Inhoudsopgave
Hoorcollege 1 Ethics in Business and Management .........................................................................2
Hoorcollege 2 Ethics in Business and Management .........................................................................7
Hoorcollege 3 Ethics in Business and Management .......................................................................12
Hoorcollege 4 Ethics in Business and Management .......................................................................16
Hoorcollege 5 Ethics in Business and Management .......................................................................21
Hoorcollege 6 Ethics in Business and Management .......................................................................25
,Hoorcollege 1 Ethics in Business and Management
Voor de tutorials, voorbereiding en ook artikelen lezen
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Vandaag gaat het over de eerste twee hoofdstukken van het boek.
What is the right thing to do? Is an important question in ethics
Mogelijke vragen die bij Ethics passen:
Would you ever work for a company that made landmines?
I tax avoidance morally permissible?
Can employers force their employers to take the coronavirus vaccine?
What is business ethics?
• The applied ethics discipline that addresses the moral features of commercial activity
o Theoretical component: concepts and principles
o Application: how to think about issues and what to do about them, judgement,
empathy and imagination. Dus de uitvoering ervan.
Morality: is concerned with the norms, values and beliefs embedded in social processes
which define right and wrong for an individual or a community
Ethics: is concerned with the study of morality and the application of reason to elucidate
specific rules and principles that determine right and wrong for any given situation.
These rules and principles are called ethical theories.
Types of ethical theory
Ethical theories are the rules and principles that determine right and wrong for any given
situation
• Normative ethics prescribes morally correct way of acting
• Descriptive ethics describes how ethics decisions are actually made in business
Scope of business ethics
• Systematic ethical issues concern the social, political, legal or economic systems
within which companies operate
• Corporate ethical issues concerning corporations and their policies, culture, climate,
impact and actions
• Individual ethical issues concern a particular individual’s decisions, behaviour or
character
Het gaat dus voornamelijk om de corporate ethical issues in dit vak
Corporations
• Size and influence make them special
• As an employee you can contribute to
o Corporate culture and values
o Corporate decision-making procedures, such as the triple bottom line
• As a consumer, social activist, citizen can also have opinions
,Some challenges to the idea of business ethics
1. Moral relativism
• According to moral relativism, there are no ethical standards that are absolutely true
and that apply to the people and companies of all societies
Points of moral relativism:
o Accept social obligations that are not unethical
o Tolerance of difference (subsidiarity)
o Take opportunity for self-scrutiny
à When you are amongst crows, you have to speak like them. When in Rome, do as the
Romans. You have to anticipate on the local morality, dus aanpassingsvermogen is
gevraagd hier.
Objections of moral relativism:
• Some moral standards are found in all societies
• Moral differences do not logically imply relativism
• Relativism has incoherent consequences
• Relativism privileges whatever moral standards are widely accepted in society
2. Egoism
• All that matters is to advance your own interests
Some objections:
o Doesn’t work: no one trusts a pure opportunist
o You are not the corporation
o What interests should you maximize (is the good life about money or virtue?)
Egoistic perspective is a risky perspective in ethics
3. The market will take care of everything
• Market actors are rational (prudent)
• Customers, suppliers etc. will only do business with companies with a reputation for
integrity
• Thus, corporations that do not act morally will suffer economically
• Companies can see this for themselves so they have an incentive to act moral
à Adam Smith’s definition
“The qualities most useful to ourselves are, first of all, superior reason and understanding,
by which we are capable of discerning the remote consequences of all our actions, and of
foreseeing the advantage or detriment which is likely to result from them: and secondly,
selfcommand, by which we are enabled to abstain from present pleasure or to endure
present pain, in order to obtain a greater pleasure or to avoid a greater pain in some future
time. In the union of those two qualities consists the virtue of prudence, of all the virtues that
which is most useful to the individual.” (Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759)
Failures of Smithian prudence
• Ignorance, especially about long-term indirect consequences via reputation
• Failure of self-command, unable to resist short-term gains
• Corporate agent incoherence, such as giving incentives to sales staff to do whatever
it takes
• Solution: good corporate management in line with market forces
When prudence isn’t enough for moral behaviour – sometimes corporate diverge from that of
consumers, i.e. being nice doesn’t pay
, 4. Ethics and the law
• ‘Political obligation’ to obey the law even if it seems unreasonable
• Sanctions are to reinforce that moral obligation, don’t define it
• You may have other moral obligations too
• Generally: correct response to bad law is acting as a citizen – in extreme cases civil
disobience
Ethics is more than the law
• Lots of things are legal but that doesn’t make them morally right
o For example, hunting rhino’s, advertising junk food to children, dumping toxic
waste in developing countries
• We need ethics for the grey areas where law isn’t clear
Why is Business Ethics so important?
• Business has a huge power in society
• Business can potentially provide major contribution to society
• Business malpractice can inflict enormous harm
• Demands placed on business are becoming more complex and challenging
• Employees may face pressure to compromise ethical standards
• Businesses face a trust deficit
Bijvoorbeeld Coca Cola en Pepsi hebben een grotere kapitalisatie/invloed dan alle andere
bedrijven in België.
Globalization and business
• Globalization changes how business is run
• Businesses employ a much broader variety of employees with different cultural
backgrounds
• Supply chains often span multiple continents. Grote bedrijven maken hun producten
over de hele wereld, outsourcing naar lagelonenlanden bijvoorbeeld.
• Global brands are represented in even the most remote places in the world
Why is globalization central to business ethics?
• Moral values: how do we go about moral values that differ across countries?
• Legal issues: to which legal framework should a company abide to? (van het eigen
land, of waar het actief is?) Tot he one of its own country of the countries where they
commerce?
• Accountability issues: multinationals are becoming economically as powerful as
governments, should they also become more accountable as governments are?
o Kun je meer van deze bedrijven vragen, omdat ze zo groot zijn
Filmpje over de appie
Sustainability
• Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
It becomes crucial because of:
o Explosive population growth
o Rapid economic development of emerging economies
Triple Bottom Line
Sustainability refers to the long-term maintenance of systems according to:
• Economic factors (profit)
• Social factors (people)
• Environmental considerations (planet)
