Business Ethics
Overview:
Lecture 1: introduction
Lecture 2: stakeholder theory (chapter 2)
Lecture 3: moral decision-making (chapter 5)
Lecture 4: organizational justice (chapter 6)
Lecture 5: reward, incentive and compensation (chapter 7)
Lecture 6: leadership (chapter 8)
Lecture 7: whistleblowing (chapter 9)
Lecture 8: corporate social responsibility (chapter 11)
Lecture 9: corporate responsibility standards (chapter 12)
Lecture 10: sustainability (chapter 13)
Lecture 11: globalization (chapter 14)
Lecture 12: questions and summary
,Lecture 1 – introduction
What is ethics:
1. It studies good and bad
2. It is reflective and critical
3. It does not provide answers but is aporetic
What is morality:
4. Prevailing ideas about what is good and bad
Ethics criticizes morality
What is business ethics:
- It studies good and bad in organizations
- It is keen on improving the status quo in business and organizations
- Criticism: it does not question the status quo doesn’t ask questions about the
nature of capitalism or the principle of profit
- Not a serious ethics does not provide clear cut answers
Aporia: philosophical problems are deemed to be aporetic if they do not lend themselves to
easy solutions
Aporia = ‘no’, ‘passage’ or ‘opening’
Aporias cause doubt, puzzlement, confusion and perplexity undecidable
Aporias are situations in which one cannot make a decision
(p. 330)
Textbook crossings between:
- Business and ethics
- Business and philosophy
- Business ethics and continental philosophy
Idea of crossings:
- Implies a willingness to take a critical stance
- To cross positions that have remained unanswered
- To develop your own position or perspective on business problems
- Crossing ‘divides’
most important ‘divide’ between analytical and continental philosophy
Analytical vs continental philosophy as seen from the perspective of analytical philosophers:
Analytical Continental
Language analysis Poetry
Scientific Artistic, nonsensical
Disciplined Wild, unruly
Politically neutral Politically left
Methodological Chaotic
Believe in progress There is no single truth, no progress
Real philosophy Rhetoric
Optimistic Pessimistic
, Analytical vs continental philosophy as seen from the perspective of continental
philosophers:
Continental Analytical
Analysis of being Stuck in language games
Profound Shallow
Realistic Naïve
Politically engaged Neutral, but also petty
Realistic Docile followers of science
Critical about the endeavors of science Docile followers of liberalism
Philosophical Not serious
‘Continental’ is generally used in a negative sense
Book: business ethics is deeply influenced by analytical philosophy
Oxymoron = the way that you bring together an adjective and a noun that it creates some
type of tension
Business ethics is an oxymoron
Metaphysical philosophers do not offer us ‘propositions’ statements that describe the
world and that are as such either false or true.
They rather offer us something entirely different, something that might be an expression
of our attitude to life, something that comes closer to poetry than to exact logical thinking
Lecture 2 – stakeholders
Chapter 2
Ed Freeman Stakeholder
A stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by, the achievement of
a corporation’s purpose.”
Stakeholders include employees, customers, suppliers, stockholders, banks,
environmentalists, governments and other groups who can help or hurt the corporation.
Stakeholder as a key concept for mainstream business ethics and a theoretical
cornerstone for the development of CSR
Friedman vs. Freeman debate (p. 38-41)
Milton Friedman Ed Freeman
There is just one social responsibility of the We need a plural apperception of the
corporation: to increase its profits (as long relation between business and society
as it stays within the rules of the game
Stakeholder theory is dangerous (for it Isolating economic tasks from social tasks is
undermines democracy) intellectually fallacious (the separation
fallacy!) thinking that economy does not
belong to the social is systematically wrong
headed
It is the task of politicians, not of Stakeholders’ interests should therefore
entrepreneurs, to decide about the inform strategic management
Overview:
Lecture 1: introduction
Lecture 2: stakeholder theory (chapter 2)
Lecture 3: moral decision-making (chapter 5)
Lecture 4: organizational justice (chapter 6)
Lecture 5: reward, incentive and compensation (chapter 7)
Lecture 6: leadership (chapter 8)
Lecture 7: whistleblowing (chapter 9)
Lecture 8: corporate social responsibility (chapter 11)
Lecture 9: corporate responsibility standards (chapter 12)
Lecture 10: sustainability (chapter 13)
Lecture 11: globalization (chapter 14)
Lecture 12: questions and summary
,Lecture 1 – introduction
What is ethics:
1. It studies good and bad
2. It is reflective and critical
3. It does not provide answers but is aporetic
What is morality:
4. Prevailing ideas about what is good and bad
Ethics criticizes morality
What is business ethics:
- It studies good and bad in organizations
- It is keen on improving the status quo in business and organizations
- Criticism: it does not question the status quo doesn’t ask questions about the
nature of capitalism or the principle of profit
- Not a serious ethics does not provide clear cut answers
Aporia: philosophical problems are deemed to be aporetic if they do not lend themselves to
easy solutions
Aporia = ‘no’, ‘passage’ or ‘opening’
Aporias cause doubt, puzzlement, confusion and perplexity undecidable
Aporias are situations in which one cannot make a decision
(p. 330)
Textbook crossings between:
- Business and ethics
- Business and philosophy
- Business ethics and continental philosophy
Idea of crossings:
- Implies a willingness to take a critical stance
- To cross positions that have remained unanswered
- To develop your own position or perspective on business problems
- Crossing ‘divides’
most important ‘divide’ between analytical and continental philosophy
Analytical vs continental philosophy as seen from the perspective of analytical philosophers:
Analytical Continental
Language analysis Poetry
Scientific Artistic, nonsensical
Disciplined Wild, unruly
Politically neutral Politically left
Methodological Chaotic
Believe in progress There is no single truth, no progress
Real philosophy Rhetoric
Optimistic Pessimistic
, Analytical vs continental philosophy as seen from the perspective of continental
philosophers:
Continental Analytical
Analysis of being Stuck in language games
Profound Shallow
Realistic Naïve
Politically engaged Neutral, but also petty
Realistic Docile followers of science
Critical about the endeavors of science Docile followers of liberalism
Philosophical Not serious
‘Continental’ is generally used in a negative sense
Book: business ethics is deeply influenced by analytical philosophy
Oxymoron = the way that you bring together an adjective and a noun that it creates some
type of tension
Business ethics is an oxymoron
Metaphysical philosophers do not offer us ‘propositions’ statements that describe the
world and that are as such either false or true.
They rather offer us something entirely different, something that might be an expression
of our attitude to life, something that comes closer to poetry than to exact logical thinking
Lecture 2 – stakeholders
Chapter 2
Ed Freeman Stakeholder
A stakeholder is any group or individual who can affect, or is affected by, the achievement of
a corporation’s purpose.”
Stakeholders include employees, customers, suppliers, stockholders, banks,
environmentalists, governments and other groups who can help or hurt the corporation.
Stakeholder as a key concept for mainstream business ethics and a theoretical
cornerstone for the development of CSR
Friedman vs. Freeman debate (p. 38-41)
Milton Friedman Ed Freeman
There is just one social responsibility of the We need a plural apperception of the
corporation: to increase its profits (as long relation between business and society
as it stays within the rules of the game
Stakeholder theory is dangerous (for it Isolating economic tasks from social tasks is
undermines democracy) intellectually fallacious (the separation
fallacy!) thinking that economy does not
belong to the social is systematically wrong
headed
It is the task of politicians, not of Stakeholders’ interests should therefore
entrepreneurs, to decide about the inform strategic management
