian.”

“Wow.”

After a few minutes in which everyone in the conversation acknowledges that this is very interesting, the

talk switches back to more normal topics. Later on, people quietly wonder why anyone would choose to

spend more or less his or her entire life in school. That doesn’t detract from the prestige of the career

path, though.

Being a doctor is prestigious, and (even if we hate to admit it) being a lawyer is, too, although it’s also true

that part of the prestige accrues from the fact that you know people who have these jobs probably have

some money too.

The Paul Teutuls (father and son), along with Mikey Teutul, hold prestige jobs at Orange County

Choppers, and they were prestigious even before the TV show.

One of the thorny parts of prestige as a career goal is the difficulty in finding jobs that straight-out

specialize in that. Frequently, what makes this kind of job attractive isn’t purely prestige, usually there’s

something else mixed in. Being a judge is prestigious, but partially because you know there’s some real

power there. Being a struggling rock musician is pretty good in terms of prestige, but only if there’s some

sober hope that one day you’ll convert into a legitimate star and not just end up with no money and

damaged eardrums. On the other end of the musical spectrum, a jazz musician who tells people that’s

what he does for a living can usually count on getting a few people to say “that’s cool” or “that’s so

interesting,” but again, part of the reason is the mixing of the music with the sense that this person has

found meaningful work, something they’d probably be doing for free if no one was paying.

Finally, the signature difference between prestige and meaningful work is that prestigious jobs by

definition demand an audience. People dedicated to a meaningful cause like protecting the welfare of

animals can labor in obscurity all their lives doing simple things that virtually no one notices, like running

a kennel for out-of-town dog owners where the pets get treated with extraordinary levels of respect. But

for this work to cross from meaningful into prestige, someone at some point has to look and say, “Wow.”

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Comfort on the job comes in all forms, spanning from the size of your desk, to how often you need to

travel in cramped airplanes, to the clothes you need to wear while on the clock. The Wall Street

Journal article grades jobs to some extent on comfort, though they call the category “Environment.” Here

are some components of an (un)comfortable workday:

 Physical demands (crawling, stooping, bending, etc.)

 Work conditions (toxic fumes, noise, etc.)

 Physical environment extremes

 Stamina required

 Degree of confinement

This is a good list of factors that move the needle on the comfort scale, but there’s something very

important missing from it. On the comfort scale, Arctic fishermen aren’t going to score highly in terms of

physical working conditions; they’re cold and wet and living in a cramped space. The food’s bad. On the

other hand, it takes a certain type of person to sign up for a job like that—a very, very specific kind of

person. And if you’re seriously thinking about it, there’s a decent chance you’re going to hit it off with—

you’re going to feel comfortable with—the other people who are doing it. The boat, consequently, will be

uncomfortable, but the company of people you’re with may be comforting.

Looking not just at the physical characteristics of the job but the other characters that’ll be there doing it

with you is important for the obvious reason: you spend a lot of time at work. (“I spend more time with

you guys than with my husband/wife” is a constant refrain in some offices.) So if your sense of humor

works well with a bunch of people you happen to know, and it turns out that many of them are nurses,

which tell you something about how you’re going to feel about seeing them bright and early every

morning, Monday through Friday.

In his book Vital Friends: the People You Can’t Afford to Live Without, Tom Rath organizes data from

Gallup polls and studies to show that employees who have good friends in the office tend to stay longer in

a job. It’s difficult to prove things about happiness, of course. It’s even hard to know exactly what

happiness is, but it seems fair to suspect that there might be a connection between duration in a job and

happiness with the job. And if there is, then feeling comfortable with the people you work with—laughing

when they laugh, watching the same TV shows, whatever—should be a job consideration.

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Pushing the importance of workmates in a different direction, in a blog post, a woman calling herself

Penelope (she doesn’t give a last name) makes a point about flourishing at work: “You’ll learn the most on

a job by having a great mentor looking after you.” [6]

If that’s true, then if you choose to work in a

profession that’s full of the kind of people you respect, admire, understand, and get along with, you’re

likely to do better for yourself than working with the kind of people you don’t take seriously (or who don’t

take you seriously).

Fitting in, the point is, with the people at work isn’t just a fringe benefit; it’s a critical value to factor into

the selection of one or another career line.

For the young, job security seems like a distant virtue, a fuddy-duddy aspiration for the over-the-hill

crowd. In fact, even for the not-so-young it’s fuddy-duddy. It’s also one of the most volatile of the values

you can assign to your job search, one of the most prone to surges and retreats.

When you wake up at 3 a.m. and then can’t get back to sleep because there’s a recession and you know

cutbacks are coming, all of a sudden holding a position that maybe isn’t too glamorous but is certainly

necessary—like being a day care worker—doesn’t seem so bad.

The day you learn your family will be growing by one is another of those moments when security’s

importance blows up. And the day your husband loses his job, that’ll be another security surge.

Then there’s age. It’s a delicate subject—for legal reasons no employer wants to go on record saying they

won’t hire people older than fifty—but there comes a point when years become a disadvantage for job

seekers, which explains why an entire subfield of the résumé-writing business has now sprung up to

manage the problem. Jeanne Knight, a certified career coach and résumé expert, says, “What candidates

can do to make themselves look younger in a résumé is only list ten to fifteen years of work experience.

Also, drop graduation dates and make sure you list any seminars or workshops that focus on new

technology.” [7]

So you can figure that if older people are going that far to camouflage their overabundant experience, it

must be hard to get hired after fifty. And if that’s true, you better have good job security at forty-nine.

Finally, the easiest way to define job security is just the confidence that you won’t be fired next week, but

the discussion broadens very naturally. For example, demographic trends tell us that the American

population is aging, so if you’re deciding between studying to be an athletic trainer or a nurse, you may

well figure that over the next twenty years it’s probably going to be easier to find work in the nursing

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home than the gymnasium, and that holds regardless of how secure any single job may appear right now.

Or again, computer technologies keep entering our lives faster and from more directions, and that’s a

good clue about future job prospects.

In any case, if you’re reading this, it’s possible that you’re what marketers are calling a millennial,

meaning someone born between 1980 and 1995, more or less. If you fit the category, the TV show 60

Minutes believes you think this: “We have options. We can keep hopping jobs. No longer is it bad to have

four jobs on your résumé in a year. Whereas for our parents or even generation X, that was terrible. But

that’s the new reality for us. And we’re going to keep adapting and switching and trying new things until

we figure out what it is.” [8]

Probably, the value of job security arrives along with the realization that companies can say the same

thing about employees. A lot of them do.

Balancing the Values

One factor can be chosen to weigh more heavily than everything else combined when sorting out the

values for initiating a job search. The imbalance would go a long way toward efficiently filtering career

possibilities. For many, however, the priorities won’t sort out so easily: it’ll be necessary to balance

competing values, to trade one against another when considering specific jobs and career paths. Someone

may, for example, value both money and comfort, but that doesn’t help answer the question about

whether a job on an Alaskan crabbing ship is more or less attractive than a summer on the beach in the

lifeguard stand. In the longer term, holding the two values won’t help to decide between the career of an

undersea welder or an office worker.

How can individuals get a grip on what their own priorities are, and how much each weighs? In his essay

“Strategic Planning—For the Good Life,” Robert Solomon offers a provocative question: “Looking back

over your life from a rocking chair, what would you like to remember—and how would you like to be

remembered?” [9]

Of course, the idea isn’t to lock you into a life plan based on how things might look in the distant future.

You have no way of knowing how things will be, and if you’re a millennial, we know you don’t like life

plans anyway. Instead, the idea is to try to get a revealing angle on the question of what values in work

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really matter for you. The aim is to step away from everything and get a different perspective, a fresh look

at the problem.

That’s important because real life, moving along fast as it does, can narrow your perspective, get you

caught seeing things more or less the way everyone around you does. Faced with a career center job board

filled with interview schedules of visiting corporate recruiters, isn’t it easiest just to sign up for the ones

your friends are signing up for? If everyone in your sorority is talking about going to work at one agency

or another, or if half the people you know are getting teaching degrees, the temptation’s there to just

follow along.

When looking at things from extreme or unusual angles, those herding forces recede. At least for a bit you

can make yourself turn away from what everyone else is doing, leaving you no choice but to arrange your

own priorities for determining the kind of work you want to get involved with. Importantly, the idea isn’t

to eliminate other people from consideration but to eliminate consideration that just imitates what other

people are thinking. Here’s the beginning of a list of questions aiming to do that, aiming to shake up

thinking about the career choice and force some sorting of the basic values determining which way the

choice is going to go:

 Of the seven discussed values—meaning, leisure time, money, power, prestige, comfort, security—can you

rank them, or at least group them, from the most to least important for you? Can you take some of the

jobs or careers you’ve been considering and loosely rank them in terms of how well they fit with your list

of values?

 To make the list of values more manageable, can you cut it down by just eliminating some concerns that

you really don’t share?

 Are there any values you think should be added to the list?

 Can you make a short list of other people whose opinions are important to you, and then loosely imagine

how they would rank the seven values for evaluating jobs? If you can, is their ranking similar to yours or

different? If it’s similar, are you sure you’re thinking for yourself? If it’s different, are you sure your values

for work align with the kind of life that you respect?

 What would you like to tell your parents you’ve decided to do for a living?

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 Career day at the elementary school. You’re standing in front of your own child’s class talking about your

work. What kinds of things would you like to report and be proud to say? Looking back at your original

list of values for jobs, does it correspond with the classroom scene?

 You’ve got six months to live: what do you do? Is it something that might be related to work or is it a pure

leisure activity? (Can you imagine any job that would allow you to do that activity, whatever it is,

throughout your career?)

 You’ll live 600 years—and have to work during 550 of them—does that change your work priorities?

Should it?

 You’ll live 600 years—and have to work during 55 of them—does that change your work priorities? Should

it?

 For you, is the term couch potato a slur or just the name of a comfortable lifestyle? Are there anti–couch

potato and pro–couch potato career tracks?

 Your rich uncle dies and leaves you a sum of money and private instructions to use it to put poor children

through school in Mexico. It’s also enough to pay your college and leave a good amount left over for

whatever. No one’s watching—no one will ever know. What do you do? What does this tell you about the

place money have in your life?

 Madonna and Mick Jagger are among the world’s two richest rock stars. Imagine you could have all their

money, but be a complete unknown and have no sense of rhythm. Would you prefer that or would you

trade all the money to have their success, voice, and rhythm for one year on a world tour? Does the

decision correspond with your original ranking of the seven values?

 For you, which would be better: spending big money or having people know you’ve got big money to

spend? If it’s the second, is there a way to command respect from others that’s easier to achieve than

wealth?

 Friday night, you’re with a new group of people who know little about you. Would you rather tell them

you’ve been invited to a dinner at the White House for notable citizens or you’ll be having dinner

tomorrow at your own expansive beach house?

 You sign up for a blind dating service, hoping to meet someone to marry. The only thing you get to choose

about the man or woman you’ll be paired with is his or her job. What job would you choose to match you?

Next, imagine that you’re not ready for marriage, still exploring, and you go to the same service. What’s

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the job this time? If the two jobs are really different, does that reflect anything about where you’re at with

respect to the kind of work you want for yourself?

 Do you like being in charge, no one is telling you what to do, even telling other people what to do? Be

honest, no one’s listening. By the way, would your answer change if people were listening?

 A brutally long Friday at work comes to an end at 9 p.m. On the elevator ride down with some people in

the office, there’s a power outage. No one’s around to fix the machinery or let you out. What kind of

people would you like to have in the elevator with you? Is it possible to match these people up with the

kind of people frequently involved in one or another profession? (Alternatively, what kind of people would

lead you to investigate how your keys or the pen in your pocket could be used as a suicide implement?)

 If you could wear anything you wanted to work every day, nose rings included, what would it be? Is there

really an office anywhere where people do dress that way? What would you be willing to give up to work

there, and what does that tell you about the importance of environment (or comfort in the broad sense)

for your work?

 At the end of every month, your boss gives you a choice. You can have your $4,000 check or you can spin

a lottery wheel with a range of numbers from $1 to $8,000. Would you take the $4,000 check or spin?

Does this tell you anything about the importance of job security?

 If you’ve had time to read through this entire list of questions, do the answers you gave more or less

correspond with the ranking of the seven values—meaning, leisure time, money, power, prestige, comfort,

security—that you set up at the beginning?

Whose Job Is It, Anyway?

No one can decide for you what line of work to start down; it’s a decision only you can make and that you

have to make for yourself. This doesn’t mean, however, that your life is the only one involved in the

decision. Here’s a blog post: “I think people need to find the right job for them, the one that will make

them happy. My parents are always telling me to get a successful and well-paying job, however the job

that I really want to do probably isn’t the best paying job, but it would make me happy if I fulfill my

dream. I think people need to go out and do what they want and they will be successful in different

ways.” [10]

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Sounds good, but is it right? If you’ve adopted egoism (morality = self-interest) as your ethical compass,

then it is. Egoism makes the job search relatively easy; just find the one that will make you most happy.

On the other hand, if you think of yourself as more of a utilitarian—someone guided by the conviction that

the morally recommendable act is the one bringing the greatest good to the greatest number—then it’s not

clear whether this is the right way to go or not. On one side, it’s true that pursuing your dream of

professional satisfaction is good, but your parents’ satisfaction—everyone’s satisfaction—has to be

factored in too. It could be that your parents’ wishes—and the happiness they enjoy if you follow their

advice—outweigh the happiness and welfare you take from a career they recommend against.

Staying with the parents, and taking their side, what kind of ethical arguments can they launch against

your career choice? One of the strongest is going to be obligation in the sense of gratitude, in the sense

that we have a duty to repay those who’ve given to us. Most of us sense this as the courtesy of returning

favors. Sometimes we feel it in an inverted form as the desire to decline a gift that seems so great we won’t

be able to pay it back. The case could be made that this sense of obligation and gratitude is a virtue, the

result of a proper upbringing. Or it may be more like a duty, a sense of fairness inherent in the idea of

ethics in the first place. Regardless, it’s too late to go back now for you and your parents. All you can do is

add up everything they’ve done for you and everything you’ve done for them. It’s doubtful that there’s any

kind of balance.

In Portuguese, the word commonly used to say “thank you” is obligado, meaning I’m obligated, and there

aren’t many instances where the word is more apt than the parental relation with children. Faced with the

obligation, these are possible responses:

 I accept my obligation and will follow the career path my parents’ desire.

 I accept my obligation, but I’ll pay it off by bringing up my own children and letting them off the hook

when they hit adulthood (or through some other mechanism of repayment).

 I accept my obligation, but I won’t respect it.

Of course people are always free to pursue that last course, to say the obligation is there and I don’t care.

But if you want to continue acting ethically, that shifts the burden onto you to build a structure

for justifying walking away.

Moving from parents to others, what kind of ethical responsibilities do you hold to your spouse if you’re

married and to children if they arrive? There’s nothing wrong with being, say, a starving actor working for

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that one break on the way to fame. But it’s a different thing entirely when you’re asking someone else to

starve too so that you can go on trying to be the next Johnny Depp.

Do you owe anything to that math teacher who saw that you had exceptional ability with numbers and

used her own time after class to patiently tutor you on the subject? She probably wouldn’t have bothered if

she knew you were going to end up working at something that doesn’t involve math-related skills. She did

bother, though, so does that create a responsibility—even if it’s only a small one—to use that ability in

your professional life, to find a job that exploits your skill with numbers that she helped you acquire?

Finally, at the broadest level, what obligations do you have to the impersonal community around you, to

all those people you barely know or have never met—the woman behind the counter at the gas station, the

plant worker in Germany who helped assemble your car, some taxi driver in Thailand whose life will never

touch yours in any way? Do you owe anything to them when thinking about your long, eight-hour days?

This Is the Perfect Job for Me…Right Now

One way of dividing up the responsibility felt to yourself and to the others who share your world

is career sequencing—that is, defining zones of life and evaluating each separately in terms of work

priorities and aspirations. Meaningful labor—signing up for a rugged, low-paying trip on the Greenpeace

ship—may fit with your values right out of school. The trip allows a broad ethical vision of work, one

seeking to incorporate the welfare of others at a good time for you, while your own needs are limited.

Later on, lucrative work—signing up for a desk job administering a tourist cruise ship where the hours are

fewer and the pay higher—might prove the better fit.

Making the move from meaningful work to a more salary-centered vision of the workplace may simply

correspond to the realization that walking around in ripped jeans and a t-shirt doesn’t work with a

receding hairline. Or it may be that the others you hope to benefit with your time have come closer to

home: it’s not that you want to make the world a better place anymore so much as make the world better

for your family.

The Tuck School of Business has published a report on sequencing in today’s world. [11]

Among the

findings: employees, led by women especially, are professionalizing the movement in and out of the

workplace. Exiting the daily grind to have a child is no longer understood so universally as leaving work

so much as a planned interruption to pursue personal goals. The difference between leaving and

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interrupting is that many women now step off the career track fully intending to return in the not-so-

distant future and to resume the professional trajectory already established. It’s not putting on the brakes

so much as taking a detour.

Men, the study finds, are following suit. Some are taking paternity leaves, more or less along the lines

pioneered by women, but the study also finds workers interested in professional detouring for the

following reasons:

 An avocation outside of work

 Stress and burnout

 Entrepreneurship

In all three cases, space along the career’s way is being pried open for different values to enter and at least

temporarily redefine the relation with work.

Why don’t people sequence? What keeps them in jobs they’d like to get away from, at least temporarily?

Fear that they won’t be able to get their jobs back leads the list. The study also shows, though, that many

employees in essence think that sequencing is wimpy, and it’ll mark them as unreliable and, therefore, un-

promotable. That perception may not be right, though. The study is a snapshot of a changing situation, so

it’s difficult to draw too many conclusions, but the authors do sense that that the direction of evolution

is toward sequencing, not away. More and more higher-level managers are willing to accommodate

employees who want to take detours; they’re willing to make space for them to come and go (as long as the

coming and going isn’t constant).

To the extent that’s right, the ethical relation with job selection transforms. It’s no longer the formation of

values for choosing a career track leading into the indefinite future; instead it’s a process. The ethical

question about your work, “What’s the right kind of job for me?,” is now a lingering concern, and

answering is a constant responsibility.

Do I Have to Decide?

Some millennial are big on job hopping, on experimenting with work first and then deciding on a path

instead of doing all the ethical considering up front. This is an attractive option.

There’s a risk here, though: it’s the trivialization of professional life. If you’re just going to take whatever

job comes along and see how it works out, then why bother even thinking about it at all? In fact, why

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bother switching? If you’re not going to do the work beforehand to get a grip on the kind of employment,

on the general direction of professional interest that supports the values you’ve decided to live by, then

how are you going to know the right job when you find it? Why switch jobs, in other words, when you

don’t know what you’re looking for?

This was one of Saint Augustine’s (AD 400) durable pieces of wisdom. It’s very simple: if you don’t know

what you’re seeking before you start looking, then how are you going to know when you’ve found it? Trial

and error, in other words, when you’re looking for the right kind of job (or the right romantic partner, or

the right beer, or whatever) only works if you already know what’s going to count as an error and what

counts as success.

Of course no one’s going to get everything down perfectly at the beginning. Ethically, there’s a kind of

bind here paralleling the first job and experience catch (you can’t get your first job without experience,

and you can’t get experience without your first job). Similarly, you can’t know exactly what kind of work

fits your values and outlook until you’ve learned how things really are out there in the nine-to-five world,

but that’s not a convincing reason to fall off the other extreme and just spin the wheel, take whatever

comes your way, and switch jobs without thinking.

K E Y T A K E A W A Y S

 Pursuing a specific job is an economic and also an ethical decision.

 Specific values shape the ethics of the job search.

 Job seekers hold ethical responsibilities both to themselves and to others.

 Job sequencing allows workers to manage shifting ethical responsibilities as their lives evolve.

R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S

1. What are some of the differences between a job that provides meaningful work, and one that provides

prestige?

2. Can leisure time—maximizing it—be pursued on its own as a value in the job search, or does it need to be

combined with other values? If it needs to be combined, which values might work best?

3. If money is selected as the prime value a job seeker decides to pursue, what other values may become

easier to reach because of the money, and which values may be pushed further away?

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4. What’s the difference between power and prestige? Can you think of a job that grants power but little

prestige and one that grants prestige but little power?

5. For you, what are the components of comfort—do they include flexible hours, working in an office instead

of outside, something else? Can you rank the components as more and less important?

6. What responsibilities to others may a job seeker consider when looking for a job?

7. What is career sequencing? What are some reasons a person may choose to sequence, and what are some

reasons a person may choose not to be a sequencer?

[1] Michael Froomkin, “What Is Your Nightmare Job?,” Discourse.net, July 19, 2007, accessed May 16,

2011,http://www.discourse.net/archives/2007/07/what_is_your_nightmare_job.html.

[2] Sarah E. Needleman, “Doing the Math to Find the Good Jobs,” Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2009, accessed

May 16, 2011,http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123119236117055127.html.

[3] About Kendra, accessed May 16, 2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_5/Kinnison_bio.html.

[4] Hannah Clark, “Whole Foods: Spinning CEO Pay,” accessed May 16,

2011,http://www.forbes.com/2006/04/20/john-mackey-pay_cx_hc_06ceo_0420wholefoods.html.

[5] Psychology of Power, accessed May 16,

2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_5/Power_in_business.html.

[6] “How to Pick the People You Work With,” Penelope Trunk (blog), May 6, 2009, accessed May 16,

2011, http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/05/06/how-to-pick-the-people-you-work-with.

[7] Ric Romero, “‘Get the Job’ Pt. 4: De-Aging Resumes,” ABC7, September 3, 2008, accessed May 16,

2011, http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/7_on_your_side&id=6369394.

[8] “The Millennial Are Coming,” 60 Minutes, CBS News.com, May 23, 2008, accessed May 16,

2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/08/60minutes/main3475200.shtml.

[9] Joanne B. Ciulla, Clancy Martin, and Robert Solomon, eds., “Strategic Planning—for the Good Life,” in Honest

Work: A Business Ethics Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 106–7.

[10] Karen Sternheimer, “How Great Is Being a Sociologist?,” Everyday Sociology (blog), January 24, 2009, accessed

May 16, 2011,http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2009/01/how-great-is-being-a-

sociologist.html.

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[11] Tuck Executive Education, Changing the Career Ladder: Paving Flexible Pathways for Today’s Talent (Hanover,

NH: Dartmouth, 2011), accessed May 16, 2011,http://worklifefit.com/pdf/TuckSurveysummary.pdf.

5.2 Working for Ethically Complicated Organizations

L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S

1. Define reasons why an organization’s work may be viewed as unethical.

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2. Consider how working for ethically troubling organizations can be managed.

The Psilocybin Project

The Harvard Psilocybin Project began in 1960 and included some of the university’s leading and most

innovative professors, especially from the psychology and related departments. One of their projects—the

Concord Prison Experiment—used the newly developed drug psilocybin on inmates. Professors wanted to

discover whether the medication could reduce antisocial behavior and recidivism. Another project, this

one carried out in tandem with the Harvard Divinity School, used the same drug to experiment with the

bond felt between young theology students and their chosen profession. In both cases, significant, even

mind-blowing success was initially reported.