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A summary of Ethics for Bedrijfskunde (Business Administration) on the VU
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Ethics Book Summary (Justice by Michael Sandel)
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ETHICSWEEK 1 Chapter 1 Sandel, Ethical decision making
Justice: how the law should be and how society should be organized
Laws and looking at justice revolve around three ideas:
1. Maximizing welfare
2. Respecting freedom
3. Promoting virtue (ethisch handelen bevorderen, deugdelijk)
Each point has a different opinion on justice.
This dilemma points to one of the great questions of political philosophy: Does a just society
seek to promote the virtue of its citizens? Or should law be neutral toward competing
conceptions of virtue, so that citizens can be free to choose for themselves the best way to live?
Ethical decision making: choose an action that is in agreement with ethical principles
- What are the alternatives? (difficult to see the options, also dependent on your own
considerations, excludes some alternatives)
- Recognizing stakeholders (Who will be affected positively and who negatively? And how
will they be affected?)
- Recognizing consequences (Is it helping people? Is it unjust?)
Ethical dilemma
- Clashes of legitimate rights or values or different principles and notions of good
- Balance clashing values
- No clash of values > No ethical problem
- Examples: train tracks or Taliban
What ethical behaviour is NOT
- Feelings and emotions
- Religious beliefs
- Following the law
- Following social conventions
- Scientific knowledge
What is hard about ethical decision-making?
- On what can we ground our ethical principles?
Aristotle: Do what brings you closer to virtue. Justice is giving people what they deserve.
Kant: Do what respects human fundamental dignity and self-determination
Utilitarians: Do what provides the most good and the least harm
John Rawls: Do what is necessary to ‘share one anothers fate’ What is just and what is fair?
Communitarians: Act considering the obligations to your community
,Ethics can mean:
• a set of moral principles: a theory or system of moral values
• the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation
Business Science
1. Business Science focuses on organizations:
• Organizations as agents;
• Organizations as environments.
• Both perspectives elicit fundamental ethical questions, e.g.:
- If organizations are agents, their behaviour can be evaluated on ethical grounds: which
of their actions and decisions are ethically justifiable?
- If organizations are environments (i.e. structured groups of agents), then how does the
organizational structure affect the behaviour of the individual agents within the
organization and outside the organization from an ethical perspective?
2. Business Science focuses on markets:
• Markets as environments in which organizations operate;
• Markets as coordination systems alternative to organizations.
• Again, both perspectives elicit fundamental ethical questions, e.g.:
- If markets are environments in which organizations operate, how do organizations
balance their need to be competitive with their ethical standing? And how should
markets be regulated in a way that makes it possible for organizations to find a balance?
- If markets are alternative to organizations, then in which ways this difference affects the
forms of evaluations (including ethical evaluations) practiced within and outside
organizations?
3. Business Science focuses on markets in society:
• The impact of markets on society;
• The impact of society on markets.
• Both perspectives elicit fundamental ethical questions, e.g.:
- To which extent current societal values are affected (or should be affected) by “what is
good for the markets”?
- To which extent should regulations on markets reflect societal values? Commit yourself,
Connect to the community, Challenge the ordinary, Create your own path
WEEK 2 Chapter 8 Sandel, Aristotle, Virtue ethics
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.):
Central to Aristotle’s political philosophy are two ideas:
, 1. Justice is teleological. Defining rights requires us to figure out the telos (the purpose, end, or
essential nature) of the social practice in question.
2. Justice is honorific. To reason about the telos of a practice—or to argue about it—is, at least
in part, to reason or argue about what virtues it should honor and reward.
Aristotle does not think justice can be neutral in this way. He believes that debates about justice
are, unavoidably, debates about honor, virtue, and the nature of the good life. It is not a
theoretical discipline.
1. What is the best way to live?
2. What is the highest good?
For Aristotle, justice means giving people what they deserve, giving each person his or her due.
- Depends on what is being distributed, define the telos (purpose, end, function or goal)
- “things, and the persons to whom things are assigned”
- The best flutes should go the the best flute players, because that is what flutes are for
Eudaimonia: living well and faring well with being happy
The highest good:
- is self-sufficient: enough for the good life
- is desirable for itself: unlike, for example, wealth which we desire only to get other things
- is not desirable for the sake of some other good
- all other goods are desirable for its sake (you can not make it better by adding more)
What is eudaimonia not:
- Pleasure is associated with happiness, but it seems a little bit crude. It’s only fulfilling for
the worst of men.
- Wealth is something we want, not for itself, but to get some other thing. Wealth is a tool
to obtain other things.
- Honor lacks for two reasons:
(1) honor depends on who bestows it, not only who receives it and the highest good
should somehow come from within and it shouldn’t be something that can be taken away
(2) many times we want honor also to prove to ourselves that we are good people, that
we possess virtues.
- Having virtues is not enough because I could have virtues, but maybe my life is a life of
inactivity. So, it cannot be the highest good since adding more can make it better.
The highest good is the ultimate purpose, or end.
Teleological: relative to the purpose
- So if you are a flute player, to play the flute the best
Goodness resides in the fulfillment of one’s telos.
Logos: Speech, structured thought, reason, ratio
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