Correlation of Ethics and Governance - Coursework Example

Ethics and Governance Introduction The role of ethics in business management has increasingly become a matter of concern in the recent years. This isprecisely because of a given erosion in the value standards of conducting business practices and the rising incidences of corporate scandals, corruption at political levels, violation of the basic scientific spirits etc., all with the sole intention of maximizing the profit levels (Callahan, 2005; Mallor et al, 2005; Cowe and Williams, 2000). Against this backdrop this paper briefly attempts to evaluate the relevance of ethical standards in the role of business management. It approaches the topic basically from two perspectives, namely, the Kantian ethical standards that are closely related with basic moral spirits and the utilitarian perspective. This paper is divided into five sections including this introduction. In the next section a discussion of Kantian ethics, especially with regard to the two types of imperatives that he first mentioned in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, is undertaken. In the third section the ethical aspects of the use of child labour, especially in the developing countries, and in the fourth section the problems associated with utilitarianism is discussed. The fifth section concludes the paper. Kantian Imperatives In Section II of Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant explains the capacity of will as practical reason – the ability to cause actions according to principles the agent represents to himself – and principles thought of as applying to the will objectively as a matter of rationality are represented in the form of imperatives (Kant 1989). He formulated two types of imperatives. According to him . . . all imperatives command either hypothetically or categorically. The former present the practical necessity of a possible action as a means to achieving something else which one desires (or which one may possibly desire). The categorical imperative would be one which presented an action as of itself objectively necessary, without regard to any other end. (Kant 1989). Hence categorical imperative in Kantian ethics presents one with an unconditional formula to differentiate between moral and amoral, and ethical and unethical practices and actions. The first formulation of categorical imperative is “Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. Implicit in this formulation is the 1) a priori character of categorical imperative, 2) the test of prudence of reason and the wills, and 3) the rational nature of morality (Krosgaard, 2007). That is, the rationale behind an act, when converted to become a formula, shall be a universal one and shall not contradict itself. Kant gives the example of a merchant who shortchanges his customers in order to maximize his profit. It would be impossible for a maxim like shortchange your customer if you want to maximise your profit to have any universal validity and hence the act is inherently unethical. Krosgaard (2007) gives the example of the impossibility of making lying promises to borrow money in a universe where everyone acted on a maxim to make a lying promise to borrow money. Although Kantian ethical formulations may appear too severe and harsh to be applied on a world of practical business it makes complete sense to initiate a discussion of current business standards against the Kantian positions. Not only that a Kantian perspective shall throw light upon the dubious current ethical standards commonly followed by business managements throughout the globe but it may also help us to take a refreshing look at the very notion of ethics and ethical practices. Ethics and Child labour The problem of employing children in factories and other manufacturing centres, especially in the developing countries, is widely considered as a matter of serious concern. A report published by UNICEF estimates that 158 million children aged between 5-14 are employed in different working places that includes some of the most vulnerable ones (UNICEF, 2008). In the context of rising discussions and debates pertaining to welfare issues child labour is considered as a serious issue and an obstacle to attaining the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) (Rena 2009). Nevertheless it also needs to be discussed with regard to the particular contexts within which it is most commonly visible and the different factors, like poverty for example, that contributes to its existence. In this section I shall make an attempt to understand the gravity of this issue with respect to the challenges it invoke from two ethical standards, namely the Kantian and the utilitarian, both of which are, although contradictory to each other on several grounds, highly relevant to the contemporary business standards and practices. From the perspective of utilitarian ethics Utilitarianism, as opposed to the Kantian positions with regard to ethical matters, assumes that the outcome is the main tool to measure the moral worth of any action (Lyons 1965). It is depended upon the extent to which the outcome of any action brings happiness and pleasure to the human beings (Kolk and Tulder 2004). In this context child labour invokes questions that could be addressed at two apparently contradicting levels. One would be on the basis of the immediate results that the use child labour brings in with respect to a cycle of production and consumption made possible at a rather cheaper cost. One commonly acknowledged fact with regard to child labour is that it is much cheaper than employing adults (Kolk and Tulder 2004: 53); also that it is considered to be a great relief against the contexts of the realities of poverty and the miserable living conditions that exist especially in many developing situations (Rena 2009: 5-6). On both these grounds child labour becomes a justifiable practice in that it keeps those children engaged whose lives would have wasted without sufficient opportunities to educate or even to feed themselves. On the other hand the second question that could be raised, from within a utilitarian perspective itself, is with regard to the larger consequences of such practices; that is, how far human beings would benefit from employing children in some of the most vulnerable conditions who would otherwise have become much more responsible adult citizens and could have contributed to the very humanity in various ways. In other words the first way of addressing the issue narrows down the utility of utilitarianism to the extent it opts for immediate goals forsaking the larger consequences of the issue at hand. From the perspective of Kantian ethics A Kantian response to the issue of child labour would be on the basis of the ‘test of universal maxim’ that it invokes. The first formulation of categorical imperative is “Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. The will specified here is the practical reason and Kant believes that morality must be based on such a universal law that precedes any simplified or even complex system of logic so that it becomes applicable to everyone regardless of inclination (Krosgaard, 2007). The will or practical reason implicit in the instance of child labour would be that, on the basis of what we saw in the previous passage, exploit the conditions in such a way as to benefit both the children and the manufacturer. By any standards this does not and cannot come under the label of any universal law or maxim that shall initiate or motivate one’s actions. By Kant’s formulation of categorical imperative the use of child labour becomes an immoral and unethical practice at two levels; that the means and ends involved in the practice are distinct from each other (Foot 2007) and thus it fails the very first test of categorical imperative, and, that the maxim under which it is practiced can never become a universal law to propagate future actions on those lines. Utilitarianism A major critique made against utilitarianism is that it is only concerned with maximising the total amount of good and is not concerned with the distribution of that good between people and groups. In this section I shall briefly examine this critique against the larger canvass offered by utilitarian branch of ethics. In the last section we have already seen that Utilitarianism holds that the moral worth of an action is intrinsically related to its utility in the form of the outcomes of that action. Out of usage it has now become a rather commonsensical understanding that utilitarianism is concerned only with increasing the total amount of good (Lyons 1965; Habib 2008). Although the critique could be justified to the extent that it refers to the contemporary business practices and that utilitarianism still functions as the major motivating force in guiding these practices, it needs to be considered against the possibilities offered by utilitarianism in a larger sense. In my suggestion the critique primarily emerge from a rather common reading which identifies contemporary practices as reflections of utilitarian principles instead of identifying the two as ‘two’ and not as one. In other words it is a commonplace criticism against utilitarian principles that attribute the terms happiness and pleasure to any such human habits and actions that are evidently immoral. For example the act of arranging a spectacle where an innocent person is placed before a starving lion in order for many to watch and cheer and enjoy, and thus become happy, cannot be a justifiable act according to utilitarian standards although the common rubric of utilitarianism can be distorted to make it a justifiable act since the act as such yields pleasure and happiness for a larger majority at the cost of one individual. I said it ‘cannot be’, because pleasure and happiness in this context allows two levels of interpretation, on a short term basis which is momentary and on a long term basis. Whereas on the basis of the former interpretation it becomes a justifiable act it is not on the basis of the latter. This shows the relevance of interpretations in understanding and/or underestimating the potentials of utilitarianism. The criticism, in my view, pertains more to the activities of production and distribution rather than to utilitarianism as such. This is because utilitarianism is not an ethical code that deals, explicitly or implicitly, with production or distribution of the good or, at least, it does not restrict itself to any of these fields in any implicit manner. If one can integrate it into the act of production then, on the same lines, one should be able to integrate it onto the other act also which is distribution. The fact that one is taken in leaving aside the other is no reason to criticise against utilitarianism. In other words contemporary business practices have failed to integrate utilitarianism in its full potentials and its distorted application needs to be criticised as problem pertaining to those practices as such rather than as originating from the standards themselves. Conclusion According to Bernard Williams (1973) there are three basic assumptions behind right actions: these are 1) a person who acts rightly chooses the best of the alternative actions available, 2) an action is right in virtue of its nature to produce a good state of affairs, and 3) sometimes such states of affairs are constituted by these right actions. He suggests that the difference between consequentianalist (basically utilitarian) and other strands of ethical thoughts are the extent to which they assign sense to the third assumption (566-569). For example in utilitarian thought an action’s worth could be measured only with regard to the state of affairs whereas in Kantian thought such a means ends relationship itself makes that act an unethical. In other words in Kantian ethical standards the means and ends should remain one and the same whereas in utilitarian thought ends justify means. Notwithstanding such indeed serious differences both these schools of thought deserve to be explicitly discussed with regard to the contemporary business practices and the standards that are followed. As was discussed during this paper utilitarianism indeed reserves much more space to be integrated into the current practices if one were to save it from the false interpretations. References Callahan, David. 2004. The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead, Orlando: Harcourt. Cowe, Roger and Simon Williams. 2000. Who are the Ethical Consumers. Retrieved from /www.co-operativebank.co.uk . on May 5, 2010. David Lyons. 1965.  Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism.Oxford: OUP. Foot, Philippa, (2007), “Morality as a system of Hypothetical Imperatives,” in (ed) Russ Shaffer-Landau, Ethical Theory, Oxford, MA: Blackwell. pp 154-159.  Habib, Allen. 2008. Promises in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retreived from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/promises/ on May 5 2010. Kant, Immanuel, 1909 (1788). Critique to Practical Reason. Tr. By Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, London: Longmans, Green. Kant, Immanuel, 1989 (1789). Foundations of The Metaphysics Of Morals. Tr. Lewis White Beck, Prentice Hall. Kolk, Ans and Rob Van Tulder. 2004. “Ethics in international business: multinational approaches to child labor.” Journal of World Business 39: 49–60. Retrieved from www.sciencedirect.com on May 5, 2010. Korsgaard, Christine, (2007), “Kant’s Formula of Univesal Law,” in (ed) Russ Shaffer-Landau, Ethical Theory, Oxford, MA: Blackwell. pp 540-552. Mallor, Jane, Barnes, James, Bowers, Thomas, and Langvardt, Arlen. 2004. Business Law: The Ethical, Global and E-Commerce Environment, 12edition. Dubudue, Iowa: McGraw-Hill. Rena, Ravinder. 2009. “The Child Labor in Developing Countries: A Challenge to Millennium Development Goals.” Indus Journal of Management & Social Sciences 3.1:1-8. Retrieved from ssrn.com on May 5, 2010. UNICEF. 2008.Child protection from violence, exploitation and abuse. Retreived from www.unicef.org/protection/index_childlabour.html on May 5 2010. Williams, Bernard. 1973. A Critique of Utilitarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read More