“To be able under all circumstances to practise five things constitutes perfect virtue; these five things are gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness and kindness.” - Confucius

http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/9547.html

BAM321 Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Session 6

Business and Management

Agenda for today

• Rights and duties

• Confucius on virtues

• Rawls on social justice

• Your issues

Kant (1724-1804)

1. Only act on rules that you would be

willing to see everyone follow.

2. Act so that you treat all humans always

as an end and never as a means only.

3. Act as if you were a member of an ideal

kingdom of ends in which you were both

subject and sovereign.

The categorical imperative.

• What issues do Kant’s ideas raise for business?

Task

Issues for thought

• Slavery.

• Child labour.

What would utilitarian thinking say about these?

And applying Kant’s categorical imperative?

UN Declaration of Human Rights

• Article 1

– All human beings are born free and

equal in dignity and rights. They are

endowed with reason and conscience

and should act towards one another in a

spirit of brotherhood.

Two factual claims, and one moral claim

UN Declaration of Human Rights

• Article 23– Everyone has the right to work, to free

choice of employment, to just and

favourable conditions of work and to

protection against unemployment

– Everyone, without any discrimination, has

the right to equal pay for equal work.

Several articles are to do with business

UN Declaration of Human Rights

• Article 23

– Everyone who works has the right to

just and favourable remuneration

ensuring for himself and his family

an existence worthy of human

dignity, and supplemented, if

necessary, by other means of social

protection.

UN Declaration of Human Rights

• Article 23

– Everyone has the right to form and to join

trade unions for the protection of his

interests.

• Article 24

– Everyone has the right to rest and leisure,

including reasonable limitation of working

hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Negative freedom

• Freedom from interference

– The right to be left alone to make one’s

own choices

– Imposes duties on others to leave me

alone

– Should I be free to turn up for work drunk

and so get fired?

– Do my flatmates have a duty not to stop

me from going?

Positive freedom

• Having the ability to achieve certain

ends

• Article 24

– Everyone has the right to rest and leisure,

including reasonable limitation of working

hours and periodic holidays with pay.

A Confucian view

• Freedom is achieved not by having

more choices but by overcoming

one’s lower desires…

• And internalising community norms –

becoming a good person

Seung-hwan Lee, 1996

Justice

• We have tended to consider individual behaviour– eg lying, management decisions.

• What about the ethical status of the economic system as whole?

Distributive justice

• Boatright suggests justice is relevant to this issue in connection with the distribution of benefits and burdens– Distributive justice.

• We may also speak of compensatory and retributive justice (also relevant to business).

Distributive justice

• Comparative.

• We compare the benefits received and burdens borne by different individuals.

• What benefits and burdens should be considered?

Distributive justice

• What benefits and burdens should be considered?

• How should these things be distributed?

Utilitarianism and justice

• Utilitarianism says we should focus on increasing utility without regard for which individuals benefit.

• Only if we assume diminishing marginal utility might adoption of utilitarianism lead to something like an equal distribution.

But is an equal distribution just?

The free market and justice

• The free market as modelled by economists leads to maximum utility. (I don’t follow Boatright’s argument at the

bottom of p85 – he seems to be wrong)

• But free markets in practice seem to lead to quite a high degree of inequality.

The free market and justice

• But free markets in practice seem to lead to quite a high degree of inequality.

Is the inequality observed in market economies just?

Market failure

• In reality some of the assumptions of the economists’ model are not satisfied.

• There is “market failure”.– Externalities, public goods…

Policies that correct for market failure might satisfy our concerns about the impact of economic activity on the environment.

But we might still be concerned about the justice of the distribution of benefits and burdens among individuals.

John Rawls

• A contract theory.– If individuals would unanimously

accept certain terms to govern their relations then those terms are just.

• Distinctive feature of Rawls’s method is the veil of ignorance.

John Rawls

• Suppose a completely new society is about to be constructed.

• Suppose you don’t know what your position will be in the new society.

• What features would you want that society to have?

• Write ideas on post-it notes.

• Then diamond mine!

John Rawls1. Each person is to have an equal right to the

most extensive total system of basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both

a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, and

b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory

• A distribution is just if it was arrived at by just transfers and

• the original distribution was just.

Robert Nozick’s entitlement theory

• The condition that the original distribution must have been just is problematic.

• And why are property rights so important?

Directed tasks

• Write short essays about at least two of the issues you have logged in the past five weeks

• Do some reading on Rawls’s theory of justice, eg Boatright chapter 4

• Keep logging!