Summary: Ethics and the Future of Business 2021
Session 1: Moral & Ethics
Introduction to Business Ethics
[Reflection question 1: What is morality, ethics and an ethical theory?]
Morality, ethics, and ethical theory
• Morality is humans’ ability to distinguish right and wrong.
• Ethics is the systematic study of morality.
• Ethical theories are principles and rules that determine right and wrong in different
situations.
• This session, focus on normative ethics, i.e. the study of how we ought to behave →
normative ethical theories are rules, guidelines, principles, and approaches that determine
right and wrong.
Ethics: an on-going discussion about morality with a very long history.
• Ethics typically examines right and wrong from the perspective of a human being
(anthropocentric), instead of, for instance, nature.
• Key questions include:
o What kind of moral principles should guide our actions?
o What kind of aims should we have?
• Ethics is not just theorization of morals, but the aim is also to affect practice.
• Ethical theories can give contradictory solutions to the same problem.
[Reflection question 2: What is business ethics and why is it challenging?]
Business ethics is the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right and
wrong are addressed.
➔ Challenges:
• Comprehensive: addresses challenging questions at individual, organizational and societal
levels.
• Cross-disciplinary: philosophy, management, economics, political science, earth system
sciences.
• Abstract nature: it can be difficult to recognize the practical implications of ethical theories.
• Critical thinking: you should not take the theories and related practices as given.
• Experience: experience in business can be helpful.
[Reflection question 3: What is the difference between ethics and the law?]
Do we need ethics when we have the law?
• In society, morality is the foundation of the law – the law is the minimum standard.
• Law and ethics are partly overlapping; not every situation is an ethical situation.
Nonetheless:
1. The law does not cover all ethical issues (e.g. cheating on your partner)
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, 2. Not all legal issues are ethical (e.g. driving on the right side of the road)
3. Law and ethics can involve contradictions (e.g. Apartheid)
• The road from unethical to illegal is short and slippery – sometimes happens without
noticing.
• Companies can operate in locations with lacking legal infrastructure.
The Moral Machine (article Awad et al, 2018)
[Reflection question 4: Which dimensions of the Moral Machine experience more agreement?]
The Moral Machine is a multilingual online “serious game” for collecting data on how citizens would
want autonomous vehicles to solve moral dilemmas in the context of unavoidable accidents. In these
accident scenarios, there was a focus on nine factors:
1. Sparing humans (vs pets)
2. Staying on course (vs swerving)
3. Sparing passenger (vs pedestrians)
4. Sparing more lives (vs fewer lives)
5. Sparing men (vs women)
6. Sparing the young (vs the elderly)
7. Sparing pedestrians who cross legally (vs jaywalking)
8. Sparing the fit (vs the less fit)
9. Sparing those with higher social status (vs lower social status)
➔ There is variance in agreement across different dimensions, but the dimensions that receive more
agreement are:
o Sparing the young instead of the elderly
o Sparing more characters instead of fewer characters
o Sparing humans instead of pets
[Reflection question 5: Which cultural differences come through in the Moral Machine when
comparing Western, Eastern and Southern cultures?]
Cultural clusters
Three “moral clusters” of countries are distinguished with homogeneous vectors of moral
preferences:
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, 1. Western cluster: North America, many European countries of Protestant, Catholic and
Orthodox Christian cultural groups.
2. Eastern cluster: Eastern countries, such as Japan and Taiwan that belong to the Confucianist
cultural group, and Islamic countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
3. Southern cluster: Latin America countries of Central and South America, in addition to some
countries that are characterized in part by French influence.
Differences between clusters:
* Sparing the young and sparing higher status: low in the Eastern cluster, much higher for
countries in the Southern cluster.
* Sparing humans over pets: weaker preference for countries in the Southern cluster,
compared to the Western and Eastern cluster.
* Sparing women and sparing fit characters: much higher in the Southern cluster.
* Sparing pedestrians: weak preference in all clusters.
* Sparing the lawful over the unlawful: same extent in all clusters.
Cultural and economic predictors of Moral Machine preferences
- Participants from individualistic cultures (emphasize the value of each individual) show a
stronger preference for sparing the greater number of characters. Participants from
collectivistic cultures (respect the older members of the community) show a weaker
preference for sparing younger characters.
- Participants from countries that are poorer and suffer from weaker institutions are more
tolerant of pedestrians who cross illegally.
- Participants from countries with less economic equality between the rich and poor also treat
the rich and poor less equally.
- In nearly all countries, participants showed a preference for female characters → this
preference was stronger in nations with better health and survival prospects for women.
Normative ethical theories (chapter 3 Crane, 2019)
[Reflection question 6: What are the core normative theories in Modernist Western thinking? What
are the core ideas of each?]
Normative ethical theories: ethical theories that aim to prescribe the morally correct way of acting;
how we ought to behove.
➔ What are the principles that guide our actions vs. outcomes of our actions → what kind of
decision should we make.
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