A Public Process and Announcement of Identity - Essay Example

Philosophy A2. Marketing is basically a process to generate consumer demands for products and services. According to conventional view demands becomeless urgent with the growing affluence of an individual. However, Galbraith has contradicted this view by stating that demands can be urgent only if the demand is born within the individual instead of being imposed on him. For a poor man who is hungry food is his urgent need since it is his inherent need while for a rich man who is envious of neighbor’s car, his demand cannot be equally urgent since his demand for the car is less for his own requirement than just a result of envy. Going by this logic Galbraith refutes the fact that production is done to satisfy wants since most of the times it is production that creates wants. Demands of consumers can have immoral roots but still that becomes valid reason in the society for production. However, Galbraith questions this validity since production which is the method of fulfilling wants itself becomes creator of demand. He compares this situation with “the efforts of the squirrel to keep abreast of the wheel that is propelled by his own efforts” (Galbraith, 135). Galbraith has established advertising and promotions as reflection of this direct link between production and demand. One major objective of advertising, as per Galbraith, is to create demand for a product even if that demand did not previously exist. The emphasis lies on enhancing advertising budget if the producers want to arouse consumer interest for their products. Thus, Galbraith concludes that demands which are created by strategic persuasion of advertisements cannot be very urgent (Galbraith, 136). Hayek confirms that consumers will not have demand for something if it never was produced like no one can demand for a non-existent thing. Hayek has agreed with one part of Galbraith’s argument, i.e. demands are urgent only when they are inherent. However, Hayek considers inherent demands as those which are associated with basic needs of humans like food and shelter. Needs for other products originate only when people see and observe other people using and enjoying them. Thus, it is the cultural environment that creates desire and so Hayek does not agree with Galbraith’s theory that demands are not urgent if they are not inherent as this theory invalidates the “whole cultural achievement of man” (Hayek, 1). Moreover, Hayek believes that hardly any demands are absolute and all demands are “acquired tastes” since demand for most goods “produce feelings or emotions which we would not know if it were not for our cultural inheritance” (Hayek, 1). People generally develop desire by observing their neighbors or looking at the market trend which means a man’s desires are shaped by his cultural environment. Although this supports Galbraith’s theory that producers create demand, Hayek states that a producer’s success in generating demand depends on the influential factors that act upon consumers like neighbor’s enjoyment level of the concerned goods. Thus, Hayek has completely disintegrated Galbraith’s claim that importance of demand decreases with the growing affluence of individuals. B1. Considering that any organization is a real entity and not fiction, Donaldson and Preston (1995) have claimed that managers are fiduciaries of the entire organization and not just of specific stakeholders like the owners of the company. According to the stakeholder model, every stakeholder of an organization perform their activities with the objective of gaining benefits and as such the beneficial relationship between the organization and all its stakeholders is mutual with no particular stakeholder group getting more or less priority than the other stakeholders (Donaldson & Preston). In spite of a manager’s responsibility towards an organization’s stakeholders, Friedman (1970) has argued that the social responsibility of any business is to earn profit. Since an organization is an artificial person, all such responsibilities belong to the individual stakeholders of the organization. However, according to Friedman any social responsibility conducted by an organization is motivated more by the principle goal of earning profit rather than mere pursuing of social goals. Friedman has illustrated this by saying that if an employer of a company provides amenities to a community then the company will gain goodwill and will be able to attract more customers. Moreover, the company will be able to recruit desirable employees which will increase efficiency of the company. Moreover, such social activities will also attract tax benefits. Friedman condemns this kind of so called social responsibility of organizations as “this is one way for a corporation to generate goodwill as a by-product of expenditures that are entirely justified in its own self-interest” (Friedman). In any business entity, it becomes the moral duty of the managers to look after the activities of the company with the motive to serve the best interests of those people who have vested their trust on them. The moral duties of the managers include concepts like loyalty and fairness. These concepts constrain the role of the managers as per the natural law required in any fiduciary-beneficiary relationship. Johnston (2005) has advocated the modern shareholder theory which provides a one-track objective to the manager which is that his job will be to look after business activities in the manner that will increase the value of the business in the long run. This will be beneficial for the shareholders as they are the sole claimants of business profits. The shareholder theory especially does not work in some contexts like in sweatshops. Critics of sweatshops base their arguments on Kant’s claim that business ethics involve treating humanity as end and not means. By this, he indicated that human beings deserve respect since they are “capable of rational, self-governing activity” (Arnold & Bowie, 240). Kant has based his theory on the fact that unlike machinery human beings are capable of performing moral activities and so they have dignity that demands respect. Therefore, based on stakeholder theory the rights of employees should be taken into consideration by the management. According to the UN, employees have the right to decent working conditions and also their full potential should be recognized and rewarded (Arnold & Bowie, 242). The notion of autonomy According to Immanuel Kant, humans deserve due dignity for their autonomous status which means humans are able to decide by their own free will regarding their opinions and choices in life. He has stated that human desires are influences by the external environment and therefore they are more a compromise than integral human nature. Hence, Kant that as rational beings human should achieve autonomy based on principles that are formed by logical reasoning by humans. Since it is human beings that create laws and principles in the society based on own logical inferences therefore their behavioral pattern is decided by those laws and principles, and thus humans act more from their self designed principles than mere biological inclinations. In this way humans act as free agents. Kant has stated as the autonomy formula “Act so that through your maxims you could be a legislator of universal laws” (Johnson). However, Kant has perceived human beings as constructor of universal laws than mere followers of the laws, and this is the basis of Kant’s theory of human dignity. He has argued that “rational will that is merely bound by universal laws could act accordingly from natural and non-moral motives, such as self-interest” (Johnson). Therefore, to become the representative of the universal laws, human beings must set aside their selfish motives. Kant mainly has two views regarding autonomy of human beings. First, he sees autonomy of human beings which is self-governance by universal law is the manner in which humans maintain freedom, and autonomy is based on human senses like the choices made by humans are not only influenced by external factors but also by their own inclinations. Second, Kant argues that autonomy is not just free will of humans but also how humans will exercise their free will to establish their freedom. He states that a person has free will if he is able to liberate himself from the dominance of others and therefore those who have sacrificed their own logical inferences to the thinking power of others have alienated their autonomy (Guyer, 71-72). Therefore, Kant has concluded that human beings can achieve autonomy if they can liberate themselves from the controlling power of others, and if they can do this by exercising their own free will. Harry G. Frankfurt has differentiated human beings from other living species like animals in the context of exercising free will. First, he has stated that desires and motives are not only part of human existence but also of other beings. However, it is only human beings who are able to form “second-order desires” and this distinguishes them from animals. While any animal like human beings can have desires and also act according to those desires, it is only human beings that have the ability to perform self-reflection which helps them to distinguish between ethical and unethical desires, and accordingly they can choose to follow the ethical desires. The same case happens with infants who are unable to perform self-reflection and hence cannot exercise free will (Frankfurt, 6-7). In such cases of infants or animals who are living beings but cannot exercise free will in many contexts give rise to situations where unequal status exists however within moral parameters. There are three conditions which must remain for unequal status with moral sense. First, there must be a minor being like an infant or a patient who must have a constant need of care or attention. Second, there must be a major being like the parent or doctor who must have the capability to satisfy the constant needs of the minor being. Finally, such relationship needs to be established. In such case, the major party will have the primary duty to look after the needs of the minor party and the latter will have corollary duty to submit himself to the power of the major party. For instance, there has to be a relation of intrinsic trust like patient must trust the doctor implicitly. In this case the corollary duty remains questionable since in some case like in the case of infants there may be lack of consent from the minor party to submit to the major party (Castro, 595). An individual’s identity, i.e. autonomy is a major part of his self-concept. Self-concept can be defined as an individual’s attempt to view himself as an object and accordingly bear thoughts and feelings that he seems appropriate for himself. Identity can be defined as the part of the self that others can become knowledgeable about. An identity construction is therefore a public process that includes announcement of identity by the one whose identity is concerned, and also placement of identity by others who acknowledge the concerned identity. An identity is created when there is a “coincidence of placements and announcements.” (Zhao et al, 1817) In the real world people interact mainly on face-to-face basis, and in such cases identity is established within limited boundaries. Since people are physically present during real encounters, it is not possible for them to create their identity which is polar different from their physical appearance, for instance a black person cannot claim to be of British origin. Moreover, in real encounters people tend to know each other’s social backgrounds thus preventing them from pretending to be someone that he or she is not. Under these real settings one can only manipulate his physical settings like furniture and decoration, or his personal front like language and appearance in order to create the desired image of himself in front of the other person. In cases where face-to-face communication takes place between strangers, people can fake their background and personality but even then such manipulations are constrained by their physical appearances. With the emergence of Internet era, there has been a change in this usual form of identity production. In social encounters people are not present in physical form which provides them the opportunity to interact with each other in text mode. In this method it becomes possible for individuals to hide their physical features. Thus, “the combination of disembodiment and anonymity creates a technologically mediated environment in which a new mode of identity production emerges.” (Zhao et al, 1817). References Arnold, Denis E. & Bowie, Norman G. “Sweatshop and Respect for Persons”, Business Ethics Quarterly, 13.2 (2003) 221-242 Castro, Susan V.H. “The Morality of Unequal Autonomy: Reviving Kant’s Concept of Status for Stakeholders”, Journal of Business Ethics, 121.4 (2014) 593-606 Donaldson, Thomas & Preston, Lee E. “The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications”, The Academy of Management Review, 20.1 (1995) 65-69 Frankfurt, Harry G. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”, The Journal of Philosophy, 68.1 (1971) 5-20 Friedman, Milton “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”, The New York Magazine, 1970 Guyer, Paul “Kant on the Theory and Practice of Autonomy”, Social Philosophy and Policy, 20.2 (2003) 70-98 Johnson, Robert “Kant’s Moral Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2014, from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#AutFor Johnston, Joseph F. “Natural Law and the Fiduciary Duties of Business Managers”, Journal of Markets & Morality, 8.1 (2005) 27-51 Zhao, Shanyang, Grasmuck, Sherri & Martin, Jason “Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships”, Computers in Human Behavior, 24.5 (2008) 1816-1836 Read More