Lecture notes – Ethics and the Future of
Business
MSc Business Administration – Feb start 2024
,WEEK 1
Session 1 Morals & Ethics
Morality, ethics, and ethical theory
• Morality is humans’ ability to distinguish between right and wrong
• Ethics is the systematic study of morality
• Ethical theories are principles and rules that determine right and wrong in different
situations (more of a framework)
• Today we focus on normative ethics (what should I do?), i.e. the study of how we ought to
behave
Ethics
An on-going discussion about morality with a very long history
Ethics typically examine right and wrong from the perspective of a human being (anthropocentric),
instead of, for instance, nature
Key questions include:
1. What kind of moral principles should guide our actions?
2. What kind of aims should we have?
Ethics is not just theorization of morals, but the aim is also to affect practice. Ethical
theories can give contradictory solutions to the same problem.
Business ethics is the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right
and wrong are addressed.
, Do we need ethics when we have the law?
In society, morality is the foundation of the law.
Law and ethics are partly overlapping -> people want to hear about the ethics behind the
decision-making as well
Nonetheless:
1. The law does not cover all ethical issues (e.g. cheating on your partner)
2. Not all legal issues are ethical (e.g. driving on the right side of the road)
3. Law and ethics can involve contradictions (e.g. Apartheid)
• The road from unethical to illegal is short and slippery
• Companies can operate in locations with lacking legal infrastructure
Four levels of analysis:
1. Global preferences
• The strongest preferences are observed for sparing humans over animals, sparing more
lives, and sparing young lives
• The four most spared characters are the baby, the little girl, the little boy, and the
pregnant woman
2. Individual variations
• Most notable effects are driven by gender and religiosity of respondents
• The variations are not essential for policymakers
3. Cultural clusters
• The preference to spare younger characters rather than older characters is much less
pronounced for countries in the Eastern cluster, and much higher for countries in the
Southern cluster. The same is true for the preference for sparing higher status characters.
• Countries in the Southern cluster show a much weaker preference for sparing
humans over pets, compared to the other two clusters.
• Only the (weak) preference for sparing pedestrians over passengers and the (moderate)
preference for sparing the lawful over the unlawful appear to be shared to the same
extent in all clusters.
• In the Southern cluster there is a strong preference for sparing women and the
strong preference for sparing fit characters
4. Country-level predictors
Which dimensions of the Moral Machine experience more agreement?
There is variance in agreement across different dimensions, but sparing humans instead of pets,
sparing more characters instead of fewer, and sparing the young instead of the old tend to receive
more agreement.
Business
MSc Business Administration – Feb start 2024
,WEEK 1
Session 1 Morals & Ethics
Morality, ethics, and ethical theory
• Morality is humans’ ability to distinguish between right and wrong
• Ethics is the systematic study of morality
• Ethical theories are principles and rules that determine right and wrong in different
situations (more of a framework)
• Today we focus on normative ethics (what should I do?), i.e. the study of how we ought to
behave
Ethics
An on-going discussion about morality with a very long history
Ethics typically examine right and wrong from the perspective of a human being (anthropocentric),
instead of, for instance, nature
Key questions include:
1. What kind of moral principles should guide our actions?
2. What kind of aims should we have?
Ethics is not just theorization of morals, but the aim is also to affect practice. Ethical
theories can give contradictory solutions to the same problem.
Business ethics is the study of business situations, activities, and decisions where issues of right
and wrong are addressed.
, Do we need ethics when we have the law?
In society, morality is the foundation of the law.
Law and ethics are partly overlapping -> people want to hear about the ethics behind the
decision-making as well
Nonetheless:
1. The law does not cover all ethical issues (e.g. cheating on your partner)
2. Not all legal issues are ethical (e.g. driving on the right side of the road)
3. Law and ethics can involve contradictions (e.g. Apartheid)
• The road from unethical to illegal is short and slippery
• Companies can operate in locations with lacking legal infrastructure
Four levels of analysis:
1. Global preferences
• The strongest preferences are observed for sparing humans over animals, sparing more
lives, and sparing young lives
• The four most spared characters are the baby, the little girl, the little boy, and the
pregnant woman
2. Individual variations
• Most notable effects are driven by gender and religiosity of respondents
• The variations are not essential for policymakers
3. Cultural clusters
• The preference to spare younger characters rather than older characters is much less
pronounced for countries in the Eastern cluster, and much higher for countries in the
Southern cluster. The same is true for the preference for sparing higher status characters.
• Countries in the Southern cluster show a much weaker preference for sparing
humans over pets, compared to the other two clusters.
• Only the (weak) preference for sparing pedestrians over passengers and the (moderate)
preference for sparing the lawful over the unlawful appear to be shared to the same
extent in all clusters.
• In the Southern cluster there is a strong preference for sparing women and the
strong preference for sparing fit characters
4. Country-level predictors
Which dimensions of the Moral Machine experience more agreement?
There is variance in agreement across different dimensions, but sparing humans instead of pets,
sparing more characters instead of fewer, and sparing the young instead of the old tend to receive
more agreement.
