Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer
Ethics is based on well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues.
Some years ago, sociologist Raymond Baumhart asked business people, "What does ethics mean to you?" Among their replies were the following:
"Ethics has to do with what my feelings tell me
is right or wrong."
"Ethics has to do with my religious beliefs."
"Being ethical is doing what the law requires."
"Ethics consists of the standards of behavior our society accepts."
"I don't know what the word means."
These replies might be typical of our own. The meaning of "ethics" is hard to pin down, and the views many people have about ethics are shaky.
Like Baumhart's first respondent, many people tend to equate ethics with their feelings. But being ethical is clearly not a matter of following one's feelings. A person following his or her feelings may recoil from doing what is right. In fact, feelings frequently deviate from what is ethical.
Nor should one identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate high ethical standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the devout religious person. Religion can set high ethical standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined to religion nor is it the same as religion.
Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical. Our own pre-Civil War slavery laws and the old apartheid laws of present-day South Africa are grotesquely obvious examples of laws that deviate from what is ethical.
Finally, being ethical is not the same as doing "whatever society accepts." In any society, most people accept standards that are, in fact, ethical. But standards of behavior in society can deviate from what is ethical. An entire society can become ethically corrupt. Nazi Germany is a good example of a morally corrupt society.
Moreover, if being ethical were doing "whatever society accepts," then to find out what is ethical, one would have to find out what society accepts. To decide what I should think about abortion, for example, I would have to take a survey of American society and then conform my beliefs to whatever society accepts. But no one ever tries to decide an ethical issue by doing a survey. Further, the lack of social consensus on many issues makes it impossible to equate ethics with whatever society accepts. Some people accept abortion but many others do not. If being ethical were doing whatever society accepts, one would have to find an agreement on issues which does not, in fact, exist.
What, then, is ethics? Ethics is two things. First, ethics refers to well-founded standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics, for example, refers to those standards that impose the reasonable obligations to refrain from rape, stealing, murder, assault, slander, and fraud. Ethical standards also include those that enjoin virtues of honesty, compassion, and loyalty. And, ethical standards include standards relating to rights, such as the right to life, the right to freedom from injury, and the right to privacy. Such standards are adequate standards of ethics because they are supported by consistent and well-founded reasons.
Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one's ethical standards. As mentioned above, feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics also means, then, the continuous effort of studying our own moral beliefs and our moral conduct, and striving to ensure that we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to standards that are reasonable and solidly-based.
This article appeared originally in Issues in Ethics IIE V1 N1 [Fall 1987]. Revised in 2010.
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IntroductionIn this CA I will be talking about [1] Definition of the ethics and the way they relate to thebehaviour of people that the law governs and by the freedom of choice. [2] And I will alsoexplainthe utilitarian, moral rights, justice and individualism approaches for doing anevaluation of the ethical behavior. [3] The factors that shape ethical decision-making of amanager. [4] Lastly, I will talk about that how leadership and the structure and systems of theorganization help in creating the ethical organizations.Ethics and its relation with thebehaviour of people that the law governs and by thefreedom of choiceEthics is a broad concept that cannot be confined to a particular definition. Ethics are definedasthe principles, values that govern the behaviors of a person or a group in relation to ‘rights'and ‘wrongs'. Now talking about Behaviour, it can be classified into three different categorieswhich include a codified law domain where the standards and the values are written into thelegal system and which has already been passed in the law. The second domain is the freechoice domain that is there at the end of the diagrams below. Here the free choice is related tothe behavior where the law does not have the power and the individual people, and thecompany has free will. The domain of ethics lies between the codified law and the free choicedomain. There is no particular law in this domain of ethics, but still, there exists a standard ofconduct that depends on the shared principles and the values that act as a guide to the peopleand the organization.Domain of freechoice[Personal Standard]Domain of ethics[Social Standard]Domain of CodifiedLaw[Legal Standard]
HighLow.Most dilemmas related to ethics involve conflict between the various needs of individuals andorganizations and in some cases, the organization and the entire society. The manager takesadvantage of the normative strategy for guiding their decision making.The approaches evaluating the ethical behaviourTheutilitarian approachThe utilitarian approach holds moral behaviors to produce the most influential results inrelation to positive morals which can also be known asutilitarianism, a moral principle thatsays correct actions are that actions which give a greater amount of benefits than most of thepeople.Theindividualism approachThis Individualism approach can also be referred to as egoism, compete that acts are moral,positive or negative moral, when the best interest of an individual for a long time areencouraged. The people analyze that what is the best advantage to them for the long term andthen they evaluate it for measuring the decision’s goodness. That action should be performedwhich is producing a comparatively more proportion of good for the people than the otheralternatives.
The moral rights approachThe fundamental human rights of the people that nobody can take away from them are knownas the moral rights. When the interference with other people’s fundamental rights is avoided,then it is said to be an ethically taken decision. There are levels of the individual moralapproach that are: thepreconventional level, the conventional level, and the principled level.Also, the thus approach has four stages: individual characteristics, the organization’sstructural design, the organizations’ culture and the intensity of the ethical issues. Theindividuals move on with the stages of the moral development consecutively. But thecontinued moral development cannot be guaranteed. So when the people focus onmaintaining the rights of the people who are affected by their decisions, then the person issaid to have taken the ethically correct decision. They have to take care of the rights like rightto privacy, free consent, freedom, the right to free speech, the right to due process, right tosafety and life, etc.The justice approachThe fairness standards, equity and impartially describe this approach. There are three justicesin this that the manger takes care of. Distributive justice is that in which the arbitrarycharacteristics does not determine that how the different people will be treated. Then inprocedural justice, the rules are fairly administered. The rules have to be stated clearly, and itis enforced consistently and impartially. Then the compensatory justice is that where thepeople are given compensation of the cost of the injuries by the responsible party. The peopleare not held accountable for the things on which they don’t have any control. The companymakes the rules for the people that are enforced by the company in a fair manner, and theyalso don’t become partial to anyone. All the people have to follow the legal rules and theregulations. When this is done, the interests of the stakeholders that are underrepresented areprotected along with the employees’ rights.
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