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Four Ethical Theories

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A Business Leader’s Guide to Philosophy

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This chapter outlines four ethical theories which, each in different ways, are essential for uniting business stakeholders in appropriate relationships to deliver company goals. Aristotle’s virtue ethics is recommended for leaders because ethical leadership character has the most influence on business moral culture. Deontology is the philosophy of obedience to principles or rules and is the system most prevalent in business ethics. For utilitarians right decisions are determined by the consequences of their outcomes, especially if it promotes prosperity for the greater good. Feminist ethics puts more stock on relational feelings than traditional male derived ethics based on reason. The rightness or goodness of Wokism is also evaluated in this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The notion of ‘free will’ is contentious in philosophy. Some say we are culturally determined to act the way we do (determinism). Others reject this arguing we are radically free to do anything we want (indeterminism). Compatibilists, like myself, argue that while determinism has some validity, we are still responsible for our actions.

  2. 2.

    See Aristotle, The Ethics of Aristotle: The Nicomachean Ethics, Penguin Books, 1976, named after Aristotle’s son, Nichomachus, who collated his father’s lecture notes. Much later, through the influence of Augustine and Aquinas, Christianity monopolised virtue ethics but its influence today is dwindling in many Western countries.

  3. 3.

    See Wittgenstein (1997). Wittgenstein, a leading linguistic philosopher of the twentieth century, gave this lecture in 1929. Normative ethics is prescriptive about what we should do, like, for example: be charitable towards others. This chapter is largely a descriptive explanation of ethical decision-making, or a meta-ethical discussion. I say ‘largely’ because I specifically recommend virtue ethics which some might say is being prescriptive. I also suggest utilitarianism, deontology, feminist ethics and environmental ethics can supplement virtue ethics in ethical decision-making. However, I’m not prescribing moral rules by which you ought to run your business. I’m only describing the personal qualities and business culture necessary to promote moral decision-making taking deontological and utilitarian considerations into account.

  4. 4.

    See Niebuhr (1960, pp. 35–36, 48–49). Niebuhr’s book was originally published in 1932, eleven years after Freud’s theory of the horde describing group psychology. See Freud (1991, pp. 137, 50, 52).

  5. 5.

    Kant (1964, pp. 96–97).

  6. 6.

    Peters and Waterman, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies, pp. 78, 80, 56, 102.

  7. 7.

    Ibid, p. 51.

  8. 8.

    Ibid, pp. 75, 103.

  9. 9.

    Deal and Kennedy (1988, pp. 5, 15, 21).

  10. 10.

    Ibid, pp. 119, 148. Reference to banks is that of Deal and Kennedy. We saw March and Weick say the same thing about a predilection to abstraction in Part 2.

  11. 11.

    Dawson, An Integrated Approach to Development, Business and Environmental Ethics, p. 22.

  12. 12.

    Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, Ch. 10, p. 118.

  13. 13.

    Fukuyama (1995, pp. 150, 156, 351).

  14. 14.

    Ibid., pp. 309, 318, 336.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., pp. 305, 263.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., p. 252. [Parenthetical insertions] are mine.

  17. 17.

    Company compensation policy influences aberrant behaviour when it encourages employees to work for their own rewards instead of customer satisfaction, particularly in the finance sector.

  18. 18.

    Klein (1993).

  19. 19.

    See O’Neill, A Question of Trust, p. 50. O’Neill claims the current trend to business accountability distorts ‘the proper aim of professional practice…damaging professional pride and integrity.’

  20. 20.

    Koslowski (2001, p. 191).

  21. 21.

    Ibid., p. 204.

  22. 22.

    These employee reward schemes are based on the Scientific Management theory of HRM (Taylorism) that assumes employees will perform more productively to enhance their self-interest through financial rewards.

  23. 23.

    In the history of ideas, philosophers and theologians in the Western tradition credit Rome as the source of obedience to civil law; Athens as the home of wisdom for obvious reasons being the crucible of Western philosophy; and Jerusalem, the birthplace of Christianity, as the origin of love and forgiveness to break the cycle of revenge and mend our tendency for moral concupiscence.

  24. 24.

    See Plato Laws, Bk. V, segments 744–5, pp. 695–6.

  25. 25.

    See Immanuel Kant’s 1784 essay: “An Answer to the Question: What is the Enlightenment?” in What is Enlightenment? Translated and edited by James Schmidt (University of California Press, California, 1996), p. 58. The notion of ‘daring to know’ comes from Horace’s Epistles 1.20.40. Horace was a first century BCE Roman poet/philosopher.

  26. 26.

    Kant’s parents were devoted Pietists, an eighteenth century derivative of Lutheranism which emphasises a sense of individual obligation to duty as opposed to relying on external religious pressure and ritual. See Kemp (1979, p. 124).

  27. 27.

    Beauvoir (2010).

  28. 28.

    Greer (1970).

  29. 29.

    Like most male philosophers of the Enlightenment Nietzsche uses the male pronoun almost exclusively, but his theory of the ubermensch (German for ideal or superior man), which he predicted was destined to overcome his generation of the ‘bungled and botched’, exemplifies some of the more misogynistic strains in his writing. But to her credit, Greer overlooks Nietzsche’s misogyny in her distillation of his more insightful ideas; the reason she’s one of the most prominent philosophers of our time.

  30. 30.

    See Butler (2015).

  31. 31.

    This view came into prominence with the release of Edward Said’s famous book: Orientalism, 1979, (Vintage Books, New York). Said criticises depictions of the Orient through the lens of Occidental authors.

  32. 32.

    See Hartsock (1983). Association of Hartsock’s ideas with the postmodern critique of capitalism is obvious here.

  33. 33.

    Held (1998, p. 691). This statement obviously doesn’t preclude women creating things other than progeny. It’s meant to draw a distinction between men limited to the creation of things and women who have the power to create life; the act of insemination is a mere incidental factor in this narrative but obviously doesn’t mean men don’t have a role in ongoing nurturing after birth. Clearly they do.

  34. 34.

    In what follows I loosely paraphrase work by Held, ibid.; Noddings (1995) and Baier (1998).

  35. 35.

    Radical feminist Jennifer Nedelsky argues the traditional model of autonomy based on property should be based on child rearing—we achieve autonomy through our relationships with others. Quoted in Held’s essay: Ethics, p. 695.

  36. 36.

    Emotions are not unique to humans, other primates have them, as does your pet cat and many other animals, including some reptiles! See Bekoff (2010). For more information on emotional intelligence used in this paragraph see: Damasio (2004, p. 28), Dozier (1992, pp. 251–3), Churchland (1995) and Solomon (2003, p. 165).

  37. 37.

    Bateson (1972, p. 470).

  38. 38.

    Critical Legal Studies (CLS) is based on Marxist theory that the law is made by those who have the most to gain from it, thus making it intimately connected to ‘structural’ socio-political/economic institutions in society (e.g.: jurisprudence, policing, democracy, constitutions, the legislature, and the stock market) which mobilises CLS championing of the suppressed voices of subjugated minorities.

  39. 39.

    Both sides of politics claim the ‘end of history’ myth to rationalise their ideology. Marx thought it would come with global communism. Liberal conservatives are equally adamant that it happens with liberal democracy and the free market. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man and Georg Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 114, Sect. 188.

  40. 40.

    The hiring of openly gay teachers for religious schools is a contentious issue in this space. Teachers are hired for their skills in particular disciplines and not to preach their personal beliefs and worldviews that might be against the school’s values. There is no need or room for ‘cancellation’ either side of this debate. Inclusivity, the very essence of pluralism, is all about accepting and tolerating that people have many different opinions about how to live their lives. If a gay teacher openly preaches their values in contradiction to those of a religious school, against their contractual obligation, they should face the consequences.

  41. 41.

    The genetic claim to inherited trauma is currently under scientific investigation as an epigenetic phenomenon. If it ultimately is proven, then obviously it will apply to the whole human race and the above reductio ad absurdum still applies.

  42. 42.

    Triggering is an acknowledged contributor to mental illnesses of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts of low self-worth. As such it should be treated by mental health professionals.

  43. 43.

    Solomon (1976).

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    Lindsay Dawson

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Dawson, L. (2023). Four Ethical Theories. In: A Business Leader’s Guide to Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33042-1_14

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