Ethical Choices In Business

A manager with personal integrity is more

likely to make ethical decisions for the
organization. He tends to become a true
professional & an asset to the
organization.

A good business manager aware of public

(consumer) interest, professional interest
and organizational interest cannot but act
in accordance with law and ethics.
Ethical Choices in Business
Evolving Ethical Values :

Business Ethics are the desired norms of

behavior exclusively dealing with
commercial transactions.

Moral Values are deep-seated ideas and

feelings that manifest themselves as
behavior or conduct. These values are not
so easy to measure or express in words.
Ethical Choices In Business
No Duryodhana. No one from the warrior
caste should use the game of dice to win his
kingdom, that is cheating. Only the traders
can cheat as that is their profession.
Ashwatthama in Mahabharata.

The first lesson in ethics is to learn to see life

as it is, w/o bitterness or expectations which
needs studied practice & self discipline.
Ethical Choices in Business
Values can be classified into 4
aspects :
1. Criteria for accepting values.
2. Values which are required to be
optimized.
3. Values in the nature of rights where
the stress is on minimizing societal
interference &
4. Means of institutionalizing ethical
implementation of values.
Ethical Choices In Business
A. Criteria for acceptance of values

1. Tests of Universalisability,
2. Test of the greatest good for the
greatest number.
Ethical Choices In Business

The criterion of
Universalisability: (Kant 1985).
We should not do anything that we
would not like to be done to us in
similar circumstances. Only when a
code of behavior can be universally
applied should it be considered
ethically correct.
Ethical Choices In Business

The Greatest good for the

greatest number: (Jeremy
Bentham and John Stuart Mill)
It attempted to make ethical
valuation precise by aggregating
the happiness of everyone affected
and deducting their unhappiness.
Ethical Choices in Business
B. Values which 5. Compassion &
would be required charity.
to be optimized : 6. Piety (Bhakti).
7. Sacrifice.
1. Controlled greed. 8. Stoic Dignity.
2. Pursuit of 9. Transparency and
pleasure. honesty.
3. Efficiency & work 10. Righteousness in
ethic. envy, pride, anger
4. Truth. & violence.
Ethical Choices In Business
Values which would be required
to be optimized : contd..
11. Camaraderie & fraternity.
12. Trust and cooperation.
13. Tolerance, pluralism & Melliorism.
14. Gratitude & Respectfulness.
15. Harmony with self, society &
nature
16. Evolutionary Destiny
 Values which would be required to be
optimized:
Controlled Greed: There is an intuitive apprehension that
human greed may destroy society. Indian ethical
philosophy also accepted greed as essential & conceived of
systems that could put it to positive use. Indian thinkers
depended severally on internal controls, general
cultivation & nurturing family culture to control greed.
Pursuit of Pleasure: Happiness and pleasure could not be
just pleasures of the flesh but also of the mind. Altruism
and absence of greed can indeed be a cause of giving
pleasure.
Efficiency & Work Ethics: The tremendous potential for
doing human good by improvement of efficiency of
operations was realized much later. The core ethical value
of improvement in productivity was measured by the index
of profits. The greatest ethics of mankind is in productive
and innovative hard work on land.
Values which would be required to be
optimized:
Truthfulness: Speaking the truth is most universally
accepted as a prime ethical value. Truth is ethically valued
because of its universalisability & also because it makes for
the greatest good for the greatest number. In business
ethics, it is the first step in building relationships based on
trust.
Transparency and Honesty: They require total openness.
Nothing is to be hidden from those who would be affected
by information.
Compassion and Charity: Though most religions place a
high value on compassion and charity, the obsession with
these concepts is more evident in Buddhism, Jainism,
Taoism & Christianity.
Piety (Bhakti): It need not be necessary or efficient step
towards compassion. It needs to be counted as one of the
various values that have a say in business ethics.
Values which would be required to be
optimized:
Sacrifice: An acute extension of compassion is concept of
self-sacrifice, as advocated by Jains and Buddhists.
Stoic Dignity: The ennobling dignity born out of enduring
with courage, pain, adversity, & failure, draws spontaneous
applause universally. Business ethics witnesses this quality
in several situations the failures faced by entrepreneurs
who takes risks all the time those within organizations
who stick to their own values in an ambience of adulation.
Righteous Pride, Envy, Anger, and violence: I teach
people to say Nay in the face of all values for weakness and
exhaustion. I teach people to say Yea in the face of their
need for strength, that pursues strength & justifies the
feeling of strength.
Camaraderie and Fraternity: The message of
brotherhood comes out loud & clear in India from Islam and
Sikhism. It braves the caste reduction in India.
Values which would be required to be
optimized:

Trust and Cooperation: Relationships created by market

systems in a capitalist society can function only if there is
an element of truth. Hosmer.
The absence of trust would make it impossible for partners
in a transaction to operate with efficiency & could ultimately
result in the collapse of capitalist system. Two perfectly
honest people transacting business could lose out if they
failed to develop a relationship based on mutual trust.
Tolerance, pluralism, and Meliorism: Pluralism is a
rejection of a destructive quest for some comprehensive &
exclusively determining principle. Meliorism is a way of life
in which there are no solutions, yet we strive to improve
things. Their importance in business ethics can be seen in
the need for working together in organizations.
Values which would be required to be
optimized:
Gratitude and Respectfulness: (More practiced in Japan)
The tremendous success of the Japanese as against the
Americans is evidence of its positive consequence.
Harmony with self, society, and nature: With the
resurgence of environmental ethics, these trends are now
finding universal acceptance all over the world.
Evolutionary destiny of cooperation: The ethics of
cooperation as against competition is seen as crucial for the
future of business ethics.
Ethical Choices In Business
C. Values in the nature of Rights of
Beneficiaries :
1. Right to Privacy: Major issue in the Western business
world.
2. Right to individual choice: It has become the core of
ethics after the French & American revolutions. In
business ethics, its implication is the right to choice of
goods and services by the consumers & right to choose
employment by the employees. The right to free speech,
correct information & free trade are necessary
preconditions to the right to choose.
3. Right to a minimum standard of life: It has a
profound meaning for India. Much of the ethics of
industrial relations & gender justice is derived from this
right.
Ethical Choices In Business
D. Norms & Means for Institutionalizing
ethical implementation :
1. Distributive Justice.
2. Democratic dispassionate discourse.
3. Market Systems.
4. Respect for processes of social adaptation.
5. Respect for law.
6. Respect for professional codes.
7. Organizations as vehicles of ethical synergy.
8. Respect for rituals and symbols.
Ethical Choices In Business
Distributive justice & social contracts:
The essential feature of this concept is transparency and
full participation of those affected in the decision process. It
consists of relevance in an ethical process of decision-
making.
The ethical process of distributive justice was exemplified in
the milk cooperatives in India that enabled remarkable
cooperation between the rich and the poor.
Distributive justice would also arise in personnel
management at the micro level and the choice of social
control measures on business at macro level.
Democratic dispassionate course:
The decisions that go through a process of distributive
justice can never be well-informed unless there have been
adequate & open public discussions where facts, beliefs &
attitudes have been spelt out calmly. The crisis in
confidence which besets Indian business can largely be
attributed to the inadequate regard for the ethic.
ETHICAL CHOICES IN BUSINESS
Market Systems:
Marketing systems can be viewed as value-neutral as they
can only be vehicles for transactions. However, the
relationships they generate have strong ethical overtones,
and therefore the system can be treated as a value in
ethics.
Respect for processes of social adaptation:
Respect for family & other institutions for socializing
individuals in their ethical evolution is now understood as
an important ethical value, equally valid for business.
Respect for law:
Institutionalizing ethics through laws that can be enforced
is a process as old as civilization itself. Laws is a convenient
institutional means for implementing values. But if the laws
were themselves a product of unfair power game, respect
for these would have an unethical outcome.
ETHICAL CHOICES IN BUSINESS
Respect for Professional Codes:
A major development in the ethical movement in the USA is
the mobilization of professions through professional
councils, who develop professional codes which make it
easier to reach across to organizations & provide a
countervailing force to greed.
Organizations as vehicles of ethical synergy:
An emerging ethical value in business is that they must
synergize ethics such that their actions are the summation
of individual ethical values & not of ethical dis-values.
Respect for rituals and symbols:
A growing number of people now feel that rituals and
symbols of every culture are strong emotional and
psychological supports for ethical sustenance.
Ethical Choices In Business
There are possibly some major differences
in ethical values among different
civilizations & nations. One may find
similar values across nations and across
time. These values may co-exist with quite
different & even contradictory ethical
values.
Ethics is a description of observed as well
as desirable behavior and conduct that
attempt to articulate moral values.