This document consists of lecture notes and summary of Ethics course that is part of International Business Administration bachelor's study Programm and one of the last mandatory classes.
Ethics
Lecture 1
Intro
Business science and business ethics
- Business science focuses on organisations
- as agents
- as environments
- Both perspective elicit fundamental ethical questions, e.g.
- If organisations are agents, their behaviour can be evaluated on ethical
grounds: which of their actions and decisions are ethically justi able?
- If organisations are environments (i.e. structured groups of agents), then
how does the organisational structure a ects the behaviour of the individual
agents within the organisation and outside the organisation from an ethical
perspective?
- Business science focuses on markets
- as environments in which organisations operate
- as coordination systems alternative to organisations
- Again, both perspectives elicit fundamental ethical questions, e.g.
- If markets are environments in which organisations operate, how do
organisations balance their need to be competitive with their ethical
standing? And how markets should be regulated in a way that makes it
possible for organisations to nd a balance?
- If markets are alternatives to organisations, then in which ways this
di erence a ects the forms of evaluations (including ethical evaluations)
practiced within and outside organisations?
- Business science focuses on markets in society
- As the impact of markets on society
- As the impact of society on markets
- Again, both perspectives elicit fundamental ethical questions, e.g.
- To which extent current societal values are a ected (or should be a ected)
by «what is good for the markets»?
- To which extent should regulations on markets re ect societal values?
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, Ethical decision-making
- The process of evaluating and choosing among alternatives in a way that is
consistent with ethical principles. This entails recognising…
- Alternatives
- Stakeholders
- Consequences
- Decision-making processes are typically multi-dimensional
- Hence, decisions involve clashes of legitimate rights or values or di erent
principles and notions of what is good
- Core to ethical decision-making is the ability to balance clashing values
- No clash of values —> no ethical problem
What is hard about ethical decision-making?
- Is there an unquestionable basis on which we can ground our ethical
principles?
- Di erent answers
- Aristotle — do what brings you closer to virtue
- Kant — do what respects human fundamental dignity and self-
determination
- Utilitarianism — do what provides the most good and the least harm
- Rawls — do what is necessary to «share one another’s fate»
- Communitarianism — obligation to our communities
- These general ethical principles might clash with each other when we to apply
them to concrete situations
Lecture 2
Aristotle — Virtue Ethics
Ethics for Aristotle
- Ethics is not a theoretical discipline
- We are asking not because we want to satisfy our curiosity, but because by
knowing we will be more capable to teach it
- Give answer to the practical question: How should men best live?
- Give answer to questions such as: What is the highest good?
- And these questions are always connected with politics
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, The highest good
- Eudaimonia — often translated as happiness, ourishing, well-being, welfare
- Aristotle — «Verbally there is a very general agreement; for both ordinary men
and wise men say that it is [eudaimonia], and identify living well and faring well
with being happy; but about what [eudaimonia] is they disagree, and the many
do not give the same account as the wise»
- What could eudaimonia consist of:
- Pleasure? Wealth? Honour? Having virtue?
- Aristotle continues — «For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing
like pleasure, wealth or honour»
The highest good and the telos
- According to Aristotle, the highest good:
- Is self-su cient
- Is desirable for itself
- Is not desirable for the sake of some other good, and
- All other goods are desirable for its sake
- Hence, the highest good is the ultimate purpose or end
- Telos — goal, end, purpose, function
- Teleological — relative to the purpose
- Goodness resides in the ful lment of one’s telos
Logos as human telos
- Addendum — man as political animal
- Logos — speech, structured thought, reason, ration
Arete and the eudaimon life
- Arete — excellence, virtue
- «Excellence displayed in the ful lment of purpose or function (telos)» Notice that
the basic meaning of ‘arete’ is not an ethical one as ‘moral virtue’. Its meaning
changes depending on what it describes since everything has its own peculiar
excellence; the arete of a man is di erent from the arete of a horse
Summing up
- The good of a human being is speci c to being human
- Reason is what distinguishes humanity from all other species
- If we use reason well, we live well as human beings; more speci cally, using
reason well throughout life is what happiness consists in
- The virtue or excellence «arete» of reason is speci c to reason
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