ERS Week 2 Narrations - Notes PDF

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BUSS604 |Week 2 Narrated PPT slides Narration 1 The material we cover this week is really important in the context of this paper. We talk about the process by which you might arrive at an ethical judgment: how you might decide what is the best (or the right, or the proper thing to do) in a given situation. It’s important to remember that ethics is not some abstract field of academic study. It’s not just about trying to memorise what someone else thinks. All of us have a set of ethical values and standards. We all have our ideas about what is right and wrong. Think about how you would react if you found out that a friend had lied to you, or stolen something from you. Any time you notice yourself thinking “that’s not fair!” or “That’s not right!”, you are drawing on your convictions as to what is right and wrong: your sense of ethics. So, this narration introduces our topic of Ethical Decision-Making by asking “where do ethical standards come from?” and “How can we know what is right and wrong?” We all have a set of ethical values and standards that we carry with us all the time to determine what we think is right or wrong. We may not be consciously aware of them – they may just feel like common sense. Sometimes we might think of them as our “conscience”. For some of us, our ethical values derive from our religious beliefs, our culture, or they might be rules and norms that we have picked up from our friends and family. It is worthwhile to actually think about our ethical values and standards. From time to time we will disagree about what is right and wrong, and it’s helpful to understand why we think as we do, so that we can explain why we hold certain ethical positions, and so that we can understand where other people are coming from. If you read through the newspaper this year, you will find that people disagree about many matters of “right and wrong”. People have disagreed passionately about the laws around abortion, around marijuana use, or around allowing terminally ill people to decide to end their own lives. Understanding our own ethical commitments can help us to make sense of these debates and they can help us to work out what we think and where we stand. The disagreement that exists around matters of right and wrong tells us that ethics is not a question of following the correct procedure to arrive at the one right answer. But it is good to think critically and carefully about your own ethical standards. Many people in apartheid-era South Africa, or Nazi Germany, believed that it was ethically acceptable to discriminate against and persecute certain groups of people because of their ethnicity or skin colour. It doesn’t mean that they were right. Thinking deeply about your own ethical values can save you from going along with ethically questionable norms. In the assigned reading for Week 2, Manual Velasquez sets out some basic principles. Ethical reasoning, he says, must be Logical (you must be able to make it explicit); it must be based on accurate and comprehensive Factual Evidence, and it must be Consistent (you must be willing to apply the consequences of your reasoning to everyone). This leads him to a basic equation: FACTS + ETHICAL STANDARD = ETHICAL JUDGEMENT.

But exactly what sort of Ethical Standard can we rely on if we want to make ethical judgments? One useful way into thinking about your own ethical standards is to think of an example of something ethical (or unethical) that you have seen (or done) recently. Your example might be something you saw on the news. Or, better, it might be something that you saw (or did) in your normal life. Hit pause now and spend a couple of minutes or so thinking of an example and writing it down. Indicate whether you think the behaviour you’re describing is ethical or unethical. And then – and this is the point of the exercise – try to explain exactly WHY you consider this behaviour ethical or unethical. Don’t just say “Well it’s just wrong!” because that doesn’t answer anything. For most people, it’s easy to arrive at ethical judgments (this is right, this is wrong, etc.) but much harder to explain how we arrived at that judgment. Some ethical judgments rest on considerations of consequences (for people, for the environment, for communities). Other judgements are based on a belief in absolute rules of right and wrong. For some a belief in the interconnectedness of all thing ensures our ethics are focussed on relationships, and that our actions affect the community around us. Let’s look an example to explain these differences. This one came from a student who worked part time in a café. A group came in and ordered decaf coffees from the manager, but the café had run out of decaf coffee. The manager decided to serve regular coffee to the customers without telling them. This action was deemed to be unethical. But if we look at the question of why it is unethical to serve regular coffee to customers who deliberately ordered decaffeinated coffee, we can answer in three different ways. One. We could say that it is wrong because this action could lead to some pretty bad consequences. We don’t know, but it’s possible that caffeinated coffee would cause or aggravate some health concerns for the customers. If nothing else, it might make it harder for them to sleep that night. There was presumably some good reason that they all order decaf coffee. The manager wanted to get their money (if he had said the café had no decaf coffee the customers would probably have gone elsewhere) and he prioritised his pleasure (getting some income for the café) over the potential pain that regular coffee might cause for the customers. Following this logic, we might say that the right thing to do would be the thing that generates the best set of consequences for all concerned. It is not ethical to do what suits you when doing so created negative consequences for others. Or, Two. We might say that something more serious was going on. The manager’s action doesn’t become right if it turns out that the customers experience no negative consequences as a result of drinking caffeinated coffee. If it turns out that they had their best day ever because the caffeine gave them extra energy, these positive consequences wouldn’t make the action ethical. So maybe the reason we find the manager’s behaviour unethical is more to do with the way he treated the customers. Maybe we are reacting to the basic fact that he lied to them. He saw the customers simply in terms of their money and didn’t respect them enough to tell them the truth. Following this

logic, we could say that in our dealings with people, we should always treat people as valuable and important, and treat them with respect. We should treat them, essentially, in the way that we would wish to be treated. Another way to think about our dealings with others is to recognise the interconnection between all people and things. The manager is not just interacting with one single customer, but with all others that customer relates to. So not only should the manager respect that customer’s wish because they respect that particular customer, but also because they respect the bond between all people. So… the argument is that all of us carry within us a set of ethical standards and values. It’s worth thinking about what they are, so that we are able to explain and reflect upon our ethical commitments. In the following narration we build on this discussion to explain the three ethical standards that we use in this paper. © AUT April 2020

BUSS604 |Week 2 Narrated PPT slides Narration 2 In this narration we will explain the three ethical decision making standards that we ask students to apply to a business situation in the first assessment. In the reading for Week 2, Velasquez presents a formula for how you can arrive at an ethical judgment. He says that if you have accurate and comprehensive information about a situation, then you can apply an ethical standard to arrive at an ethical judgment about that situation. But that leaves the question of how we can decide on what ethical standard we should use: what coherent set of values and principles should we use to guide our decision? In this narration, we will explore three well-established ethical standards that can guide ethical decision-making. You’ll notice pretty quickly that these standards have similarities with the ways of making judgments that were discussed in the previous narration. Under ‘Content’ for Week 2 on Blackboard, we have provided some additional information to help you better understand these three ethical standards. And there are some examples of questionable business practices on the slides for you to practice applying these three ethical standards to a range of business situations. ETHICAL STANDARD 1: ACTIONS ARE JUDGED RIGHT OR WRONG ACCORDING TO THEIR CONSEQUENCES. Consequence-based ethics is actually very simple. It can be explained like this. In any situation where you need to make a decision, the right thing to do is the thing that results in the best balance of positive consequences over negative consequences. This approach to ethics is based on the underlying assumption that all human beings have equal moral worth. It’s not morally ok to create pleasure for one person when doing so causes pain for other people that outweighs that pleasure. From this perspective, there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong: we decide whether actions are right or wrong simply by calculating the consequences of those actions for everyone affected. We can take an example of two people at a party, where one friend (let call her Maia) hides the keys of another friend (Josh) who was drinking. Josh had been drinking but was still planning to drive home. Josh was angry and said it wasn’t Maia’s right for her to hide his keys, that it was like stealing. But for Maia, her action of hiding the keys was ethical as it promised to deliver a better set of consequences than the alternative of letting her friend drive while drunk. The negative consequences for Josh (being annoyed; having to find another way home) were easily outweighed by the potential pain (to Josh and others) caused by the possibility of a car accident. Hiding the keys was the action that promised the best set of consequences, compared to other alternative actions. Returning to the terms we used at the start, she felt that her action was ethical because it had the best chance of maximising good outcomes over bad outcomes. A couple of things to stress with consequence-based ethics.

1. We need to look at the consequences of the action for all affected parties. We can’t just say that our decision is good because it benefits one or two groups of people. We need to consider its consequences for everyone. 2. We need to look at consequences in the long term. There are many things (eating unhealthy food, for example) that seem to create pleasure in the short term, but that create more serious problems in the long term. 3. We need, very importantly, to consider all possible alternatives. We can’t just say that our proposed action is good because it has better consequences than the status quo. We also need to see if there are other alternatives available that could give an even better balance of positive over negative consequences. So, that’s an overview of how an ethics based on consequences works. You’ll have opportunities in to apply this ethical standard to an example of business practice listed later on the slides. Using consequences as the basis for your ethical standard isn’t always easy - the thing with consequences is that they’re in the future, so we don’t always know exactly how things will work out. But in most cases, if we approach the question honestly and intelligently, we can predict the likely consequences of most actions quite confidently. ETHICAL STANDARD 2: ACTIONS ARE JUDGED RIGHT OR WRONG BASED ON CATEGORICAL RULES For some people, however, basing our ethical judgments on consequences feels a bit weak. For instance, they might say that racial discrimination is always wrong. We don’t need to look at its consequences to say that its wrong. We shouldn’t weigh up the consequences for people who are positively and negatively affected by discrimination. Rather, we simply say that discrimination is wrong. We say that it is never right to treat people differently based on factors such as ethnicity, gender, orientation, religion etc, because we believe that all human beings have equal moral worth and dignity. People who agree that discrimination is “simply wrong” are using an ethical standard built on categorical moral rules. They argue that there are certain things that are always right, or always wrong, and that they can establish categorical rules of behaviour. In this case, the rule is: you should treat all people as equally important, and holding equal moral worth and equal dignity. The most famous example of this approach to ethics is summarised as the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or, phrased negatively, don’t treat others in a way that you wouldn’t want to be treated yourself. In the 1700s, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant tried to codify the golden rule and he explains it using two different formulations. The first formulation is called the principle of universal acceptability. Kant says that ‘an act is morally right if and only if we can will it to become a universal law of conduct’. What he’s saying is that, when you are proposing to act in a certain way, you need to ask “what rule would my action be following?” and then you need to ask “would I be happy for that rule to be followed by all people, at all times, even if I was on the receiving end?” Universal acceptability doesn’t mean that everyone agrees with something. Universal acceptability means: would things be acceptable if this rule were universally followed? For instance, imagine that I was 15 minutes late to teach a class one day, and I was worried that the

class was going to be angry with me. I have an idea: I’ll lie to the class and tell them that I was late because I came across an old lady who had fallen on the street, so I had to stop, call for an ambulance, and then wait for the ambulance to arrive. In deciding whether this action was ethically acceptable, Kant would have me ask: what rule is my action following? I guess the rule here is “it’s OK to lie if doing so can help me avoid an embarrassing situation.” Kant would then have me ask “would I be happy if this rule was followed by everyone, everywhere, at all times, including back towards myself?” The answer, clearly is no. I couldn’t rationally wish to live in a world where people lied whenever it suited them. I certainly don’t want to teach a class where everyone lies when it suits them. If lying is widely accepted, it would defeat the very point of communication. Society wouldn’t function if you never knew whether someone was telling the truth or not. So, this is the principle of universal acceptability: you should only act in a way where you would be happy for everyone, everywhere, at all times, to act in the same way. Kant goes on to express his ethical standard in one other way, which we can call the principle of shared humanity. He says that every single human being has equal moral worth. We are all equally important. Just as we want our human dignity to be respected by others, so we should respect the humanity and the dignity of every other human. He puts it like this: we should always treat other people as ends in themselves, never merely as a means to an end. The idea of ends and means is this. An “end” is whatever you really want – it is your objective, the thing that you value. A “means” is whatever you use to achieve this end. So, Kant is saying, because human beings are so special, you should always treat other human beings as ultimately valuable ends-in-themselves. You should never use another human being merely as a tool to get what you want. The word “merely” is important. All of us need other people in order to achieve the things we want to. Any boss, in a sense, “uses” her workers to achieve productivity and efficiency. Kant knows this. But he says that in these relationships, we still need to recognise that other people are not just a means-to-our-end. They remain ultimately valuable human beings. And so our relationships with other people must be guided by our recognition that these other have value in themselves. Bosses can have employees, and use them to get things done, but these workers should be treated as human beings that have their own desires and their own dignity that needs to be respected. A worker is never merely a means to the end of a company’s profit – they are also – and most importantly – an ultimately valuable human being. One thing worth noting: Because he’s so fixated on reason and rationality, Kant only gives moral worth to human beings. Animals don’t have any moral status in his framework. In an ethics based on consequences, however, animals do matter, because they can experience pleasure and pain. ETHICAL STANDARD 3: ACTIONS ARE JUDGED RIGHT OR WRONG BASED ON RELATIONAL VALUES The former two ethical standards very much shape our laws and business ethics in the western world. However, they don’t always resonate with all cultures and peoples. Some Indigenous cultures, including Māori, see ethical behaviour as actions based on relational values.

By relational values, we mean a way of thinking of ourselves as interrelated to other humans, plants, animals, the natural world, and to spirit. This gives a focus more on the community, than the individual players, as our actions affect all those around us. To act ethically, is to be a good member of your family, of society, of the environment. Additionally, in this ethical standard, the feeling in your gut about right or wrong, is as important (if not more so) than thinking rationally about what is right and wrong. So, we need to be aware of both our thoughts and our feelings. These relational values are passed down through stories, so ways of understanding how to be a good person, and how to act ethically may differ between families, depending on the stories that are passed down. In making an ethical decision, a Māori worldview will take into account the affect the action has on mauri. Mauri is the spiritual life force that connects all things. Mauri flows through all living things such as land, forests, waters, animals, and humans. To weaken mauri is to weaken life. So, something that affects the mauri between people, will affect personal mauri. If we take the previous two examples of ethics, we may arrive at the same conclusions, but for different reasons. In ethics as consequences we spoke about Maia hiding car keys so that Josh would not drive drunk, and that it could be argued that this was ethical due to greater positive benefits. Using a relational values framework, we could say that this action of hiding keys is ethical as allowing a friend to drive drunk could upset the balance of life. A car accident could damage the bonds between friends, the bond between the driver and family, the driver and the wider community, and ultimately the driver and their spirit. In ethics as rules, we spoke about whether it was ok to lie to students about the reason for being late? Using a relational values framework, we would ask if this lie was going to enhance or diminish the bond/mauri between the teacher and students? If found out, would the lie affect the wider AUT community and its reputation? And we would also weigh up that that would feel in your gut? One Indigenous decision-making framework that can be used to assess the ethical nature of an action is the Mauri Model. The Mauri Model, designed by Te Kipa Kepa Morgan assesses whether and action destroys, diminishes, is neutral, enhances, or restores mauri. The Mauri Model separately assesses the mauri of the ecosystem (environmental well-being); hapū or kinship group (cultural well-being); community (social well-being); and whānau or family unit (economic well-being). In this context, the cultural, environmental and social wellbeing are as important (if not more so) than the economic wellbeing. It also takes into account long-term effects of an action. To assess if something was ethical, you would decide whether it was enhancin...