Summary
Business and Consumer Ethics Summary VUB
- Course
- Institution
Summary of Business and Consumer Ethics for BA3 Business Economics at the VUB. Well structured summary without inessential information.
[Show more]
Seller
Follow
frdrickrger
Content preview
Frédéric Kröger Business and Consumer Ethics - SummaryBusiness and Consumer Ethics – Summary
❖ Introduction
o TWO FORMS OF ETHICS
o Non-normative Ethics
▪ Non-normative ethics ➔ Objective is to establish what
factually/conceptually is the case (not what it should be ethically)
Ex. How does this person choose which commodities they buy
• Descriptive ethics
• Meta-ethics
o Normative Ethics
▪ Normative (prescriptive) ethics ➔ Based on standards of what is right and
judges all actions as right or wrong based on these standards
Study of how people should behave
Ex. You should not kill
• Fundamental ethics
▪ Virtue theories
▪ Deontological theories
▪ Teleological theories
• Applied ethics
▪ Bio-ethics
▪ Medical ethics
▪ Business ethics
▪ …
o General Remarks
▪ Negatively framed
• No super model of ethics
▪ Because ethics has to do with singularity, absoluteness, and infinity
• Ethics is not a form of praxis
▪ Ethics doesn’t make you good, it makes you think about the good
• Ethics is no moral education
• Ethics cannot and may not bypass personal and contextual specificity
→ “phronesis [prudentia]”
▪ Responsibility is something that cannot be shared, it’s you
▪ Positively stated
• Normative character
• Related to existing fields of morals
• Presupposes individual responsibility and autonomy of the will
▪ Relation with law (similarities but no reduction)
• Law = compulsory and enforceable
▪ Ethical law will never tell you what to do, it will give you bad consciousness
▪ You can never force someone to do the good, you can blame them
▪ Strength and weakness of ethics
• Legitimacy ≠ justice (‘jurisprudence’)
1
,Frédéric Kröger Business and Consumer Ethics - Summary
❖ Introduction : Against Business Ethics (Chap 1)
▪ This chapter outlines 6 problems with business ethics (BE)
▪ Each problem relates to a ‘foreclosure’, by which authors mean that
something has been closed down before it should have been
While, ethics is an opening and not a closure
o FIRST PROBLEM : FORECLOSING PHILOSOPHY
o Problem → The way business ethicists do philosophy
▪ Twentieth century philosophy is almost completely excluded
o Solution of the book → Bringing philosophy back into BE
▪ Rereading BE in the light of development in contemporary thoughts
▪ Turning to sources that have been pretty much ignored in Dvlpmt of BE
o SECOND PROBLEM : FORECLOSING SOCIETY
o Problem → Individualism
▪ BE downplays the role of social context
▪ Corporate scandals are attributed purely to the evil character of an individual
without referring to the situation that has shaped him in a way that is
common to other people (gender, ethnicity, class, age, …)
▪ Cannot hide context in which acts of misconduct take place
o Remark
▪ Individuals have responsibilities of their acts, but it always takes place in a
social context
o Solution of the book → Important to see both
▪ Individuals responsible for certain choices
▪ Context in which their actions took place
o THIRD PROBLEM : FORECLOSING ‘THE ETHICAL’
o Problem → BE rests on a narrow definition of what counts as ‘the ethical’
▪ Doesn’t consider everything it should (Ex. Contracts)
▪ BE does not exhaust the range of matters that concern people about the role
of businesses in the contemporary world
o Solution of the book → Authors raise ethical problems with stuff considered
business as usual
o FOURTH PROBLEM : FORECLOSING THE MEANING OF ‘ETHICS’
o Problem → ‘Ethics’ means a lot of different things
▪ Words like ethics don’t have a transparent meaning
▪ Different movements in ethics (talk about different subjects) have different
point of views on ethic itself
o Solution of the book → Look at meaning of ethics
o FIFTH PROBLEM : FORECLOSING POLITICS
o Problem → BE tends to deny the role of politics
▪ Related to third problem, but it goes further (what is BE willing to question ?)
▪ BE explain scandals such as small problems in a wide sea
o Solution of the book → Argue that BE could treat scandals as symptoms of broader
problem in contemporary business practice
▪ Also reconsider place of politics in BE
2
, Frédéric Kröger Business and Consumer Ethics - Summary
o SIXTH PROBLEM : FORECLOSING THE GOAL OF ETHICS
o Problem → BE is often caught btw two conceptions of what it is for
▪ Two conceptions (often first one today)
• Reassuring and satisfying ideas that reminds us how to do right thing
• Threatens us by exposing us to difference, and that challenges us to think
and act differently
▪ BE often acts as a technology for reduction of undecidability
▪ BE has become something claiming to show what to do
o Solution of the book → Discuss arguments that ethics is not a matter of solutions but
perhaps better thought of as a set of problems
3
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller frdrickrger. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $5.40. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
79373 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now