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Ethics and Individual Values

What are our values?

Where do they come from?

What do we value?

Who do we value?

We are what we value?

Values

  • Value = an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct (e.g., honesty) or end-state (e.g., happiness) is personally and socially preferable to alternative modes of conduct or end-states of existence

  • Value system = the network of values an individual holds and their importance to that person

Sources of Values

  • Family
  • Work
  • Religion
  • Friends
  • School
  • Culture
  • Personal experience
  • Media
  • Etc.

Few students have thought deeply or carefully about their own values, the values of institutions that they have been a part, and the values of institutions in which they are going to spend much of their future life.

Don Robin, 2003

Developing a
Mission/Vision Statement

Self Awareness

Sentence Completion Exercise

20 statements

“I am __________________”

“I am a ________________”

Self Awareness

  • Understanding core values
  • Making commitment to live by them

Choose the top 10 statements that most represent who you are and what is important to you.

Self Awareness

How many statements represent roles you play in life (daughter, mother, student, employee)?

Self Awareness

How many represent personal characteristics (loving, fun to be with)?

Self Awareness

How many represent activities you enjoy (reader, athlete, musician)?

Self Awareness

How many represent diversity characteristics (a woman, a middle-aged man, African Canadian)?

Self Awareness

What do these categories tell you about yourself and how you see yourself?

The Managing by Values Process

Phase 1: Clarifying your mission/purpose and values

Phase 2: Communicating your mission and values

Phase 3: Aligning your daily practices with your mission and values

Ken Blanchard & Michael O’Connor

Self Awareness

Visualize yourself at your own funeral or retirement party – what would people be saying about you?

Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Personal Mission Statement

  • Be honest “To thine own self be true.”
  • State enduring values
  • Combine perspectives
  • Be brief

Steve Sphar, Why a Personal Missions Statement: A Way to Unite Meaning and Action

Personal Mission Statement

  • Select personally meaningful, memorable, and inspirational action words
  • Select a personal principle, cause, value, or purpose
  • Select a group or field that is the focus of your work
  • Put it together

Laura Beth Jones

Values Refinement

  • Cross off 5 more of your “I am” statements.
  • Prioritize these 5 statements.


Ethics and Individual Values

What values will we use as a class?

MGMT3480 Values Statement

  • Reflecting on corresponding responsibilities…

    if we were to adopt these as our own… …how would this play out in our actions?

Why do good people do bad things?

  • Normative myopia (failing to see the ethical issue)
  • Scripts (pre-programmed behaviors)
  • Distractions (deadlines)
  • Moral Exclusion (them)
  • Failing to Bother (not doing)

Ethical Theories

The Philosophical and Theological Bases for Business Ethics

Types of Ethical Systems

  • Teleological (consequentialist)
  • Ethical Egoism
  • Utilitarianism
  • Deontological
  • Categorical Imperative
  • Distributive Justice
  • Virtue-based

Teleological Theories?

Teleological Theories (Ends)

  • Utilitarianism
  • Ethical egoism

Utilitarianism

  • Greatest good for greatest number (Bentham, Mill)
  • Basis for C/B analysis, utility theory, democracy
  • Limitations?

Problems with C/B approaches

  • What is a benefit? Cost? Are all preferences known?
  • Whose happiness counts?
  • Dangers of instrumentalism/ Economic Imperialism

Application of Cost-benefit Analysis

“Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (less developed countries)?…I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.”

Lawrence Summers

Chief Economist World Bank

Economic Imperialism

“Even simple non-economic values can survive only if they prove to be economic.”

“The higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price.”

E.F. Schumacher Small is Beautiful

Ethical Egoism

  • Maximization of self-interest
  • do what you want
  • greatest good for self
  • “Survivor” ethics

What are the limitations to ethical egoism?

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Martin Luther King, Jr

Deontological Theories?

Deontological Theories (means)

  • Deon – duty, rights, principles
  • Categorical Imperative (Kant)
  • Confucius (551 BC)

Categorical Imperative

  • Focus on rules, principles, duty, goodwill
  • universal laws
  • relationship between reason and morality (based on our ability to act as rational human beings)

Categorical Imperative

  • Kant believed that morality can be summed up in one, ultimate, or imperative, from which all duties and obligations derive.

“Act according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

  • Always treat humanity as end and never simply a means.
  • Limitations? Conflicting values?

(Wiki)

Distributive Justice

  • Fairness - equitable distribution of benefits and harms
  • John Rawls
  • “Veil of ignorance”

Virtue Ethics?

Virtue Ethics

  • Character is key
  • Aristotle, Aquinas
  • “rational pursuit of excellence” (or “knowledge of the good”)
  • happiness <==> reason

Virtue Ethics

  • What is the best way for me to live my life?
  • Examples of virtues
  • Honesty fairness
  • Courage self control
  • Compassion generosity
  • Integrity solidarity
  • Ultimate goal – Good character

Virtue Ethics

  • Practical wisdom allows us to shed our ignorance and make the right choices.
  • Judging in “grey” areas comes naturally because the good person will inevitably decide what is best.

Character

“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

John Wooden

UCLA Basketball Coach

The Limitations of Reason

"...(R)eason is a useful instrument only for purposes of everyday life, but must fall silent in face of the great problems and give way to the more substantial powers of the soul.”

Horkheimer

Notes on Science and the Crisis

The Theological Basis
for Business Ethics

  • Faith as foundation
  • Eternal Law
  • Good vs evil

Principle of Eternal Law

  • We should act in the way that our Creator wanted us to act, with kindness and compassion towards others
  • revealed source of truth vs reasoned source of truth
  • Golden Rule - Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism
  • Limitations?

Limitations

  • Different religious beliefs and systems
  • “Structures of sin” within religious organizations
  • Instrumental versus authentic

Decision Making Process for Ethics

What are facts?

Identify ethical issue(s).

Who are stakeholders?

Consider alternatives (“moral imagination”).

Identify impacts of alternatives on stakeholders.

Analyze impacts using theories

Make a decision.

Monitor outcomes.

5. Consider how a decision affects stakeholders

  • Consequences/harms and benefits
  • Duties, rights, & principles
  • Law
  • Professional duties
  • Fairness
  • Integrity and character
  • My own principles and purposes (vision, values statement)

Quote of the Day

“The problems of business today are, first and foremost, profoundly ethical and philosophical problems.”

Robert Solomon