CHAPTER ONE

Ethics and Business

Overview
Introduction
This chapter presents an introduction to the basic principles of ethics in general and shows how
these principles are relevant to businesses. It begins with a case study of Merck and Company,
discussing how they dealt with the problem of developing a drug that was potentially life-saving
but which presented them with little, if any, chance of earning a return on their investment.
The drug was Ivermectin, one of their best-selling animal drugs. The potential market for the
drug was those suffering from river blindness an agonizing disease afflicting about 18 million
impoverished individuals in Africa and Latin America. The disease is particularly horrendous:
worms as long as two feet curl up in nodules under an infected person's skin, slowly sending out
offspring that cause intense itching, lesions, blindness, and ultimately death (though many
sufferers actually commit suicide before the final stage of the disease).
The need for the drug was clear. However, the victims of river blindness are almost exclusively
poor. It seemed unlikely that Merck would ever recoup the estimated $100 million it would cost
to develop the human version of the drug. Moreover, if there proved to be adverse human side
effects, this might affect sales of the very profitable animal version that were $300 million of
Mercks $2 billion annual sales. Finally, Congress was getting ready to pass the Drug Regulation
Act, which would intensify competition in the drug industry by allowing competitors to more
quickly copy and market drugs originally developed by other companies.
Questions: Was Merck morally obligated to develop this drug?
Their managers felt, ultimately, that they were. They even went so far as to give the drug away
for free. This story seems to run counter to the assumption that, given the choice between profits
and ethics, companies will always choose the former. The choice, however, may not be as clearcut as this dichotomy suggests. Some have suggested that, in the long run, Merck will benefit
from this act of kindness just as they are currently benefiting from a similar situation in Japan.
Even so, most companies would probably not invest in an R & D project that promises no profit.
And some companies often engage in outright unethical behavior. Still, habitually engaging in
such behavior is not a good long-term business strategy, and it is the view of this book that,
though unethical behavior sometimes pays off, ethical behavior is better in the long run.

A more basic problem is the fact that the ethical choice is not always clear. Merck, as a for-profit
corporation, has responsibilities to its shareholders to make a profit. Companies that spend all
their funds on unprofitable ventures will find themselves out of business.
This book takes the view that ethical behavior is the best long-term business strategy for a
companya view that has become increasingly accepted during the last few years. This does not
mean that occasions never arise when doing what is ethical will prove costly to a company. Such
occasions are common in the life of a company, and we will see many examples in this book.
Nor does it mean that ethical behavior is always rewarded or that unethical behavior is always
punished. On the contrary, unethical behavior sometimes pays off, and the good guy sometimes
loses. To say that ethical behavior is the best long-range business strategy means merely that,
over the long run and for the most part, ethical behavior can give a company significant
competitive advantages over companies that are not ethical. The example of Merck and
Company suggests this view, and a bit of reflection over how we, as consumers and employees,
respond to companies that behave unethically supports it. Later we see what more can be said for
or against the view that ethical behavior is the best long-term business strategy for a company.
This text aims to clarify the ethical issues that managers of modern business organizations must
face. This does not mean that it is designed to give moral advice to people in business nor that it
is aimed at persuading people to act in certain moral ways. The main purpose of the text is to
provide a deeper knowledge of the nature of ethical principles and concepts and an
understanding of how these apply to the ethical problems encountered in business. This type of
knowledge and understanding should help managers more clearly see their way through the
ethical uncertainties that confront them in their business livesuncertainties such as those faced
by the managers of Merck.

1.1 Business Issues and Its Issues

According to the dictionary, the term ethics has a variety of different meanings. One of its
meanings is: "the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group. We sometimes use
the term personal ethics, for example, when referring to the rules by which an individual lives
his or her personal life. We use the term accounting ethics when referring to the code that guides
the professional conduct of accountants.
A secondand more importantmeaning of ethics, according to the dictionary, is: Ethics is "the
study of morality." Ethicists use the term ethics to refer primarily to the study of morality, just as
chemists use the term chemistry to refer to a study of the properties of chemical substances.
Although ethics deals with morality, it is not quite the same as morality. Ethics is a kind of
investigationand includes both the activity of investigating as well as the results of that
investigationwhereas morality is the subject matter that ethics investigates.
This chapter discusses the case of B.F. Goodrich to clarify these definitions. Kermit Vandivier
was presented with a moral quandary: he knew that Goodrich was producing brakes for the U.S.
government that were likely to fail, but was required by his superiors to report that the brake
passed the necessary tests. His choice was to write the false report and go against his ethical
principles, or be fired and suffer the economic consequences.
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He chose the former, even though his moral standards were in conflict with his actions. Such
standards include the norms we have about the kinds of actions we believe are right and wrong,
such as "always tell the truth." As Vandivier shows, we do not always live up to our standards.

There are other types of standards as well, such as standards of etiquette, law, and language.
Moral standards can be distinguished from non-moral standards using five characteristics:
1. Moral standards deal with matters that can seriously injure or benefit humans. For
example, most people in American society hold moral standards against theft, rape,
enslavement, murder, child abuse, assault, slander, fraud, lawbreaking, and so on.
2. Moral standards are not established or changed by authoritative bodies. The validity of
moral standards rests on the adequacy of the reasons that are taken to support and justify
them; so long as these reasons are adequate, the standards remain valid.
3. Moral standards, we feel, should be preferred to other values, including self-interest.
This does not mean, of course, that it is always wrong to act on self-interest; it only
means that it is wrong to choose self-interest over morality
4. Moral standards are based on impartial considerations. The fact that you will benefit
from a lie and that I will be harmed is irrelevant to whether lying is morally wrong.
5. Moral standards are associated with special emotions and a special vocabulary (guilt,
shame, remorse, etc.). The fact that you will benefit from a lie and that I will be harmed is
irrelevant to whether lying is morally wrong.
Ethics is the discipline that examines one's moral standards or the moral standards of a society. It
asks how these standards apply to our lives and whether these standards are reasonable or
unreasonablethat is, whether they are supported by good reasons or poor ones. Therefore, a
person starts to do ethics when he or she takes the moral standards absorbed from family, church,
and friends and asks: What do these standards imply for the situations in which I find myself? Do
these standards really make sense? What are the reasons for or against these standards? Why
should I continue to believe in them? What can be said in their favor and what can be said
against them? Are they really reasonable for me to hold? Are their implications in this or that
particular situation reasonable?
Taking Vandivier as an example, we might ask if writing the false report was really wrong given
his responsibilities to support his family. Moreover, the company, not Vandivier, would be held
responsible for any faulty brakes. Finally, even if he did not cooperate and was consequently
fired, the brakes would still be manufactured and installed. The consequences of writing the
report or not would be the same, except that if he chose not to participate he would be fired. It is
in considering such points that we begin to do ethics.
Ethics is the study of moral standardsthe process of examining the moral standards of a person
or society to determine whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable in order to apply
them to concrete situations and issues. The ultimate aim of ethics is to develop a body of moral
standards that we feel are reasonable to holdstandards that we have thought about carefully and
have decided are justified standards for us to accept and apply to the choices that fill our lives.
Ethics is not the only way to study morality. The social sciencessuch as anthropology,
sociology, and psychologyalso study morality, but do so in a way that is quite different from
the approach to morality that is characteristic of ethics. Although ethics is a normative study of
ethics, the social sciences engage in a descriptive study of ethics.

Other fields, such as the social sciences, also study ethics; but they do so descriptively, not
normatively. That is, they explain the world but without reaching conclusions about whether it
ought to be the way it is. Ethics itself, on the other hand, being normative, attempts to determine
whether or not standards are correct.
A normative study is an investigation that attempts to reach normative conclusionsthat is,
conclusions about what things are good or bad or about what actions are right or wrong. In short,
a normative study aims to discover what should be.
A descriptive study is one that does not try to reach any conclusions about what things are truly
good or bad or right or wrong. Instead, a descriptive study attempts to describe or explain the
world without reaching any conclusions about whether the world is as it should be.
Business ethics is a specialized study of right and wrong applied to business policies, institutions,
and behaviors. This is an important study since businesses are some of the most influential
institutions within modern society. Business organizations are the primary economic institutions
through which people in modern societies carry on the tasks of producing and distributing goods
and services. They provide the fundamental structures within which the members of society
combine their scarce resourcesland, labor, capital, and technologyinto usable goods, and
they provide the channels through which these goods are distributed in the form of consumer
products, employee salaries, investors' return, and government taxes. Today large corporate
organizations dominate our economies. In 2003, General Motors, the world's largest automobile
company, had revenues of $195.6 billion and employed more than 325,000 workers; Wal-Mart,
the world's largest retailer, had sales of $258.7 billion and 1,400,000 employees; General
Electric, the world's largest maker of electrical equipment, had sales of $134 billion and 305,000
employees; and IBM, the world's largest computer company, had revenues of $89 billion and
319,000 employees.'
Modern corporations are organizations that the law treats as immortal fictitious "persons" who
have the right to sue and be sued, own and sell property, and enter into contracts, all in their own
name. As an organization, the modern corporation consists of (a) stockholders who contribute
capital and who own the corporation but whose liability for the acts of the corporation is limited
to the money they contributed, (b) directors and officers who administer the corporation's assets
and who run the corporation through various levels of "middle managers," and (c) employees
who provide labor and who do the basic work related directly to the production of goods and
services. To cope with their complex coordination and control problems, the officers and
managers of large corporations adopt formal bureaucratic systems of rules that link together the
activities of the individual members of the organization so as to achieve certain outcomes or
objectives. So long as the individual follows these rules, the outcome can be achieved even if the
individual does not know what it is and does not care about it.
Though business ethics cover a variety of topics, there are three basic types of issues:
1. Systemic issuesquestions raised about the economic, political, legal, or other social
systems within which businesses operate. These include questions about the morality of
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capitalism or of the laws, regulations, industrial structures, and social practices within
which American businesses operate.
2. Corporate issuesquestions raised about a particular company. These include questions
about the morality of the activities, policies, practices, or organizational structure of an
individual company taken as a whole.
3. Individual issuesquestions about a particular individual within an organization and their
behaviors and decisions. These include questions about the morality of the decisions,
actions, or character of an individual.
Some theorists maintain that moral notions apply only to individuals, not to corporations
themselves. They say that it makes no sense to hold businesses "responsible" since businesses are
more like machines than people. Others counter that corporations do act like individuals, having
objectives and actions, which can be moral or immoral just as an individual's action might be.
In 2002, for example, the Justice Department charged the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen for
obstruction of justice. Arthur Andersen was caught shredding documents showing how they
helped Enron hide its debt through the use of several accounting tricks. Critics afterward claimed
that the Justice Department should have charged the individual employees of Arthur Andersen,
not the company, because "Companies don't commit crimes, people do."
Perhaps neither extreme view is correct. Corporate actions do depend on human individuals who
should be held accountable for their actions. However, they also have policies and culture that
direct individuals, and should therefore be held accountable for the effects of these corporate
artifacts.
Nonetheless, it makes perfectly good sense to say that a corporate organization has moral duties
and that it is morally responsible for its acts. However, organizations have moral duties and are
morally responsible in a secondary sense; a corporation has a moral duty to do something only if
some of its members have a moral duty to make sure it is done, and a corporation is morally
responsible for something only if some of its members are morally responsible for what
happened.
Virtually all of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations today are multinationals. Operating in
more than one country at once produces a new set of ethical dilemmas. Multinationals can escape
environmental regulations and labor laws by shifting to another country, for example. They can
shift raw materials, goods, and capital so that they escape taxes. In addition, because they have
new technologies and products that less developed countries do not, multinationals must decide
when a particular country is ready to assimilate these new things. They are also faced with the
different moral codes and laws of different countries. Even if a particular norm is not unethical,
they must still decide between competing standards in their many operations.
Ethical relativism is the theory that, because different societies have different ethical beliefs, there is
no rational way of determining whether an action is morally right or wrong other than by asking
whether the people of this or that society believe it to be right or wrong by asking whether people of
a particular society believe that it is. In fact, the multiplicity of moral codes demonstrates that there is
6

no one "right" answer to ethical questions. The best a company can do is follow the old adage,
"When in Rome, do as the Romans do." In other words, there are no absolute moral standards.

Critics of ethical relativism point out that it is illogical to assume that because there is more than
one answer to an ethical question that both answers are equally corrector even that either
answer is correct. They also maintain that there are more similarities than differences even
among what seem to be very divergent societies.
The late Philosopher James Rachels put the matter quite succinctly:
The fact that different societies have different moral codes proves nothing. There is also
disagreement from society to society about scientific matters: in some cultures it is believed
that the earth is flat, and evil spirits cause disease. We do not on that account conclude that
there is no truth in geography or in medicine. Instead, we conclude that in some cultures
people are better informed than in others. Similarly, disagreement in ethics might signal
nothing more than that some people are less enlightened than others. At the very least, the
fact of disagreement does not, by itself, entail that truth does not exist.
Why should we assume that, if ethical truth exists, everyone must know it?'
However, the most telling criticisms of the theory point out that it has incoherent consequences.
For example, it becomes impossible to criticize a practice of another society as long as members
of that society conform to their own standards. How could we maintain that Nazi Germany or
pre-Civil War Virginia were wrong if we were consistent relativists? There must be criteria other
than the society's own moral standards by which we can judge actions in any particular society.
Though we should not dismiss the moral beliefs of other cultures, we likewise should not
conclude that all systems of morality are equally acceptable.
Finally, new technologies developed in the closing decades of the 20th century and the opening
years of the 21st century are again transforming society and business and creating the potential
for new ethical problems. They bring with them questions of risks, which may be unpredictable
and/or irreversible. Who should decide whether the benefits of a particular technology are worth
the risks? How will victims of bad technology be compensated for their loss? How will risk be
distributed? How will privacy be maintained? How will property rights be protected?

1.2 Moral Developments and Moral Reasoning

This section investigates how we examine our own moral standards and apply them to concrete
situations and issues. It first looks at the process of moral development itself.
We sometimes assume that a person's values are formed during childhood and do not change. In
fact, a great deal of psychological research, as well as one's own personal experience,
demonstrates that as people mature, they change their values in very deep and profound ways.
Just as people's physical, emotional, and cognitive abilities develop as they age, so also their
ability to deal with moral issues develops as they move through their lives.

Lawrence Kohlberg identified six stages of moral development:

Level One: Pre-conventional Stages
1. Punishment and Obedience Orientation - At this stage, the physical consequences of an
act wholly determine the goodness or badness of that act. The child's reasons for doing
the right thing are to avoid punishment or defer to the superior physical power of
authorities. There is little awareness that others have needs similar to ones own.
2. Instrument and Relativity Orientation- At this stage, right actions become those that can
serve as instruments for satisfying the childs own needs or the needs of those for whom
the child cares.
At these first two stages, the child is able to respond to rules and social expectations and can
apply the labels good, bad, right, and wrong. These rules, however, are seen as something
externally imposed on the self. Right and wrong are interpreted in terms of the pleasant or
painful consequences of actions or in terms of the physical power of those who set the rules.
Level Two: Conventional Stages
Maintaining the expectations of one's own family, peer group, or nation is now seen as valuable
in its own right, regardless of the consequences.
1. Interpersonal Concordance Orientation - Good behavior at this early conventional stage is
living to the expectations of those for whom one feels loyalty, affection, and trust, such as
family and friends. Right action is conformity to what is generally expected in one's role
as a good son, daughter, brother, friend, and so on.
2. Law and Order Orientation - Right and wrong at this more mature conventional stage
now come to be determined by loyalty to one's own larger nation or surrounding society.
Laws are to be upheld except where they conflict with other fixed social duties.
Level Three: Post-conventional, Autonomous, or Principled Stages
1. Social Contract Orientation - At this first post-conventional stage, the person becomes
aware that people hold a variety of conflicting personal views and opinions and
emphasizes fair ways of reaching consensus by agreement, contract, and due process.
2. Universal Ethical Principles Orientation - At this final stage, right action comes to be
defined in terms of moral principles chosen because of their logical comprehensiveness,
universality, and consistency.
At these stages, the person no longer simply accepts the values and norms of the groups to which
he or she belongs. Instead, the person now tries to see situations from a point of view that
impartially takes everyone's interests into account. The person questions the laws and values that
society has adopted and redefines them in terms of self-chosen moral principles that can be
justified in rational terms.

Kohlberg's own research found that many people remain stuck at an early stage of moral
development. His structure implies that later stages are better than the earlier ones. Kohlberg has
been criticized for this implication, and for not offering any argument to back it up.
Carol Gilligan, a feminist psychologist, has also criticized Kohlberg's theory on the grounds that
it describes male and not female patterns of moral development. Gilligan claims that there is a
"female" approach to moral issues that Kohlberg ignores.
Both Gilligan and Kohlberg agree that there are stages of growth in moral development, moving
from a focus on the self through conventional stages and onto a mature stage where we critically
and reflectively examine the adequacy of our moral standards. Therefore, one of the central aims
of ethics is the stimulation of this moral development by discussing, analyzing, and criticizing
the moral reasoning that we and others do, finding one set of principles "better" when it has been
examined and found to have better and stronger reasons supporting it.
Moral reasoning itself has two essential components: an understanding of what reasonable moral
standards require, and evidence or information concerning whether a particular policy, person,
institution, or behavior has the features of these moral standards. People often fail to make their
moral standards explicit when they make a moral judgment, mainly because they assume them to
be obvious. This assumption is not always true, however; often we must retrace a person's moral
reasoning to deduce what their moral standards are. Of course, it is not always easy to separate
factual information from moral standards.
Moral reasoning refers to the reasoning process by which human behaviors, institutions, or
policies are judged to be in accordance with or in violation of moral standards. Moral reasoning
always involves two essential components: (a) an understanding of what reasonable moral
standards require, prohibit, value, or condemn; and (b) evidence or information that shows that a
particular person, policy, institution, or behavior has the kinds of features that these moral
standards require, prohibit, value, or condemn.
To evaluate the adequacy of moral reasoning, ethicists employ three main criteria:
1. Moral reasoning must be logical.
2. Factual evidence must be accurate, relevant, and complete.
3. Moral standards must be consistent.
Consistency refers not only to the fact that one's standards must be able to coexist with each
other, but also to the requirement that one must be willing to accept the consequences of
applying one's moral standards consistently to others in similar circumstances. The consistency
requirement is, in fact, the basis of an important critical method in ethics: the use of
counterexamples and hypothetical examples.

10

This consistency requirement can be phrased as follows:

If I judge that a certain person is morally justified (or unjustified) in doing A in circumstance
C, then I must accept that it is morally justified (or unjustified) for any other person:
(a) To perform any act relevantly similar to A
(b) In any circumstances relevantly similar to C.

1.3 Arguments For and Against Business Ethics

Some people object to the entire notion that ethical standards should be brought into business
organizations. They make three general objections.
First, they argue that the pursuit of profit in perfectly competitive free markets will, by itself,
ensure that the members of a society are served in the most socially beneficial ways. Of course,
the assumption that industrial markets are perfectly competitive is highly suspect. Even more,
there are several ways of increasing profits that will actually harm society. Producing what the
buying public wants may not be the same as producing what the entirety of society needs. The
argument is essentially making a normative judgment on the basis of some assumed but
unproved moral standards ("people should do whatever will benefit those who participate in
markets"). Thus, although the argument tries to show that ethics does not matter, it can do this
only by assuming an unproved moral standard that at least appears mistaken.
Second, they claim that employees, as "loyal agents," are obligated to serve their employers
single-mindedly, in whatever ways will advance the employer's self-interest.
As a loyal agent of his or her employer, the manager has a duty to serve his or her
employer as the employer would want to be served (if the employer had the agent's
expertise). An employer would want to be served in whatever ways will advance his
or her self-interests.
Therefore, as a loyal agent of his or her employer, the manager has a duty to serve
his or her employer in whatever ways will advance the employer's self-interests.
But this argument itself rests on an unproven moral standard that the employee has a duty to
serve his or her employer and there is no reason to assume that this standard is acceptable. An
agent's duties are defined by what is called the law of agency, (i.e., the law that specifies the
duties of persons [agents] who agree to act on behalf of another party and who are authorized by
the agreement so to act). Also, agreements to serve another do not automatically justify doing
wrong on another's behalf.
Third, they say that obeying the law is sufficient for businesses and that business ethics is,
essentially, nothing more than obeying the law. However, the law and morality do not always
coincide (again, slavery and Nazi Germany are relevant examples). Some laws have nothing to
do with morality because they do not involve serious matters. These include parking laws, dress
codes, and other laws covering similar matters. Other laws may even violate our moral standards
so that they are actually contrary to morality.
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Thus, none of the arguments for keeping ethics out of business seems forceful. In contrast, there
are fairly strong arguments for bringing ethics into business.
One argument points out that since ethics should govern all human activity, there is no reason to
exempt business activity from ethical scrutiny. Business is a cooperative activity whose very
existence requires ethical behavior. Another more developed argument points out that no
activity, business included, could be carried out in an ethical vacuum.
One interesting argument actually claims that ethical considerations are consistent with business
activities such as the pursuit of profit. Indeed, the argument claims that ethical companies are
more profitable than other companies. The data is mixed on this question, but even though it
cannot demonstrate that ethical behavior is always more profitable, it does clearly show that it is
not a drag on profits.
Perhaps the most fascinating argument for bringing ethics into business is the prisoner's
dilemma. A prisoners dilemma is a situation in which two parties are each faced with a choice
between two options: Either cooperate with the other party or do not cooperate. If both parties
cooperate, they will both gain some benefit. If both choose not to cooperate, neither gets the
benefit. If one cooperates while the other chooses not to cooperate, the one who cooperates
suffers a loss while the one who chooses not to cooperate gains a benefit. Though it may seem a
bit stilted, closer examination will reveal that we all face such dilemmas in our everyday lives.
The prisoner's dilemma demonstrates that cooperation is more advantageous than continuously
trying to take advantage of others at least when we will meet these others again.
This has significant implications for business. Though a business might get away with unethical
behavior much of the time, if retaliation is a real threat then such behavior will impose costs that
are greater than ethical behavior would have been in the first place. Even self-interested
organizations have a good reason to be ethical in their business dealings: it is in their own longterm best interests. In reality, of course, most people seem to be social and so are also motivated
by a concern for the welfare of others. To the extent that people are motivated by a concern for
others, they will probably behave ethically. Finally, we should note that there is also a good deal
of evidence that most people so value ethical behavior that they will punish those whom they
perceive to be behaving unethically and reward those who are perceived to be ethical.

1.4 Moral Responsibility and Blame

Moral responsibility is directed not only at judgments concerning right or wrong. Sometimes,
they are directed at determining whether a person or organization is morally responsible for
having done something wrong. People are not always responsible for their wrongful or injurious
acts: moral responsibility is incurred only when a person knowingly and freely acts in an
immoral way or fails to act in a moral way.

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Ignorance and inability to do otherwise are two conditions, called excusing condition, that
completely eliminate a person's moral responsibility for causing wrongful injury. Ignorance and
inability do not always excuse a person, however. When one deliberately keeps oneself ignorant
to escape responsibility, that ignorance does not excuse the wrongful injury. A person is morally
responsible for an injury or a wrong if:
1.

The person caused or helped cause it, or failed to prevent it when he could and should
have;
2.
The person did so knowing what he or she was doing;
3.
The person did so of his own free will.
Ignorance may concern the relevant facts or the relevant moral standards. Generally, ignorance of
the facts eliminates moral responsibility. This is because moral responsibility requires freedom,
which is impossible in the case of ignorance of the relevant facts. Inability eliminates
responsibility because a person cannot have a moral obligation to do something over which he or
she has no control. A person is NOT morally responsible for an injury or a wrong if:
1.

The person did not cause and could not prevent the injury or
wrong;

2.
The person did not know he was inflicting the injury or the wrong;
3. The person did not inflict the injury or the wrong of his own free will;
In addition to the excusing conditions, there are also three mitigating factors that diminish moral
responsibility. They are:
1.

Circumstances that leave a person uncertain (but not unsure) about what he or she is
doing;
2.
Circumstances that make it difficult (but not impossible) for the person to avoid doing it;
3.
Circumstances that minimize (but do not remove) a person's involvement in an act.
The extents to which these mitigating circumstances can diminish an agent's responsibility
depend on the seriousness of the injury. Generally, the more serious the injury, the less the
mitigating circumstances will diminish responsibility.

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CHAPTER TWO
Ethical Principles in Business

Overview
Introduction
In this chapter, we begin with a discussion of apartheid-era South Africa and Caltex, an
American oil company operating in South Africa during that time. A large number of Caltex
stockholders opposed the company's operations in South Africa, and introduced a series of
shareholder resolutions requiring Caltex to leave South Africa, which they saw as racist and
immoral. Caltex' s management did not agree. Rather than focusing on the financial assistance
they were giving the South African government, they pointed to the positive effects their
operations had on black workers.
South African leaders, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, were not convinced by Caltex's
arguments. He supported the shareholder resolutions, saying that comfort under an immoral
regime was not preferable to freedom, even at the cost of economic hardship.
The point of this example is to show how a real moral debate in business works. The arguments
on both sides appealed to moral considerations and four basic types of moral standards:
utilitarianism, rights, justice, and caring. The shareholders' argument referred to the unjust
policies of the apartheid government and the fact that these policies violated the civil rights of
black citizens. On the other side, Caltex's management made utilitarian arguments and arguments
about caring: it was in blacks' best interests to have Caltex jobs, and Caltex had a duty to take
care of these workers as best it could. In addition, both sides refer to the moral character of the
groups involved, basing these distinctions on what is called the ethic of virtue.
The following sections of this chapter explain each of these approaches, identifying their
strengths and weaknesses and showing how they can be used to clarify the moral issues we
confront in business.

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2.1 Utilitarianism: Weighing Social Costs and Benefits

Utilitarianism (or consequentialism) characterizes the moral approach taken by Caltex's
management. Another example, Ford and its infamous Pinto, demonstrates just how closely the
weighing of costs and benefits can be done.
Ford knew that the Pinto would explode when rear-ended at only 20 mph, but they also knew
that it would cost $137 million to fix the problem. Since they would only have to pay $49 million
in damages to injured victims and the families of those who died, they calculated that it was not
right to spend the money to fix the cars when society set such a low price on the lives and health
of the victims. The kind of analysis that Ford managers used in their cost-benefit study is a
version of what has been traditionally called utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is a general term for
any view that holds that actions and policies should be evaluated on the basis of the benefits and
costs they will impose on society. In any situation, the "right" action or policy is the one that will
produce the greatest net benefits or the lowest net costs (when all alternatives have only net
costs).
Many businesses rely on such utilitarian cost-benefit analyses, and maintain that the socially
responsible course to take is the utilitarian one with the lowest net costs.
Jeremy Bentham founded traditional utilitarianism. His version of the theory assumes that we
can measure and add the quantities of benefits produced by an action and subtract the measured
quantities of harm it will cause, allowing us to determine which action has the most benefits or
lowest total costs and is therefore moral. The utility Bentham had in mind was not the greatest
benefit for the person taking the action, but rather the greatest benefit for all involved. For
Bentham:
An action is right from an ethical point of view if and only if the sum total of
utilities produced by that act is greater than the sum total of utilities produced by
any other act the agent could have performed in its place.
Also, it is important to note that only one action can have the lowest net costs and greatest net
benefits.
To determine what the moral thing to do on any particular occasion might be, there are three
considerations to follow:
1. You must determine what alternative actions are available.
2. You must estimate the direct and indirect costs and benefits the action would produce for
all involved in the foreseeable future.
3. You must choose the alternative that produces the greatest sum total of utility.
Utilitarianism is attractive to many because it matches the views we tend to hold when
discussing governmental policies and public goods. Most people agree, for example, that when
the government is trying to determine on which public projects it should spend tax monies, the
proper course of action would be for it to adopt those projects that objective studies show will
15

provide the greatest benefits for the members of society at the least cost. It also fits in with the
intuitive criteria that many employ when discussing moral conduct. Utilitarianism can explain
why we hold certain types of activities, such as lying, to be immoral: it is so because of the
costly effects it has in the long run. However, traditional utilitarians would deny that an action of
a certain kind is always either right or wrong. Instead, each action would have to be weighed
given its particular circumstances. Utilitarian views have also been highly influential in
economics. A long line of economists, beginning in the 19th century, argued that economic
behavior could be explained by assuming that human beings always attempt to maximize their
utility and that the utilities of commodities can be measured by the prices people are willing to
pay for them.
Utilitarianism is also the basis of the techniques of economic costbenefit analysis. This type of
analysis is used to determine the desirability of investing in a project (such as a dam, factory, or
public park) by figuring whether its present and future economic benefits outweigh its present
and future economic costs. To calculate these costs and benefits, discounted monetary prices are
estimated for all the effects the project will have on the present and future environment and on
present and future populations. Finally, we can note that utilitarianism fits nicely with a value
that many people prize: efficiency. Efficiency can mean different things to different people, but
for many it means operating in such a way that one produces the most one can with the resources
at hand.
Though utilitarianism offers a superficially clear-cut method of calculating the morality of
actions, it relies upon accurate measurement, and this can be problematic. There are five major
problems with the utilitarian reliance on measurement:
1. Comparative measures of the values things have for different people cannot be madewe cannot get into each others' skins to measure the pleasure or pain caused.
2. Some benefits and costs are impossible to measure. How much is a human life worth,
for example?
3. The potential benefits and costs of an action cannot always be reliably predicted, so
they are also not adequately measurable.
4. It is unclear exactly what counts as a benefit or a cost. People see these things in
different ways.
5. Utilitarian measurement implies that all goods can be traded for equivalents of each
other. However, not everything has a monetary equivalent.
The critics of utilitarianism contend that these measurement problems undercut whatever claims
utilitarian theory makes towards providing an objective basis for determining normative issues.
These problems have become especially obvious in debates over the feasibility of corporate
social audits.
Utilitarians defend their approach against the objections raised by these problems by saying that
though ideally they would like accurate measurements of everything, they know that this is
largely impossible. Therefore, when measurements are difficult or impossible to obtain, shared or
common-sense judgments of comparative value are sufficient.
16

There are two widely used common-sense criteria. One relies on the distinction between
intrinsic goods and instrumental goods. Intrinsic goods are things that are desired for their own
sake, such as health and life. These goods always take precedence over instrumental goods,
which are things that are good because they help to bring about an intrinsic good. The other
common-sense criterion depends on the distinction between needs and wants. Goods that bring
about needs are more important than those that bring about wants. However, these methods are
intended to be used only when quantitative methods fail.
The most flexible method is to measure actions and goods in terms of their monetary equivalents.
If someone is willing to pay twice as much for one good than for another, we can assume that the
former is twice as valuable for that person. Many people are made uncomfortable by the notion
that health and life must be assigned a monetary value. Utilitarians point out that we do so every
day, however, by paying for some safety measures but not for those measures that are considered
more expensive.
The major difficulty with utilitarianism, according to some critics, is that it is unable to deal with
two kinds of moral issues: those relating to rights and those relating to justice. If people have
rights to life, health, and other basic needs, and if there is such a thing as justice that does not
depend on mere utility, then utilitarianism does not provide a complete picture of morality.
Utilitarianism can also go wrong, according to the critics, when it is applied to situations that
involve social justice. Utilitarianism looks only at how much utility is produced in a
society and fails to take into account how that utility is distributed among the members of
society.
Largely in response to these concerns, utilitarians have devised an alternative version, called rule
utilitarianism. In this version, instead of looking at individual acts to see whether they produce
more pleasure than the alternatives, one looks only at moral rules at actions of a particular type.
If actions of a kind tend to produce more pleasure or have lower costs, then they are the moral
types of actions. Just because an action produces more utility on one occasion does not show it is
right ethically.
Rule utilitarianism may not completely answer all of the objections raised by critics of
utilitarianism. A rule may generally produce more utility and still be unjust: consider rules that
would allow a large majority to take unfair advantage of a smaller minority.
The theory of the rule utilitarian, then, has two parts, which we can summarize in the following
two principles:

17

1.

An action is right from an ethical point of view if and only if the action would be
required by those moral rules that are correct.

2.

A moral rule is correct if and only if the sum total of utilities produced if everyone
were to follow that rule is greater than the sum total utilities produced if everyone were to
follow some alternative rule.

Thus, according to the rule-utilitarian, the fact that a certain action would maximize utility on
one particular occasion does not show that it is right from an ethical point of view.
Thus, the two major limits to utilitarianism difficulties of measurement and the inability to deal
with rights and justice remain, though the extent to which they limit utilitarian morality is not
clear.

18

2.2 Rights and Duties

The discussion of rights and duties begins with a discussion of Walt Disney and its dealings with
Chinese companies. On March 3, 2004, executives of Walt Disney, the world's second largest
media conglomerate, were confronted with a group of stockholders concerned about the
company's human rights record in China. Walt Disney markets merchandise based on its
characters and films, including toys, apparel, watches, consumer electronics and accessories.
Much of this merchandise is manufactured in China in factories that contract with Disney to
produce the merchandise according to Disney's specifications. The Congressional-Executive
Commission on China, a group established by the U.S. Congress in 2001, reported in 2003,
however, "China's poor record of protecting the internationally recognized rights of its workers
has not changed significantly in the past year. Chinese workers cannot form or join independent
trade unions, and workers who seek redress for wrongs committed by their employers often face
harassment and criminal charges. Moreover, child labor continues to be a problem in some
sectors of the economy, and forced labor by prisoners is common." In its March 2003 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. State Department said China's economy also made
massive use of prison or forced labor.
In general, a right is a person's entitlement to something; one has a right to something when one
is entitled to act a certain way or to have others act in a certain way towards oneself. An
entitlement is called a legal right. Entitlements can come from laws or moral standards; the
latter are called moral rights or human rights. They specify, in general, that all humans are
permitted to do something or are entitled to have something done for them.
In our ordinary discourse, we use the term right to cover a variety of situations in which
individuals are enabled to make such choices in very different ways. First, we sometimes use the
term right to indicate the mere absence of prohibitions against pursuing some interest or activity.
Second, we sometimes use the term right to indicate that a person is authorized or empowered to
do something either to secure the interests of others or to secure one's interests. Third, the term
right is sometimes used to indicate the existence of prohibitions or requirements on others that
enable the individual to pursue certain interests or activities
The most important rights are those that impose requirements or prohibitions on others, enabling
people to choose whether or not to do something. Moral rights have three important features
defining them:
1. Moral rights are closely correlated with duties.
2. Moral rights provide individuals with autonomy and equality in the free pursuit of their
interests.
3. Moral rights provide a basis for justifying one's actions and invoking the aid of others.
4. Moral judgments made on the basis of rights differ substantially from those based on
utility.
First, they are based on the individual, whereas utilitarianism is based on society as a whole.
Second, rights limit the validity of preferring numbers and social benefits to the individual. On
19

the other hand, although rights generally override utilitarian standards, they do not always do so.
In times of war, for example, civil rights are commonly restricted for the public good.
Besides negative rights, which are defined entirely in terms of the duties others have not to
interfere with you, there are also positive rights. Positive rights imply that others have a duty not
only to refrain from interference, but also to provide you with what you need to pursue your
interests. Privacy is an example of a negative right; the rights to food, life, and health care are
positive. In general, more liberal theorists hold that society should guarantee positive as well as
negative rights; conservatives wish to limit government to enforcing negative rights. Positive
rights were not emphasized until the 20th century. Negative rights were often employed in the
17th and 18th centuries by writers of manifestos (such as the Declaration of Independence and
the Bill of Rights), who were anxious to protect individuals against the encroachments of
monarchical governments. Positive rights became important in the 20th century when society
increasingly took it on itself to provide its members with the necessities of life that they were
unable to provide for themselves.
There are other rights as well. Those most closely connected to business activity are contractual
rights, sometimes called special rights and duties or special obligations. These rights attach
only to specific individuals, and the duties they give rise to attach only to specific individuals. In
addition, they arise out of specific transactions between parties and depend upon a pre-existing
public system of rules. Without the institution of contracts, modern businesses could not exist.
There are four ethical rules governing contracts:
1. Both parties to a contract must have full knowledge of the nature of the agreement.
2. Neither party must intentionally misrepresent the facts.
3. Neither party must be forced to enter the contract.
4. The contract must not bind the parties to an immoral act.
Generally, a contract that violates one or more of these conditions is considered void.
One of the most powerful groundings for moral rights (and therefore the ethical rules governing
contracts) comes from Immanuel Kant. His principle, called the categorical imperative, requires
that everyone be treated as a free and equal person. It states, "I ought never to act except in such
a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law." A maxim, according to
Kant, is the reason a person has for doing what he plans to do. Therefore, an action is morally
right if the person's reason for doing it is a reason he would be willing to have every person in a
similar situation act upon. For Kant:
An action is morally right for a person in a certain situation if, and only if, the person's
reason for carrying out the action is a reason that he or she would be willing to have
every person act on, in any similar situation.
The categorical imperative incorporates two criteria for determining moral right and wrong:
universalizability and reversibility. Universalizability means the person's reasons for acting
must be reasons that everyone could act on at least in principle. Reversibility means the person's
reasons for acting must be reasons that he or she would be willing to have all others use, even as
20

a basis of how they treat him or her. That is, one's reasons for acting must be reasons that
everyone could act upon in principle, and the person's reasons must be such that he would be
willing to have all others use them as well. Unlike utilitarianism, which focuses on
consequences, Kantian theory focuses on interior motivations.
The second formulation Kant gives of the categorical imperative is this: "Act in such a way that
you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never
simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end." Or never treat people only as means,
but always also as ends. What Kant means by "treating humanity as an end" is that everyone
should treat each human being as a being whose existence as a free rational person should be
promoted. For Kant, this means two things: (a) respect each person's freedom by treating people
only as they have freely consented to be treated beforehand, and (b) develop each person's
capacity to freely choose for him or herself the aims he or she will pursue. Kant's second version
of the categorical imperative can be expressed in the following principle:
An action is morally right for a person if, and only if, in performing the action, the
person does not use others merely as a means for advancing his or her own interests,
but also both respects and develops their capacity to choose freely for themselves.
This version of the categorical imperative implies that human beings have an equal dignity that
sets them apart from things such as tools or machines and that is incompatible with their being
manipulated, deceived, or otherwise unwillingly exploited to satisfy the self-interests of another.
However, even if the categorical imperative explains why people have moral rights, it cannot by
itself tell us what particular moral rights humans have. And when rights come into conflict, it
cannot tell us which right should take precedence. Still, there seem to be three basic rights that
can be defended on Kantian grounds:
1. Humans have a clear interest in being provided with the work, food, clothing,
housing, and medical care they need to live.
2. Humans have a clear interest in being free from injury and in being free to live and
think as they choose.
3. Humans have a clear interest in preserving the institution of contracts.
Despite the attractiveness of Kant's theory, critics have argued that, like utilitarianism, it has its
limitations and inadequacies. A first problem that critics have traditionally pointed out is that
Kant's theory is not precise enough to always be useful. Second, some critics claim that although
we might be able to agree on the kinds of interests that have the status of moral rights, there is
substantial disagreement concerning what the limits of each of these rights are and concerning
how each of these rights should be balanced against other conflicting rights. A third group of
criticisms that have been made of Kant's theory is that there are counterexamples that show the
theory sometimes goes wrong. Most counterexamples to Kant's theory focus on the criteria of
universalizability and reversibility.

21

A very different view of rights is based on the work of libertarian philosophers such as Robert
Nozick. They claim that freedom from constraint is necessarily good, and that all constraints
imposed on one by others are necessary evils, except when they prevent even greater human
constraints. The only basic right we all possess is the negative right to be free from the coercion
of other human beings.
Libertarians may pass too quickly over the fact that the freedom of one person necessarily
imposes constraints on other persons, if only that others must be constrained from interfering
with that person. If I have the right to unionize, for example, I constrain the rights of my
employer to treat me as he sees fit. Though libertarians tend to use Kant to support their views,
there is no consensus on whether or not this is actually possible. There is also no good reason to
assume that only negative rights exist.

2.3 Justice and Fairness

The dispute over "brown lung" disease caused by cotton dust illustrates how references to justice
and fairness permeate such concerns. Justice and fairness are essentially comparative. They are
concerned with the comparative treatment given to the members of a group when benefits and
burdens are distributed, when rules and laws are administered, when members of a group
cooperate or compete with each other, and when people are punished for the wrongs they have
done or compensated for the wrongs they have suffered. Justice generally refers to matters that
are more serious than fairness, though some philosophers maintain that fairness is more
fundamental. In general, we think that considerations of justice are more important than
utilitarian concerns: greater benefits for some do not justify injustices to others. However,
standards of justice to not generally override individual moral rights. This is probably because
justice is, to some extent, based on individual moral rights.
There are three categories of issues involving justice:
1. Distributive justice is concerned with the fair distribution of society's benefits and
burdens.
2. Retributive justice refers to the just imposition of penalties and punishments
3. Compensatory justice is concerned with compensating people for what they lose
when harmed by others.
Questions of distributive justice arise when there is a scarcity of benefits or a plethora of
burdens; not enough food or health care, for example, or too much unpleasant work. When
resources are scarce, we must develop principles to allocate them fairly. The fundamental
principle involved is that equals should be treated equally (and unequals treated unequally).
However, it is not clear in just what respects people must be equal. The fundamental principle of
distributive justice may be expressed as follows:
Individuals who are similar in all respects relevant to the kind of treatment in
question should be given similar benefits and burdens, even if they are dissimilar in
other irrelevant respects; and individuals who are dissimilar in a relevant respect ought
to be treated dissimilarly, in proportion to their dissimilarity.
22

Egalitarians hold that there are no relevant differences among people that can justify unequal
treatment. According to the egalitarian, all benefits and burdens should be distributed according
to the following formula:
Every person should be given exactly equal shares of a society's or a group's benefits
and burdens.
Though equality is an attractive social ideal for many, egalitarianism has been strongly criticized.
Some critics claim that need, ability, and effort are all relevant differences among people, and
that it would be unjust to ignore these differences.
Some egalitarians have tried to strengthen their position by distinguishing two different kinds of
equality: political equality and economic equality. Political equality refers to an equal
participation in, and treatment by, the means of controlling and directing the political system.
This includes equal rights to participate in the legislative process, equal civil liberties, and equal
rights to due process. Economic equality refers to equality of income and wealth and equality of
opportunity. The criticisms leveled against equality, according to some egalitarians, only apply to
economic equality and not to political equality.
Capitalists argue that a society's benefits should be distributed in proportion to what each
individual contributes to society. According to this capitalist view of justice, when people engage
in economic exchanges with each other, what a person gets out of the exchange should be at least
equal in value to what he or she contributed. Justice requires, then, that the benefits a person
receives should be proportional to the value of his or her contribution. Quite simply:
Benefits should be distributed according to the value of the contribution the individual
makes to a society, a task, a group, or an exchange.
The main question raised by the contributive principle of distributive justice is how the "value of
the contribution" of each individual is to be measured. One long-lived tradition has held that
contributions should be measured in terms of work effort. The more effort people put forth in
their work, the greater the share of benefits to which they are entitled. The harder one works, the
more one deserves. A second important tradition has held that contributions should be measured
in terms of productivity. The better the quality of a person's contributed product, the more he or
she should receive.
Socialists address this concern by stating that the benefits of a society should be distributed
according to need, and that people should contribute according to their abilities. Critics of
socialism contend that workers in this system would have no incentive to work and that the
principle would obliterate individual freedom.
The libertarian view of justice is markedly different, of course. Libertarians consider it wrong to
tax someone to provide benefits to someone else. No way of distributing goods can be just or
unjust apart from an individual's free choice. Robert Nozick, a leading libertarian, suggests this
principle as the basic principle of distributive justice:
23

From each according to what he chooses to do, to each according to what he makes
for himself (perhaps with the contracted aid of others) and what others choose to do
for him and choose to give him of what they've been given previously (under this
maxim) and haven't yet expended or transferred.
If I choose to help another, that is fine, but I should not be forced to do so. Critics of this view
point out that freedom from coercion is a value, but not necessarily the most important value, and
libertarians seem unable to prove outright that it is more important to be free than, say, to be fed.
If each person's life is valuable, it seems as if everyone should be cared for to some extent. A
second related criticism of libertarianism claims that the libertarian principle of distributive
justice will generate unjust treatment of the disadvantaged. Under the libertarian principle, a
person's share of goods will depend wholly on what the person can produce through his or her
own efforts or what others choose to give the person out of charity.
John Rawls' theory of justice as fairness is an attempt to bring many of these disparate ideas
together in a comprehensive way. According to his theory, the distribution of benefits and
burdens in a society is just if:
1. Each person has an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with
equal liberties for all (the principle of equal liberty); and
2. Social and economic inequalities are arranged so that they are both:
a) To the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle), and
b) Attached to offices and positions open fairly and equally to all (the principle of
equal opportunity).
Rawls tells us that Principle 1 is supposed to take priority over Principle 2 should the two of them
ever come into conflict, and within Principle 2, Part b is supposed to take priority over Part a.
Principle 1 is called the principle of equal liberty. Essentially, it says that each citizen's
liberties must be protected from invasion by others and must be equal to those of others. These
basic liberties include the right to vote, freedom of speech and conscience and the other civil
liberties, freedom to hold personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest. Part of Principle
2 is called the difference principle. It assumes that a productive society will incorporate
inequalities, but it then asserts that steps must be taken to improve the position of the most needy
members of society, such as the sick and the disabled, unless such improvements would so
burden society that they make everyone, including the needy, worse off than before. Part b of
Principle 2 is called the principle of fair equality of opportunity. It says that everyone should
be given an equal opportunity to qualify for the more privileged positions in society's
institutions.
Therefore, according to Rawls, a principle is moral if it would be acceptable to a group of
rational, self-interested persons who know they will live under it themselves. This incorporates
the Kantian principles of reversibility and universalizability, and treats people as ends and not as
means. Some critics of Rawls point out, however, that just because a group of people would be
willing to live under a principle does not mean that it is morally justified.
24

Two final types of justice are retributive and compensatory justice, both of which deal with how
best to deal with wrongdoers. Retributive justice concerns blaming or punishing those who do
wrong; compensatory justice concerns restoring to a harmed person what he lost when someone
else wronged him. Traditionally, theorists have held that a person has a moral obligation to
compensate an injured party only if three conditions pertain:
1. The action that inflicted the injury was wrong or negligent.
2. The action was the real cause of the injury.
3. The person did the action voluntarily.
The most controversial forms of compensation undoubtedly are the preferential treatment
programs that attempt to remedy past injustices against groups.

2.4 The Ethics of Care

As the Malden Mills fire and rebuilding shows, there are perspectives on ethics that are not
explainable from the point of view of utilitarianism, rights, or Kantian philosophy. The owner
had no duty to rebuild (or to pay his workers when they were not working) from any of these
perspectives; still, he maintained that he had a responsibility to his workers and to his
community. Rather than being impartial (which all of these theories maintain is crucial), this
owner treated his community and workers partially.
This is central to the point of view known as the ethics of care, an approach to ethics that many
feminist ethicists have recently advanced. According to this method, we have an obligation to
exercise special care toward the people with whom we have valuable, close relationships.
Compassion, concern, love, friendship, and kindness are all sentiments or virtues that normally
manifest this dimension of morality. Thus, an ethic of care emphasizes two moral demands:
1. We each exist in a web of relationships and should preserve and nurture those concrete
and valuable relationships we have with specific persons.
2. We each should exercise special care for those with whom we are concretely related by
attending to their particular needs, values, desires, and concrete well-being as seen from
their own personal perspective, and by responding positively to these needs, values,
desires, and concrete well-being, particularly of those who are vulnerable and dependent
on our care.
An ethic of care, therefore, can be seen as encompassing the kinds of obligations that a so-called
communitarian ethic advocates. A communitarian ethic is an ethic that sees concrete
communities and communal relationships as having a fundamental value that should be
preserved and maintained.
The demands of caring are sometimes in conflict with the demands of justice, though, and no
fixed rule exists to resolve these conflicts. Critics point out that the ethics of care can easily
degenerate into unjust favoritism. Though the ethics of care can also lead to burnout, the
advantage of the theory is that it is a corrective to the other approaches that are impartial and
universal.
25

2.5 Integrating Utility, Rights, Justice, and Caring

So far, the chapter has outlined four main kinds of basic moral considerations:
1. Utilitarian standards - must be used when we do not have the resources to attain
everyone's objectives, so we are forced to consider the net social benefits and social costs
consequent on the actions (or policies or institutions) by which we can attain these
objectives.
2. Standards that specify how individuals must be treated - must be employed when our
actions and policies will substantially affect the welfare and freedom of specifiable
individuals. Moral reasoning of this type forces consideration of whether the behavior
respects the basic rights of the individuals involved and whether the behavior is
consistent with one's agreements and special duties.
3. Standards of justice - indicate how benefits and burdens should be distributed among
the members of a group. These sorts of standards must be employed when evaluating
actions whose distributive effects differ in important ways.
4. Standards of caring - indicate the kind of care that is owed to those with whom we have
special concrete relationships. Standards of caring are essential when moral questions
arise that involve persons embedded in a web of relationships, particularly persons with
whom one has close relationships, especially those of dependency.
One simple strategy for ensuring that all four kinds of considerations are incorporated into one's
moral reasoning is to inquire systematically into the utility, rights, justice, and caring involved in
a given moral judgment, as in Fig. 2.1. One might, for example, ask a series of questions about
an action that one is considering: (a) Does the action, as far as possible, maximize social benefits
and minimize social injuries? (b) Is the action consistent with the moral rights of those whom it
will affect? (c) Will the action lead to a just distribution of benefits and burdens? (d) Does the
action exhibit appropriate care for the well-being of those who are closely related to or
dependent on oneself? Unfortunately, there is not yet any comprehensive moral theory to show
when one of these considerations should take precedence.

2.6 An Alternative to Moral Principles: Virtue Ethics

Many ethicists criticize the entire notion that actions are the subject of ethics. The central issue
(as Ivan Boesky's case demonstrates) is the kind of person an agent ought to be and what the
character of humans ought to be. This does not mean that the conclusion of this type of ethics
(called virtue ethics) will be much different, however. Rather, the virtues provide a perspective
that covers the same ground as the four approaches, just from a different perspective.
A moral virtue is an acquired disposition that is a valuable part of a morally good person,
exhibited in the person's habitual behavior. It is praiseworthy, in part, because it is an
achievement whose development requires effort. The most basic issue, from the perspective of
virtue ethics, is the question: What are the traits of character that make a person a morally good
human being? Which traits of character are moral virtues? According to Aristotle, moral virtues
enable humans to act in accordance with their specific purpose (which he held to be reasoning).
26

Other philosophers, such as Aquinas, have come up with different lists of virtues. The American
philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has claimed that a virtue is any human disposition that is praised
because it enables a person to achieve the good at which human "practices" aim. Pincoffs
suggests that virtues include all those dispositions to act, feel, and think in certain ways that we
use as the basis for choosing between persons or between potential future selves. In general, the
virtues seem to be dispositions that enable people to deal with human life. However, it also
seems that what counts as a moral virtue will depend on one's beliefs and the situations one
faces.
Virtue theory says that the aim of the moral life is to develop the dispositions that we call
virtues, and to exercise them as well. The key action guiding implication of virtue theory, then,
can be summed up in the claim that:
An action is morally right if, in carrying out the action, the agent exercises, exhibits,
or develops a morally virtuous character, and it is morally wrong to the extent that by
carrying out the action the agent exercises, exhibits, or develops a morally vicious
character.
The wrongfulness of an action can be determined by examining the character the action tends to
produce (or the character that tends to produce the action). It also provides a useful criterion for
evaluating our social institutions and practices.
An ethic of virtue, then, is not a fifth kind of moral principle that should take its place alongside
the principles of utilitarianism, rights, justice, and caring. Instead, an ethics of virtue fills out and
adds to utilitarianism, rights, justice, and caring by looking not at the actions people are required
to perform, but at the character they are required to have.

2.7 Morality in International Contexts

Though the principles discussed in the chapter so far are clear enough, how they are to be applied
in foreign countries is more complex. Petty bribery, which is considered unethical in the U.S., is
standard practice in Mexico; nepotism and sexism occur as a matter of course in some Arabic
business environments. Should multinationals follow the laws of the less developed countries in
which they operate? Should they try to introduce their own standards? How do they treat their
own employees doing the same job in two very different countries? Do they pay them the same
wage?
The following four questions can help clarify what a multinational corporation ought to do in the
face of these difficulties:
1. What does the action really mean in the local culture's context?
2. Does the action produce consequences that are ethically acceptable from the point of
view of at least one of the four ethical theories?
3. Does the local government truly represent the will of all its people?
4. If the morally questionable action is a common local practice, is it possible to conduct
business there without engaging in it?
27

CHAPTER THREE
The Market and Business

Overview
Introduction
This chapter examines the ethical aspects of the market system itselfhow it is justified, and
what the strengths and weaknesses of the system are from the point of view of ethics. It begins
by discussing the economic conditions in the U.S. at the close of the 20th century, when
proponents of industrial policy were urging the government to help declining industries and their
workers to adjust to new economic conditions. Others urged caution, advising the government to
"avoid the pitfalls of protectionism." This dichotomy illustrates the difference between two
opposite ideologies, those who believe in the "free market" and those who advocate a "planned"
economy.
These two ideologies take different positions on some very basic issues: What is human nature
really like? What is the purpose of social institutions? How does society function? What values
should it try to protect?
In general, two important ideological camps, the individualistic and communitarian viewpoints,
characterize modern societies. Individualistic societies promote a limited government whose
primary purpose is to protect property, contract rights, and open markets. Communitarian
societies, in contrast, define the needs of the community first and then define the rights and
duties of community membership to ensure that those needs are met.
These two camps face the problem of coordinating the economic activities of their members in
two distinct ways. Communitarian systems use a command system, in which a single authority
decides what to produce, who will produce it, and who will get it. Free market systems are
characteristic of individualistic societies. Incorporating ideas from thinkers like John Locke and
Adam Smith, they allow individual firms to make their own decisions about what to produce and
how to do so.
Free market systems have two main components: a private property system and a voluntary
exchange system. Pure free market systems would have absolutely no constraints on what one
can own and what one can do with it. Since such systems would allow things like slavery and
prostitution, however, there are no pure market systems.

28

3.1 Free Markets and Rights: John Locke

John Locke (1632-1704), an English political philosopher, is generally credited with developing
the idea that human beings have a "natural right" to liberty and a "natural right" to private
property. Locke argued that if there were no governments, human beings would find themselves
in a state of nature. In this state of nature, each man would be the political equal of all others and
would be perfectly free of any constraints other than the law of naturethat is, the moral
principles that God gave to humanity and that each man can discover by the use of his own Godgiven reason. As he puts it, in a state of nature, all men would be in:
A state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and
persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave,
or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the
power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another... without
subordination or subjection [to another].... But... the state of nature has a law of
nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason, which is that law, teaches all
mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought
to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
Thus, according to Locke, the law of nature teaches us that we have a natural right to liberty. But
because the state of nature is so dangerous, says Locke, individuals organize themselves into a
political body to protect their lives and property. The power of government is limited, however,
extending only far enough to protect these very basic rights.
Locke's views on property rights have been very influential in America. The Fifth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution even quotes Locke directly. In this view, government does not grant or
create property rights. Rather, nature does, and government must therefore respect and protect
these rights. Locke's view that labor creates property rights has also been influential in the U.S.
Although Locke never explicitly used his theory of natural rights to argue for free markets,
several 20th-century authors have employed his theory for this purpose.19 Friedrich A. Hayek,
Murray Rothbard, Gottfried Dietze, Eric Mack, and many others have claimed that each person
has the right to liberty and property that Locke credited to every human being and consequently,
government must leave individuals free to exchange their labor and their property as they
voluntarily choose. Only a free private enterprise exchange economy, in which government stays
out of the market and in which government protects the property rights of private individuals,
allows for such voluntary exchanges. The existence of the Lockean rights to liberty and
property, then, implies that societies should incorporate private property institutions and free
markets.
It is also important to note that Locke's views on the right to private property have had a
significant influence on American institutions of property even in today's computer society. First,
and most important, throughout most of its early history, American law has held to the theory
that individuals have an almost absolute right to do whatever they want with their property and
that government has no right to interfere with or confiscate an individual's private property even
for the good of society. Second, underlying many American laws regarding property and
29

ownership is Locke's view that when a person expends his or her labor and effort to create or
improve a thing, he or she acquires property rights over that thing.

30

Locke's critics focus on four weaknesses in his argument:

The assumption that individuals have natural rights: This assumption is unproven and assumes
that the rights to liberty and property should take precedence over all other rights. If humans do
not have the overriding rights to liberty and property, then the fact that free markets would
preserve the rights does not mean a great deal.
The conflict between natural (negative) rights and positive rights: Why should negative rights
such as liberty take precedence over positive rights? Critics argue, in fact, that we have no reason
to believe that the rights to liberty and property are overriding.
The conflict between natural rights and justice: Free markets create unjust inequalities, and
people who have no property or who are unable to work will not be able to live. As a result,
without government intervention, the gap between the richest and poorest will widen until large
disparities of wealth emerge. Unless government intervenes to adjust the distribution of property
that results from free markets, large groups of citizens will remain at a subsistence level while
others grow ever wealthier.
Individualistic assumptions and their conflicts with the ethics of caring: Locke assumes that
people are individuals first, independent of their communities. But humans are born dependent
on others, and without caring relationships, no human could survive. The degree of liberty a
person has depends on what the person can do. The less a person can do, the less he is free to do.
But a person's abilities depend on what he learns from those who care for him as well as on what
others care to help him to do or allow him to do.

3.2 Free Markets and Utility: Adam Smith

Modifying Locke's views on free markets, Adam Smith's arguments rest on utilitarian arguments
that unregulated markets and private property will produce greater benefits than any other
system. According to Smith, when private individuals are left free to seek their own interests in
free markets, they will inevitably be led to further the public welfare by an "invisible hand:"
By directing [his] industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest
value, [the individual] intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other
cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end that was no part of his intention. By
pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectively than
when he really intends to promote it. Free markets, according to Smith, ensure that
buyers will purchase what they need at the lowest prices they can find, and business
will correspondingly attempt to satisfy these needs at the lowest prices they can offer.
Competition forces sellers to drop their prices as low as they can and to conserve
resources while producing what consumers actually want.
Supply and demand, according to this view, will help allocate resources efficiently. When the
supply of a certain commodity is not enough to meet the demand, buyers bid the price of the
commodity upward until it rises above what Smith called the natural price (i.e., the price that
just covers the costs of producing the commodity, including the going rate of profit obtainable in
31

other markets). Producers of that commodity then reap profits higher than those available to
producers of other commodities. The higher profits induce producers of those other products to
switch their resources into the production of the more profitable commodity. As a result, the
shortage of that commodity disappears and its price sinks back to its natural level. Conversely,
when the supply of a commodity is greater than the quantity demanded, its price falls, inducing
its producers to switch their resources into the production of other, more profitable commodities.
The fluctuating prices of commodities in a system of competitive markets then forces producers
to allocate their resources to those industries where they are most in demand and to withdraw
resources from industries where there is a relative oversupply of commodities. The market, in
short, allocates resources so as to most efficiently meet consumer demand, thereby promoting
social utility. The best thing for government to do is nothing; the market, on its own, will
advance the public welfare, giving people what they want for the lowest possible cost. It is
important to note that, although Adam Smith did not discuss the notion of private property at
great length, it is a key assumption of his views. Before individuals can come together in markets
to sell things to each other, they must have some agreement about what each individual "owns"
and what each individual has the right to "sell" to others. Unless a society has a system of private
property that allocates its resources to individuals, that society cannot have a free market system.
Smith's utilitarian argument is most commonly criticized for making what some call unrealistic
arguments. First, Smith assumes that no one seller can control the price of a good. Though this
may have been true at one time, today many industries are monopolized to some extent. Second,
Smith assumes that the manufacturer will pay for all the resources used to produce a product, but
when a manufacturer uses water and pollutes it without cleaning it, for example, someone else
must pay to do so. Third, Smith assumes that humans are motivated only by a natural, selfinterested desire for profit. This, say his critics, is clearly false. Many humans are concerned for
others and act to help others, constraining their own self-interest. Market systems, say Smith's
critics, make humans selfish and make us think that the profit motive is natural.
One especially influential critic of Smith was John Maynard Keynes. Keynes argued that
government intervention was necessary because there is a mismatch between aggregate supply
and demand, which inevitably leads to a contraction of supply. Government, according to
Keynes, can influence the propensity to save, which lowers aggregate demand and creates
unemployment. Government can prevent excess savings through its influence on interest rates,
and it can influence interest rates by regulating the money supply. The higher the supply of
money, the lower the rate at which it is lent. Second, government can directly affect the amount
of money households have available to them by raising or lowering taxes. Third, government
spending can close any gap between aggregate demand and aggregate supply by taking up the
slack in demand from households and businesses. Keynes' arguments became less convincing
after the stagflation of the 1970s, though. It has been replaced by a post-Keynesian school of
thought, which argues for even more governmental intervention in the market.
Social Darwinists had a different take on the utilitarian justification for free markets. They
argued that economic competition produced human progress. If governments were to interfere in
this process, they would also unintentionally be impeding human progress. Weak firms must be
weeded out by competition, they claim. The basic problem underlying the views of the social
Darwinist, however, is the fundamental normative assumption that survival of the fittest means
32

survival of the best. That is, whatever results from the workings of nature is necessarily good.
The fallacy, which modern authors call the naturalistic fallacy, implies, of course, that whatever
happens naturally is always for the best.

3.3 Free Trade and Utility: David Ricardo

Adam Smith's major work, the Wealth of Nations, in fact, was primarily aimed at showing the
benefits of free trade. There he wrote:
It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home
what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not make his own
shoes but buys them from the shoemaker... What is prudence in the conduct of every
family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply
us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them
with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we
have some advantage.
Adam Smith's point here is simple. Like individuals, countries differ in their ability to produce
goods. One country can produce a good more cheaply than another and it is then said to have an
"absolute advantage" in producing that good. These cost differences may be based on
differences in labor costs and skills, climate, technology, equipment, land, or natural resources.
Suppose that because of these differences, our nation can make one product for less than a
foreign nation can, and suppose the foreign nation can make some other product for less than we
can. Then clearly it would be best for both nations to specialize in making the product each has
an "absolute advantage" in producing, and to trade it for what the other country has an "absolute
advantage" in producing. It was Ricardo's genius to realize that both countries could benefit from
specialization and trade even though one can make everything more cheaply than the other.
Specialization increases the total output of goods countries produce, and through trade all
countries can share in this added bounty.
Ricardo's ingenious argument has been hailed as the single "most important" and "most
meaningful" economic discovery ever made. Some have said it is the most "surprising" and
"counterintuitive" concept in economics. It is, without a doubt, the most important concept in
international trade theory today and is at the heart of the most significant economic arguments
people propose today when they argue in favor of globalization. Ricardo makes a number of
simplifying assumptions that clearly do not hold in the real world, such as that there are only two
countries making only two products with only a fixed number of workers. But these are merely
simplifying assumptions Ricardo made to get his point across more easily and Ricardo's
conclusion could still be proved without these assumptions.
There are other assumptions, however, that are not so easy to get around. First, Ricardo assumes
that the resources used to produce goods (labor, equipment, factories, etc.) do not move from one
country to another. Yet today multinational companies can, and easily do, move their productive
capital from one country to another. Second, Ricardo assumes that each country's production
33

costs are constant and do not decline as countries expand their production or as they acquire new
technology.
Third, Ricardo assumes that workers can easily and unreservedly move from one industry to
another. Yet when a company closes down because it cannot compete with imports from another
country that has a comparative advantage in those goods, the company's workers are laid off,
suffer heavy costs, need retraining, and often cannot find comparable jobs.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Ricardo ignores international rule setters. International
trade inevitably leads to disagreements and conflicts, and so countries must agree to abide by
some set of rules and rule-setters.

3.4 Marx and Justice: Criticizing Markets and Trade

Karl Marx offers the most critical view of modern private property and free market institutions.
Marx claims that free-market capitalism necessarily produces extremes of inequality. Since
capitalist systems offer only two sources of incomeowning the means of production and selling
one's laborworkers cannot produce anything without the owner of the productive forces. But
owners do not pay the full value of the workers' labor; they pay workers what they need to
subsist, keeping the rest for themselves and gradually becoming wealthier as a result.
The result for workers is increased alienation. Rather than realizing their human nature and
satisfying their real human needs, they are separated from what is actually theirs in four ways:
1. In capitalist societies, the products that the worker produces by his or her labor are
taken away by the capitalist employer and used for purposes that are antagonistic to the
worker's own interests.
2. Capitalism forces people into work that they find dissatisfying, unfulfilling, and that is
controlled by someone else.
3. Capitalism alienates people from themselves by instilling in them false views of what
their real human needs and desires are.
4. Capitalist societies alienate human beings from each other by separating them into
antagonistic and unequal social classes that break down community and caring
relationships namely the Bourgeois and proletariat.
Though utilitarians claim that people would be lazy without private property, Marx counters that
by this argument the bourgeois owners should long ago have wasted away: they do not work,
while those who do cannot acquire any real property.
The real purpose of government, according to Marx, is to protect the interests of the ruling class
of owners. The forces of production of a societyits substructurealways have, historically, given
society its class and its superstructure (or government and popular ideologies). Those in power
promote the ideologies that justify their position of privilege. This view of history is called
historical materialism.

34

The result of unrestrained free markets and private ownership will be a series of disasters for
working people, leaving them immiserated. Three general tendencies will combine to bring this
about:
First, modern capitalist systems will exhibit an increasing concentration of industrial
power in relatively few hands. As self-interested private owners struggle to increase the
assets they control, little businesses will gradually be taken over by larger firms that will
keep expanding in size.
Second, capitalist societies will experience repeated cycles of economic downturns or
crises. Because workers are organized into mass assembly lines, the firm of each owner
can produce large amounts of surplus.
Third, Marx argues, the position of the worker in capitalist societies will gradually
worsen.' This gradual decline will result from the self-interested desire of capitalist
owners to increase their assets at the expense of their workers.
Though many of Marx's predictions have turned out to be correct, the immiseration of workers
has not occurred. Still, many claim that unemployment, inflation, alienation, and false desires do
characterize much of modern capitalist society.
Defenders of free markets counter that Marx makes an unprovable assumption that just means
equality or distribution according to need. They claim that justice really means distribution
according to contribution (which requires free markets). Even if private ownership causes
inequalities, defenders of free markets still maintain that the benefits of the system are greater
and more important than the incidental inequalities.
Whether the free market argument is persuasive depends ultimately on the importance one gives
to the rights to liberty and property as opposed to a just distribution of income and wealth.

3.5 Conclusion: The Mixed Economy

Which side, free markets or government intervention, will ultimately win? Neither the collapse
of the Soviet Union nor the rise of strong collectivist governments like Japan proves one side or
the other. Indeed, it may be the case that neither side by itself presents a complete picture of how
the modern economy ought to run.
Many economists now advocate retaining the market system and private property while
modifying their workings through government regulation, a mixed economy that attempts to
remedy the deficiencies of a free market system. Such policies can be very successful, as they
have been in Sweden, Japan, Norway, and many other countries. Even though the U.S. is more
successful economically than most other countries, studies do indicate that mixed economies
have some advantages.
New technologies are also firing the debate over the balance between Lockean private property
and collective ownership. Modern technologies, especially computers, create new forms of
35

intellectual property that, unlike other types of property, can be copied and consumed by a
number of different individuals at once. Locke's view, and the view of some utilitarians, is that
the mental labor that creates the property creates the property rights over that product. Socialists
point out that artists, writers, and thinkers have always created works without any financial
incentive.
Should new scientific and engineering discoveries be protected as private property? Should these
things be shared by the society that made their discovery possible? The debate continues. Still,
though critics of Marx contend that Marxism is dead, many socialist trends and theories remain
influential. Locke and Smith's form of capitalism has the upper hand, but many nevertheless
maintain that a mixed economy comes closest to combining the utilitarian benefits of the market
economy with a proper respect for human rights, caring and justice.

36

CHAPTER FOUR
Ethics in the Marketplace

Overview
Introduction
This chapter moves the consideration of business ethics from the morality of the economic
system in general to the morality of specific practices within our system. Given that our system
generally follows the free market model, which is based on competition, it may be surprising to
note that there are so many examples of anticompetitive practices in the U.S. today. A report on
New York Stock Exchange companies showed that 10 percent of the companies had been
involved in antitrust suits during the previous five years. A survey of major corporate executives
indicated that 60 percent of those sampled believed that many businesses engage in price fixing.6
One study found that in a period of two years alone over sixty major firms were prosecuted by
federal agencies for anticompetitive practices. Actually, it is more than surprising. The morality
of the free market system itself is based on the idea of competition creating a just allocation of
resources and maximizing the utility of society's members. To the extent that the market is not
competitive, it loses its moral justification for existing.
To understand the nature of market competition and the ethics of anticompetitive practices, it is
helpful to examine three abstract models of the different degrees of competition in a market:
perfect competition, pure monopoly, and oligopoly.

4.1 Perfect Competition

In a perfectly free competitive market, no buyer or seller has the power to significantly affect the
price of a good. Seven features characterize such markets:
1.

There are numerous buyers and sellers, none of whom has a substantial share of the
market.
2.
All buyers and sellers can freely and immediately enter or leave the market.
3.
Every buyer and seller has full and perfect knowledge of what every other buyer and
seller is doing, including knowledge of the prices, quantities, and quality of all goods
being bought and sold.
4.
The goods being sold in the market are so similar to each other that no one cares from
whom each buys or sells.
37

5.

The costs and benefits of producing or using the goods being exchanged are borne
entirely by those buying or selling the goods and not by any other external parties.
6.
All buyers and sellers are utility maximizers: Each tries to get as much as possible for
as little as possible.
7.
No external parties (such as the government) regulate the price, quantity, or quality of
any of the goods being bought and sold in the market.

38

In addition, free competitive markets require an enforceable private property system and a
system of contracts and production.
In such markets, prices rise when supply falls, inducing greater production. Thus, prices and
quantities move towards the equilibrium point, where the amount produced exactly equals the
amount buyers want to purchase. Thus, perfectly free markets satisfy three of the moral criteria:
justice, utility, and rights. That is, perfectly competitive free markets achieve a certain kind of
justice, they satisfy a certain version of utilitarianism, and they respect certain kinds of moral
rights.
The movement towards the equilibrium point can be explained in terms of two principles: the
principle of diminishing marginal utility and the principle of increasing marginal costs.
When a buyer purchases a good, each additional item of a certain type is less satisfying than the
earlier ones. Therefore, the more goods a consumer purchases, the less he will be willing to pay
for them. The more one buys, the less one is willing to pay. On the supply side, the more units of
a good a producer makes, the higher the average costs of making each unit. This is because a
producer will use the most productive resources to make his or her first few goods. After this
point, the producer must turn to less productive resources, which means that his costs will rise.
Since sellers and buyers meet in the same market, their respective supply and demand curves will
meet and cross at the equilibrium point.
Though some agricultural markets approximate the model of the perfectly competitive free
market, in actuality there is no real example of such a market. Markets that do not have all seven
features of the perfectly free market are, therefore, correspondingly less moral.
In the capitalist sense of the word, justice is when the benefits and burdens of society are
distributed such that a person receives the value of the contribution he or she makes to an
enterprise. Perfectly competitive free markets embody this sense of justice, since the equilibrium
point is the only point at which both the buyer and seller receive the just price for a product.
Such markets also maximize the utility of buyers and sellers by leading them to use and
distribute goods with maximum efficiency.
Efficiency comes about in perfectly competitive free markets in three main ways:
1. They motivate firms to invest resources in industries with a high consumer demand and
move away from industries where demand is low.
2. They encourage firms to minimize the resources they consume to produce a commodity
and to use the most efficient technologies.
3. They distribute commodities among buyers so that they receive the most satisfying
commodities they can purchase, given what is available to them and the amount they
have to spend.
First, in a perfectly competitive market, buyers and sellers are free (by definition) to enter or
leave the market as they choose. That is, individuals are neither forced into nor prevented from
engaging in a certain business, provided they have the expertise and the financial resources
required.
39

Second, in the perfectly competitive free market, all exchanges are fully voluntary. That is,
participants are not forced to buy or sell anything other than what they freely and knowingly
consent to buy or sell. Third, no single seller or buyer will so dominate the market that he is able
to force the others to accept his terms or go without. In this market, industrial power is
decentralized among numerous firms so that prices and quantities are not dependent on the whim
of one or a few businesses. In short, perfectly competitive free markets embody the negative
right of freedom from coercion. Thus, they are perfectly moral in three important respects: (a)
Each continuously establishes a capitalist form of justice; (b) together they maximize utility in
the form of market efficiency; and (c) each respects certain important negative rights of buyers
and sellers. No single seller or buyer can dominate the market and force others to accept his
terms. Thus, freedom of opportunity, consent, and freedom from coercion are all preserved under
this system.
Several cautions are in order, however, when interpreting these moral features of perfectly
competitive free markets. First, perfectly competitive free markets do not establish other forms
of justice. Because they do not respond to the needs of those outside the market or those who
have little to exchange, for example, they cannot establish a justice based on needs. Second,
competitive markets maximize the utility of those who can participate in the market given the
constraints of each participant's budget. However, this does not mean that society's total utility is
necessarily maximized. Third, although free competitive markets establish certain negative rights
for those within the market, they may actually diminish the positive rights of those outside those
whose participation is minimal. Fourth, free competitive markets ignore and even conflict with
the demands of caring. As we have seen, an ethic of care implies that people exist in a web of
interdependent relationships and should care for those who are closely related to them. A free
market system, however, operates as if individuals are completely independent of each other and
takes no account of the human relationships that may exist among them. Fifth, free competitive
markets may have a pernicious effect on people's moral character. The competitive pressures that
are present in perfectly competitive markets can lead people to attend constantly to economic
efficiency. Producers are constantly pressured to reduce their costs and increase their profit
margins. Finally, and most important, we should note that the three values of capitalist justice,
utility, and negative rights are produced by free markets only if they embody the seven
conditions that define perfect competition. If one or more of these conditions are not present in a
given real market, then the claim can no longer be made that these three values are present.
Of course, the three values of capitalist justice are only produced if the market embodies the
seven conditions that define perfect competition. If even one of the conditions is not present,
then the market cannot claim to promote those values. This, in fact, is the most important
limitation of free market morality: because free markets are not perfectly competitive, they do
not achieve the moral values.

4.2 Monopoly Competition

In a monopoly, two of the seven conditions are absent: there is only one seller, and other sellers
cannot enter the market. As the case of Alcoa exemplifies, such markets are far from the
perfectly competitive model. Although Alcoa's patents on the manufacturing of aluminum ran out
in 1909, it remained the sole producer of virgin aluminum for another thirty years. No competitor
40

could enter the market because their startup costs would have been too great, and they lacked
Alcoa's experience. Alcoa and other monopolies like Western Electric, Standard Oil, and the
American Tobacco Company were thus able to fix output at a quantity less than equilibrium,
making demand so high that they reaped excess profits. (Had entry into these markets been open,
the excess profits would have drawn others into producing these goods until prices dropped, but
this does not happen in a monopoly.)
Monopolistic markets and their high prices and profits violate capitalist justice because the seller
charges more than the goods are worth. Thus, the prices the buyer must pay are unjust. In
addition, the monopoly market results in a decline in the efficiency of the system. First, the
monopoly market allows resources to be used in ways that will produce shortages of those things
buyers want and cause them to be sold at higher prices than necessary. Second, monopoly
markets do not encourage suppliers to use resources in ways that will minimize the resources
consumed to produce a certain amount of a commodity. A monopoly firm is not encouraged to
reduce its costs and is therefore not motivated to find less costly methods of production. Third, a
monopoly market allows the seller to introduce price differentials that block consumers from
putting together the most satisfying bundle of commodities they can purchase given the
commodities available and the money they can spend. Because everyone must buy from the
monopoly firm, the firm can set its prices so that some buyers are forced to pay a higher price for
the same goods than others.
In effect, those who have a greater desire for an item will buy less, and those who desire an item
less will buy more, which is a great inefficiency, and means that consumers are no longer able to
purchase the most satisfying bundle of goods they can.

4.3 Oligopolistic Competition

Most industries are not entirely monopolistic; in fact, most are dominated by a few large firms.
These markets lie somewhere in between the monopoly and the perfectly competitive free
market; the most important type of these imperfectly competitive markets is the oligopoly.
In an oligopoly, two of the seven conditions are not present. Instead of many sellers, there are
only a few significant ones. The share each firm holds may be somewhere between 25 percent
and 90 percent of the market, and the firms controlling this share may range from 2 to 50
depending on the industry. Second, as with the monopoly, other sellers are not free to enter the
market. Markets like this, which are dominated by four to eight firms, are highly concentrated
markets. A list of firms in oligopoly markets in the most highly concentrated American industries
reads like a who's who of American corporate power.
The most common cause of oligopolistic market structure is the horizontal merger or unification
of two companies that formerly competed in the same line of business. Because such markets are
comprised of a small number of firms, it is easy for their managers to join forces to set prices and
restrict their output, acting, in effect, like one large monopolistic firm. Therefore, like
monopolies, they can fail to set just profits, respect basic economic freedoms, and protect social
utility.
41

Oligopolies can set high prices through explicit agreements to restrain competition. The more
highly concentrated the oligopoly, the easier it is to collude against the interests of society,
economic freedom, and justice. The following list identifies practices that are clearly unethical:
1.
2.
3.

Price Fixing - when companies agree to set prices artificially high.

Manipulation of Supply - when a company agrees to limit production.
Exclusive Dealing Arrangements - when a company sells to a retailer only on
condition that the retailer will not purchase products from other companies and/or will
not sell outside a certain geographical area.
4.
Tying Arrangements - when a company sells a buyer certain goods only on
condition that the buyer also purchases other goods from the firm.
5.
Retail Price Maintenance Agreements - when a company sells to a retailer only on
condition that they agree to charge the same set retail prices.
6.
Price Discrimination - when a company charges different prices to different buyers
for the same goods or services.
Several industrial and organizational factors lead companies to engage in these practices:
1. Crowded and Mature Market - When large numbers of new entrants or declining
demand create overcapacity in a market, the resulting decline in revenues and profits
creates pressures on middle-level managers. They may respond by allowing, encouraging,
and even ordering their sales teams to engage in price fixing.
2. Job-Order Nature of Business - If orders are priced individually so that pricing
decisions are made frequently and at low levels of the organization, collusion among lowlevel salespeople is more likely.
3. Undifferentiated Products - When the product offered by each company in an industry
is so similar to those of other companies that they must compete on price alone by
continually reducing prices, salespeople come to feel that the only way to keep prices
from collapsing is by getting together and fixing prices.
4. Culture of the Business - When an organization's salespeople feel that price fixing is a
common practice and is desired, condoned, accepted, rationalized, and even encouraged
by the organization, price fixing is more likely.
5. Personnel Practices - When managers are evaluated and rewarded solely or primarily on
the basis of profits and volume so that bonuses, commissions, advancement, and other
rewards are dependent on these objectives, they will come to believe that the company
wants them to achieve these objectives regardless of the means.
6. Pricing Decisions - When organizations are decentralized so that pricing decisions are
pushed down into the hands of a lower part of the organization, price fixing is more likely
to happen. Price decisions should be made at higher organizational levels.
7. Trade Associations - Allowing salespeople to meet with competitors in trade association
meetings will encourage them to talk about pricing and to begin to engage in price-setting
arrangements with their counterparts in competing firms.
8. Corporate Legal Staff - When legal departments fail to provide guidance to sales staff
until after a problem has occurred, price-fixing problems are more likely.

42

It is difficult to legislate against many common oligopolistic price-setting practices, however,

because they are accomplished by tacit agreement. Firms may, without ever discussing it
explicitly, realize that competition is not in their collective best interests. Therefore, they may
recognize one firm as the "price leader," raising their prices in reaction when the leader decides
to do so. No matter how prices are set, however, clearly social utility declines when prices are
artificially raised.
Firms also occasionally resort to bribery, which also results in a decline in market competition.
Bribes serve as a barrier to others entering the market; the briber becomes, in effect, a monopoly
seller. To determine whether a payment is ethical, there are three relevant points to consider:
1.

Is the offer of a payment initiated by the payer (the one who pays the money),
or does the payee (the one who receives the money) demand the payment by threatening
injury to the payer's interests? In the latter case, the payment is not a bribe but a form of
extortion. If the threatened injury is large enough, the payer may not be morally
responsible for his or her act, or the moral responsibility may at least be diminished.
2.
Is the payment made to induce the payee to act in a manner that violates his or
her official sworn duty to act in the best interests of the public? Or is the payment made
to induce the payee to perform what is already his or her official duty? If the payee is
being induced to violate his or her official duty, then the payer is cooperating in an
immoral act because the payee has entered an agreement to fulfill these duties.
3. Are the nature and purpose of the payment considered ethically unobjectionable in the
local culture? If a form of payment is a locally accepted public custom and there is a
proportionately serious reason for making the payment, then it would appear to be
ethically permissible on utilitarian grounds.

4.4 Oligopolies and Public Policy

What should society do in the face of the high degree of market concentration in oligopolistic
industries? There are three main points of view:
First, the Do-Nothing view claims that the power of oligopolies is not as large as it appears.
Though competition within industries has declined, they maintain that competition between
industries with substitutable products has replaced it. In addition, there are "countervailing
powers" of other large corporate groups, the government, and unions that keep corporations in
check. Finally, they argue that bigger is better, especially in the current age of global
competition. Economies of scale, produced by high concentration, actually lower prices for
consumers.
Second, the Antitrust view argues that prices and profits in highly concentrated industries are
higher than they should be. By breaking up large corporations into smaller units, they claim,
higher levels of competition will emerge in those industries. The result will be a decrease in
collusion, greater innovation, and lower prices. Clearly, the antitrust view is based on a number
of assumptions. J. Fred Weston has summarized the basic propositions on which this traditional
view is based:
43

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

If an industry is not atomistic with many small competitors, there is likely to be

administrative discretion over prices.
Concentration results in recognized interdependence among companies, with no price
competition in concentrated industries.
Concentration is due mostly to mergers because the most efficient scale of operation
is not more than 3 to 5 percent of the industry. A high degree of concentration is
unnecessary.
There is a positive correlation between concentration and profitability that gives
evidence of monopoly power in concentrated industriesthe ability to elevate prices and
the persistence of high profits. Entry does not take place to eliminate excessive profits.
Concentration is aggravated by product differentiation and advertising. Advertising is
correlated with higher profits.
There is oligopolistic coordination by signaling through press releases or other means.

The third view is the Regulation view, which can be seen as a middle ground between the other
two. Those who advocate regulation do not wish to lose the economies of scale offered by large
corporations, but they also wish to ensure that large firms do not harm the consumers. Therefore,
they suggest setting up regulatory agencies and legislation to control the activities of large
corporations. Some even suggest that the government should take over the operation of firms
where only public ownership can guarantee that they operate in the public interest.
Whichever view we take, clearly the social benefits of free markets cannot be guaranteed, and
the markets themselves cannot be morally justified, unless firms remain competitive.

44

CHAPTER FIVE
Ethics and the Environment
Overview
Introduction
This chapter on ethics and the environment begins with some rather sobering statistics from the
Worldwatch Institute. This includes population growth, rising temperature, falling water tables,
45

shrinking cropland per person, collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, and the loss of plant and
animal species. Our environment seems to be stressed nearly to the breaking point. The ethical
and technological questions that this state of affairs raises are extremely important and complex.
First, there are still serious disagreements about the extent of the environmental damage that
industrial technology has produced. Furthermore, there is no precise way of knowing just how
much of a threat this environmental damage will have for our future welfare. And whatever the
level of damage, we must surely sacrifice some values to halt or slow it.
To explore these issues, this chapter begins with an overview of the technical aspects of
environmental resource use. Then it moves to a discussion of the ethical basis of environmental
protection. It concludes with a consideration of our obligation to future generations and the
prospects for continued economic expansion.

5.1 The Dimensions of Pollution and Resource Depletion

Environmental damage inevitably threatens the welfare of human beings as well as plants and
animals. Threats to the environment come from two sources, pollution and resource depletion.
Pollution refers to the undesirable and unintended contamination of the environment by the
manufacture or use of commodities. Resource depletion refers to the consumption of finite or
scarce resources. In a certain sense, pollution is really a type of resource depletion because
contamination of air, water, or land diminishes their beneficial qualities.
Air pollution has been with modern society for nearly 200 years; its costs are increasing greatly.
It negatively affects agricultural yields, human health, and global temperatures. The result is a
large economic impact and a staggering effect on the quality of human life.
Global warming itself poses a difficult and frightening challenge. Global warming greenhouse
gases such as: carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons, are gases that
absorb and hold heat from the sun, preventing it from escaping back into space, much like a
greenhouse absorbs and holds the sun's heat. Most scenarios concerning the effects of global
warming predict massive flooding, increase of disease, loss of plant and animal species, and
expansion of deserts at the expense of agricultural land. These effects will have high human and
economic costs. However, to halt the increase of greenhouse gasses, we would have to reduce
emissions by 60% to 70%, a level that would damage the economies of countries around the
world. To halt global warming, experts say that we would need to change our lifestyles and
values drastically.
Ozone depletion is also a serious concern. Caused by the release of CFCs into the atmosphere,
ozone depletion may lead to several hundred thousand new cases of skin cancer each year and
destroy many valuable food crops. Also, ocean plankton, on which the entire ocean's food chain
depends, may be severely damaged. Even though CFC production has been nearly halted, we can
expect the gasses already released to continue damaging the ozone for the next century.
Burning fossil fuels causes acid rain and global warming. Though not as devastating as global
warming, it nevertheless is harming many fish populations and trees, corroding bridges and
46

buildings, and contaminating drinking water. Airborne toxins and air quality in general are also
serious concerns for human health.
Airborne Toxics are less catastrophic but highly worrisome air pollution threats; 2.4 billion
pounds of airborne toxic substances released annually into the nation's atmosphere, including
phosgene, a nerve gas used in warfare, and methyl isocyanate.
Water pollution is likewise a serious problem. About 40% of the world's surface water is too
polluted to fish or swim in. Pollution comes from agriculture, mines, oil wells, human wastes,
manufacturing, detergents, and the food industry, among other sources. Today, almost 1 billion
people lack access to safe water and the worlds per capita supplies of water are shrinking.
The pollution of the land by toxic substances also causes increased mortality and illness.
Hazardous or toxic substances are those that can cause an increase in mortality rates or
irreversible or incapacitating illness, or those that have other seriously adverse health or
environmental effects. Over 58,000 different chemical compounds are currently being used in the
U.S., and the number is increasing each year. How many of these chemicals affect humans, no
one really knows. The sheer volume of solid waste is staggering: each U.S. resident produces
about seven pounds of garbage per day. Though this quantity is massive, it is not even close to
the quantity of industrial waste. The EPA estimates that about 15 million tons of toxic waste is
produced in the U.S. each year. This does not include nuclear wastes, which, because they are so
concentrated and persistent, present special problems for storage and disposal. Each nuclear
reactor produces 265 pounds of plutonium waste a year, a substance so toxic that only twenty
pounds would be sufficient to cause lung cancer in everyone on Earth. So far, no one really
knows how to dispose of this and similar wastes safely and securely.
As if pollution was not serious enough, we also must consider the depletion of species, habitats,
and natural resources. The world loses about 1% of its rain forests each year, and between 15%
and 20% of species had become extinct by 2000. Our consumption of fossil fuels has recently
been rising at exponential rates, but this cannot continue much longer because we are coming
close to the depletion point of fossil fuels. Minerals are also being depleted, so we can expect
them gradually to become more scare and expensive. This scarcity will have a serious impact on
the world economy.

5.2 The Ethics of Pollution Control

Businesses have been ignoring their impact on the natural environment for centuries, largely
because the economic costs and harmful effects of this impact have been unclear. Businesses
have treated air and water as free goods that no one owns. Since the carrying capacity of both is
so large, each individual firm sees its own contribution to pollution as negligible. Combined,
however, the effects are enormous. The harm comes not only from the direct activity of
businesses. Pollution also occurs as a result of consumer use of manufactured items. The
problems of pollution have a variety of origins, and will require a similarly varied set of
solutions. The rest of this chapter concentrates on a single range of problems, the ethical issues
raised by pollution from commercial and industrial enterprises.
47

Because our environment is so complex and its parts are so interwoven, many theorists believe
that our duty to protect the environment extends beyond the welfare of humans to other
nonhuman parts of the system. This idea, called ecological ethics or deep ecology, maintains
that the environment deserves to be preserved for its own sake, regardless of whether or not this
directly benefits humanity. Because the various parts of an ecological system are interrelated, the
activities of one of its parts will affect all the other parts. Because the various parts are
interdependent, the survival of each part depends on the survival of the other parts. Business
firms (and all other social institutions) are parts of a larger ecological system, "spaceship earth.
Several supporters of this approach have formulated their views in a platform consisting of the
following statements:
1. The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on earth have value in
themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world for
human purposes.
2. Richness and diversity of life forms contribute to the realization of these values and are
also values in themselves.
3. Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity except to satisfy vital needs.
4. The flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of
the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.
5. Present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is
rapidly worsening.
6. Policies must therefore be changed. The changes in policies affect basic economic,
technological, and ideological structures. The resulting state of affairs will be deeply
different from the present.
7. The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality, rather than adhering to
an increasingly higher standard of living.
8. Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation directly or indirectly to
participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes.
An ecological ethic, therefore, claims that the welfare of at least some nonhumans is intrinsically
valuable and deserving of respect and protection. Utilitarian and rights arguments both support
such a view. Under either system, for instance, it would be wrong to raise animals for food in
painful conditions.
Though some of the views of deep ecology are unusual and controversial, two traditional views
of ethics can also help us to develop an environmental ethic: utilitarianism and concern for
human rights.
William T. Blackstone has argued that the possession of a livable environment is something to
which every human being has a right. To some extent, U.S. federal law recognizes this concept.
The main difficulty with Blackstone's view, however, is that it fails to provide any nuanced
guidance on several pressing environmental choices. This lack of nuance in the absolute rights
approach is especially problematic when the costs of removing certain amounts of pollution are
high in comparison to the benefits that will be attained.
48

Utilitarianism can answer some of the difficulties with Blackstone's theory. Utilitarians see
environmental problems as market defects, arguing that pollution should be avoided because it
harms society's welfare.
To make this position clear, it is helpful to distinguish between private costs and social costs.
Private costs are the actual costs a firm incurs to produce a commodity. Social costs include the
costs that the firm does not paythe costs of pollution and medical care that result from the
manufacture of the commodities. The divergence of private and social costs is problematic
because the divergence means that price no longer accurately reflects all of the costs of a
commodity. This means that resources are not being allocated efficiently, and society's welfare
consequently declines.
When markets do not take all costs into account, more of a commodity will be produced than
society would demand if it could measure what it is actually paying for the commodity. In
addition, producers ignore these costs and do not try to minimize them. Since goods are no
longer efficiently distributed to consumers, pollution violates the utilitarian principles that
underlie the market system.
The remedy for external costs, according to utilitarians, is to internalize them to ensure that the
producer pays all of the real costs of production and uses these costs to determine the price of the
commodity. To internalize the costs of pollution, a firm may be required to pay all those harmed
by pollution. A problem with this way of internalizing the costs of pollution, however, is that
when several polluters are involved, it is not always clear just who is being harmed and by
whom. Alternatively, the firm might install pollution control devices and stop the harm at its
source.
This way of dealing with pollution is consistent with the requirements of distributive justice.
Since pollution's external costs are largely borne by the poor, pollution produces a net flow of
benefits away from the poor and towards the rich. Internalizing these costs can reverse this flow.
However, if a firm makes basic goods, such as food, then internalizing costs may place a heavier
burden on poorer people.
Internalizing external costs is also consistent with retributive and compensatory justice, because
those who are responsible for pollution bear the burden of rectifying it and compensating those
who have been harmed. Taken together, these requirements imply that (a) the costs of pollution
control should be borne by those who cause pollution and who have benefited from pollution
activities, whereas (b) the benefits of pollution control should flow to those who have had to bear
the external costs of pollution. Internalizing external costs seems to meet these two requirements:
(a) The costs of pollution control are borne by stockholders and customers, both of whom benefit
from the polluting activities of the firm; and (b) the benefits of pollution control flow to those
neighbors who once had to put up with the firm's pollution.
Since the effects of pollution are so harmful, it might seem that no action to remedy pollution
could be too drastic. However, if a firm spends a greater amount on a pollution control device
than the amount of damage the pollution would cause, then the firm should not install it; the
economic utility of society will be damaged if they do. The amount a firm should invest in
49

pollution control, then, must rest on a cost-benefit analysis: a precise calculation of what the
device or practice would cost and what its expected benefits would be. Thomas Klein
summarized the procedures for cost-benefit analysis as follows:
1.

Identify costs and benefits of the proposed program and the person or sectors
incurring or receiving them. Trace transfers.
2.
Evaluate the costs and benefits in terms of their value to beneficiaries and donors. The
standard of measure is the value of each marginal unit to demanders and suppliers ideally
captured in competitive prices. Useful refinements involve:
a.
Incorporating time values through the use of a discount rate.
b.
Recognizing risk by factoring possible outcomes according to probabilities and,
where dependent, probability trees.
3.
Add up costs and benefits to determine the net social benefit of a project or program.
The problems involved in getting accurate measurements of the benefits and costs of pollution
control are also illustrated by the difficulties businesses have encountered in trying to construct a
social audit (a report of the social costs and social benefits of the firm's activities). This can be
difficult, however. How do we measure the costs and benefits of pollution control when they
involve damages to human life or health? Measurement itself is also difficult when the effects of
pollution are uncertain and therefore hard to predict. In fact, getting accurate pollution
measurements is sometimes nearly impossible, and the problem only is multiplied when there are
a number of polluters in a single area. Measuring benefits is likewise difficult, which poses
significant technical problems for utilitarian approaches to pollution.
Even where measurement is not a problem, another problem remains for the utilitarian approach.
Is it morally permissible to impose costs on unwilling or unknowing citizens? Can some
unilaterally impose costs on others without their consent? Even getting consent is tricky, because
many pollution problems involve information and risks that are extremely technical and difficult
to understand. It is perhaps impossible in principle to get informed consent from a segment of the
public on some complicated issues.
Because of these problems, some contend that utilitarianism cannot lead our pollution control
policy. Perhaps absolute bans on pollution are more adequate. Some writers even suggest that
when risk cannot be reliably estimated, it is best to steer clear of such projects. Others maintain
that we should identify those who will bear the risks and take steps to protect them.
Many thinkers have argued that the environmental crises we face are rooted in the social systems
of hierarchy and domination that characterize our society. This view, now referred to as social
ecology, holds that until those patterns of hierarchy and domination are changed, we will be
unable to deal with environmental crises. In a system of hierarchy, one group holds power over
another and members of the superior group are able to dominate those of the inferior group and
get them to serve their ends.
Until these systems (such as racism, sexism, and social classes) are changed, we will be unable
to deal adequately with the environment. Ecofeminists, a related group of thinkers, sees the key
form of hierarchy connected to the destruction of the environment as the domination of women
50

by men. They believe that there are important connections between the domination of women
and the domination of naturepatterns of thinking, which justify and perpetuate the
subordination. This logic of domination sets up dualisms (artificial and natural, male and female)
where one of the pair is seen as stronger and more important. To solve our ecological problems,
we must first change these destructive modes of thinking.
According to the ethics of caring, the destruction of nature that has accompanied male
domination must be replaced with caring for and nurturing our relationships with nature and
other living things. Nature must be seen as an "other" that must be cared for, not tamed or
dominated. Thought-provoking as these approaches are, they are still too new and undeveloped
to give us specific direction.

5.3 The Ethics of Conserving Depletable Resources

Conservation refers to the saving or rationing of natural resources for later use. In fact, even
pollution control can be seen as a form of conservation, since pollution consumes air and water.
However, generally, conservation refers to the saving of finite, depletable resources. The only
source of such resources is what has been left over from previous generations.
As we deplete the world's resources, there is unavoidably a smaller amount of them left for
future generations. If future generations have an equal right to the world's resources, then by
depleting them we are stealing what is actually theirs.
A number of writers have claimed that it is a mistake to think that future generations have rights.
They advance three main reasons to show this:
First, future generations cannot intelligently be said to have rights because they do not now exist
and may never exist. I may be able to think about future people, but I cannot hit them, punish
them, injure them, or treat them wrongly. Future people exist only in the imagination, and
imaginary entities cannot be acted on in any way whatsoever except in the imagination.
Similarly, we cannot say that future people possess things now when they do not yet exist to
possess or have them. Because there is a possibility that future generations may never exist, they
cannot "possess" rights.
Second, if future generations did have rights, we might be led to the absurd conclusion that we
must sacrifice our entire civilization for their sake. Suppose that each of the infinite number of
future generations had an equal right to the world's supply of oil. Then we would have to divide
the oil equally among them all, and our share would be a few quarts at the most. We would then
be put in the absurd position of having to shut down our entire Western civilization so that each
future person might be able to possess a few quarts of oil.
Third, we can say that someone has a certain right only if we know that he or she has a certain
interest that that right protects. The purpose of a right, after all, is to protect the interests of the
right holder, but we are virtually ignorant of what interests future generations will have. What
wants will they have?
51

John Rawls, on the other hand, argues that though it is unjust to impose heavy burdens on present
generations for the sake of the future, it is also unjust for present generations to leave nothing for
the future. We should ask ourselves what we can reasonably expect they might want and, putting
ourselves in their place, leave what we would like them to have left for us. Justice, in short,
requires that we hand over to our children a world in no worse condition than the one we
received ourselves.
The ethics of care support conservation policies similar to the ones Rawls advocates. Utilitarian
reasoning, too, supports Rawls' conclusions. Some utilitarians posit that the ethical thing to do is
to discount future consequences based on their uncertainty and distance from the future. We are
therefore clearly obligated not to take actions that will almost certainly harm tomorrow's
generations. However, since we can be less certain what the effects of our actions will be on far
distant generations, our responsibility towards them is somewhat diminished.
We cannot rely on market mechanisms to ensure adequate conservation for future generations,
however. The needs of future generations are so heavily discounted by markets that they hardly
affect prices at all.
Six reasons conspire to bring this about:
1. Multiple access - If several separate extractors can use a resource, then the shared access
will invariably lead the resource to be depleted too fast. As with several people with
straws in one milkshake, each owner's private interest is in taking it out as fast as
possible.
2. Time preferences and myopia - Firms often have short time horizons under the stress of
commercial competition. This may under-represent the legitimate interests of future
generations.
3. Inadequate forecasting - Present users may simply fail to foresee future developments.
This may reflect a lack of sufficient research interest and ability to discern future
changes.
4. Special influences - Specific taxes and other incentive devices may encourage overly
rapid use of resources.
5. External effects - There are important externalities in the uses of many resources, so that
private users ignore major degrees of pollution and other external costs.
6. Distribution - Finally, private market decisions are based on the existing pattern of
distribution of wealth and income. As resource users vote with their dollars, market
demand will more strongly reflect the interests and preferences of the wealthy.
Many observers believe that conservation measures are falling short of what is needed. Some
even maintain that future generations will have a quality of life much lower than our own.
Industrialized nations will need to convert from growth-oriented technologies to more laborintensive ones. In fact, our entire economic system may have to abandon the goal of steadily
increasing production: continual economic growth promises to degrade the quality of life for
future generations. This is because demand for depletable resources will continue to rise until the
resources simply run out. Then, living standards will decline sharply.
52

One group, the Club of Rome, predicted that a catastrophic collapse of goods and services will
result at some point in the middle of this century; by 2100 the world's population may even drop
below 1900 levels. More recently, the Worldwatch Institute has concluded that even if the Club
of Rome's timetables were off, their conclusions were substantially correct.
As our supplies of energy diminish, other moral concerns are raised. Though the U.S. has only
6% of the world's population, we consume 25% of its energy; 50% of the people of the world get
along with only 8%. Some seriously question whether high-consuming nations like ours can be
justified in using for its own sake the nonrenewable resources of the world that others are too
weak or frugal to use themselves.

53

CHAPTER SIX
The Ethics of Consumer Production and Marketing

Overview
Introduction
As the examples of Bridgestone/Firestone and Metabolife International clearly demonstrate,
consumers are exposed daily to high levels of risk simply by using consumer products. The risk
translates into injury, death, and astonishingly high costs as a result. As if product injuries were
not enough, consumers must also bear the costs of deceptive sales practices, shoddy
merchandise, and un-honored warranties. This chapter examines the ethical issues raised by
product quality and advertising.

6.1 Markets and Consumer Protection

Consumers are at great risk every day. Many believe that consumers are automatically protected
from injury by the operation of the free and competitive market. In the market approach to
consumer protection, consumer safety is seen as a good that is most efficiently provided through
the mechanism of the free market whereby sellers must respond to consumer demands. If
consumers want products to be safer, they will indicate this preference in markets by willingly
paying more for safer products and showing a preference for manufacturers of safe products
while turning down the goods of manufacturers of unsafe products. Producers will have to
respond to this demand by building more safety into their products or they risk losing customers
to competitors who cater to the preferences of consumers. Moreover, if consumers do not place a
high value on safety (or are unwilling to pay for it), then it is wrong to force them to accept
higher levels of safety through regulation.
Critics to the market approach respond that the benefits of free markets are obtained only when
the markets have all of the seven defining characteristics: (a) There are numerous buyers and
sellers, (b) everyone can freely enter and exit the market, (c) everyone has full and perfect
information, (d) all goods in the market are exactly similar, (e) there are no external costs, (f) all
buyers and sellers are rational utility maximizers, and (g) the market is unregulated. Critics of the
market approach to consumer issues argue that these characteristics are absent in consumer
markets.
Most importantly, markets are efficient only if participants have full and perfect information
about the goods they are buying. This is obviously not always the case, however; some products
are simply too complex for anyone but an expert to understand them. Gathering information is
also time consuming and expensive, so many consumers may not have the resources to acquire
the necessary information on their own.
54

In theory, of course, if consumers really wanted this information, then a market would be created
for consumer information. It is difficult, however, for such organizations to cover their costs.
Once costly information is released, it is easily leaked to others who do not pay. Because people
know they can become free riders, the number of people who pay for the information is too small
to cover the costs of gathering it. Second, consumers are unwilling to pay for information
because they do not know what its value is until after they get it, and then they already have it
and don't need to pay for it. When we buy information, we cannot know in advance what we are
purchasing until we have it. Markets alone, then, cannot provide consumers with the information
they need.
Another criticism of the free market approach to consumer issues refers to the sixth characteristic
of perfectly competitive free markets, that of the consumer is a "rational utility maximizer." The
consumers defined by the theory think ahead, consider, and watch every penny they spend,
knowing how their choices will affect their preferences. This does not really characterize
consumer choice, however. Most consumer choices are based on probability estimates that we
make concerning the chances that the products we buy will function as we expect. Research
shows, unfortunately, that we become inept and irrational when we make such choices.
First, most of us are not good at estimating probabilities. We typically underestimate risks and
overestimate the probabilities of unlikely but memorable things. Our probability judgments go
astray for five reasons:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

We ignore prior probabilities when we get new information, even if the new
information is irrelevant.
We emphasize "causation," but underweight evidence that is relevant but not seen
as "causal."
We generalize based on small sample findings.
We believe in the nonexistent "law of averages."
We believe that we control purely chance events.

Second, as a number of researchers have shown, people are irrational and inconsistent when
weighing choices based on probability estimates of future costs and payoffs. Research shows that
people inconsistently rank one payoff as being both better and worse than another. Finally,
markets often fail to have numerous buyers and sellers. Since most consumer markets are
monopolies or oligopolies, the sellers are able to extract abnormally high profits by ensuring that
demand always exceeds supply.
As a whole, then, market forces by themselves are not able to deal with consumer concerns for
safety, freedom from risk, and value. Instead, consumers must be protected by governmental
action and the voluntary initiatives of businesses. Of course, part of the responsibility for
consumer injuries does rest on consumers. People often use items that they have neither the skill
nor experience to handle.
Injuries also occur because of flaws in design, materials, or manufacturing, however. In these
cases, it is the manufacturer's duty to minimize injuries. Their expertise makes them most
knowledgeable about the safest materials and methods of making their products.
55

Where does the consumer's duty end and the manufacturer's duty begin? Three different theories
address this question: the contract, "due care," and the social costs views.

6.2 The Contract View of Business' Duties to Consumers

In the contract view of business' duties to consumers, the relationship between a firm and its
customers is essentially contractual. When we purchase an item, we enter voluntarily into a
"sales contract" with the firm, who then has a duty to provide a product with the characteristics
they have agreed to supply. Consumers therefore have a correlative right to receive the product
they have been promised.
This theory rests on the view that such contracts are free agreements that impose on each side the
duty of complying with the terms of the agreement. Both Kant's and Rawls' theories offer
justification for this view, and traditional moralists also remind us that contracts are subject to
three moral constraints (mentioned in Chapter Two): both parties must have full knowledge of
the agreement, neither party must misrepresent the facts, and neither party must be forced to
enter it. The same sorts of arguments that Kant and Rawls use to justify the basic duty to perform
ones contracts can justify these secondary constraints.
Hence, the contractual theory of business' duties to consumers claims that a business has four
main moral duties: the basic duty of (a) complying with the terms of the sales contract, and the
secondary duties of (b) disclosing the nature of the product, (c) avoiding misrepresentation, and
(d) avoiding the use of duress and undue influence. By acting in accordance with these duties, a
business respects the right of consumers to be treated as free and equal personsthat is, in
accordance with their right to be treated only as they have freely consented to be treated.
First, businesses must provide a product that actually lives up to the express claims that they
make about it. In addition, they must also carry through on any implied claims they knowingly
make about it. Generally, such claims refer to one of four areas: reliability, service life,
maintainability, and product safety. Businesses, therefore, must provide products that are as
reliable, long-lasting, easily maintained, and as safe as consumers are led to believe them to be.
Since a contract cannot bind where both parties do not have full knowledge, the seller also has a
duty to disclose to the buyer any facts about the product that would affect the consumer's
decision to purchase it. Sellers also must not misrepresent their products. Even more than not
disclosing information, misrepresentation makes freedom of choice impossible; it is, in reality,
coercive. Coercion itself also renders a contract void, because people act irrationally when under
the influence of fear. Sellers must not take advantage of gullibility, immaturity, or ignorance,
which reduce the buyer's ability to make a free rational choice.
The main objections to the contractual theory maintain that the assumptions on which the theory
is based are unrealistic. Manufacturers do not deal directly with consumers. They do deal
indirectly with them through advertisements, however, and promoters of the theory argue that
advertisements forge the indirect contractual relationship between seller and the buyer.

56

Another objection to the theory points out that consumers can freely agree to purchase a product
without certain qualities. Manufacturers can be released from normal contractual obligations
simply by disclaiming that the product is safe and reliable. Disclaimers can, in effect, nullify all
of the seller's contractual duties.
Finally, critics of this theory point out that the assumption that buyer and seller meet on equal
ground is false. Buyers and sellers are not equally skilled; the seller is in a much stronger
position than the buyer. Sellers only have to know their own products, while buyers need to
know about every sellers' products for every commodity they purchase.

6.3 The Due Care Theory

The due care theory of the manufacturer's duties to consumers is based on the idea that
consumers and sellers do not meet as equals and the consumer's interests are particularly
vulnerable to being harmed by the manufacturer, who has a knowledge and an expertise that the
consumer lacks. Because manufacturers are in a more advantaged position, they have a duty to
take special care to ensure that the products they offer do not harm the consumers' interests. The
doctrine of caveat emptor is here replaced with a weak version of the doctrine of caveat vendor.
Let the seller take care. Because consumers must rely on the expertise of the manufacturer, they
have a duty not only to deliver a product that lives up to the express and implied claims they
make about it. They have a duty to exercise due care to prevent others from being injured by the
product, even if they explicitly disclaim such responsibility.
Due care must enter into the product's design, choice of materials and construction methods,
quality control, and warnings attached to it. Failure to exercise due care in these areas is a breach
of the manufacturer's moral duties. This theory rests on the principle that agents have a moral
duty not to harm or injure others. The principle can be defended by the ethics of care, of course,
but rule utilitarianism, Kant, and Rawls can all also be used as a solid basis for the theory.
Manufacturers' responsibilities to exercise due care extend to the following three areas:
1.

Design - a product's design should not conceal any dangers, should incorporate all
feasible safety devices, and use adequate materials. The design should additionally be
well tested to ensure that consumers will use the product properly.
2.
Production - the manufacturing process must be controlled to eliminate any defective
items, identify weaknesses, and ensure that unsafe economizing measures are not taken.
3.
Information - the firm should fix labels, notices, and instructions on the product
warning of all potential dangers involved in using or misusing the item.
Manufacturers must also take into consideration the capacities of the persons who they expect
will use the product. If the possible harmful effects of using a product are serious or if they
cannot be adequately understood without expert opinion, then sale of the product should be
carefully controlled.
There are three difficulties with the due care theory. The basic problem with it is that there is no
way to determine when one has exercised enough due care. Every product involves some small
57

risk; if all risks were eliminated, few if any products would be affordable. Secondly, the theory
assumes that the manufacturer can indeed discover all the risks attendant upon using a product
before it is actually used and this may not be possible. Finally, the theory is to some, paternalistic,
assuming that the manufacturer alone should make the important decisions about the level of risk
the consumer should bear. Perhaps such decisions should be left up to consumers, who can
decide for themselves whether or not they want to pay for additional safety measures.

6.4 The Social Costs View of the Manufacturers Duties

The third theory of the duties of the manufacturer extends beyond what the other two theories
impose. It maintains that a manufacturer must pay the costs of any injuries sustained through any
defects in the product, even when the manufacturer exercised due care and took all reasonable
precautions to warn users of every foreseen danger.
This theory, which forms the basis of the legal doctrine of strict liability, is utilitarian. It says
that the external costs of injuries resulting even from unavoidable defects constitute part of the
cost society must pay for producing and using a product. Having the manufacturer bear these
costs is the most efficient use of society's resources: that way, the price of the good will reflect its
real cost and it will not be overproduced. Additionally, manufacturers will take even greater care
since they will be responsible for paying for all of the costs of injuries. When they include the
cost of injuries in the price of the product, they also will be distributing the real cost of the item
among all users, which is more fair than making just the unlucky injured parties bear the entire
cost of the injury themselves.
The major criticism of this theory is that it is unfair because it violates the basic canons of
compensatory justice: a person should not be forced to compensate an injured party if he or she
could not have foreseen and prevented the injury. Critics also contend that the theory will not
actually reduce the number of accidents. Instead, it may have the unintended effect of
encouraging carelessness in consumers, which would cause even more accidents. Finally, such
critics argue that liability suits will increase and impose heavy losses on insurance companies,
forcing insurance rates to rise precipitously.
Social cost theorists counter by pointing out that, in reality, the costs of consumer liability suits
are not large. Less than 1% of product-related injuries result in suits, and successful suits average
only a few thousand dollars in any case. Moreover, the insurance industry has remained quite
profitable, despite the warnings of the critics.

6.5 Advertising Ethics

Advertising is a huge industry, which imposes great expense on manufacturers and service
providers. Commercial advertising is sometimes defined as a form of "information" and an
advertiser as "one who gives information." The implication is that the defining function of
advertising is to provide information to consumers. In the end, consumers must cover the costs of
advertising, but what do they get for this extra expenditure? Most consumers say that they get
very little. So is advertising a waste, or a benefit? Does it help or harm consumers?
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Though advertising is sometimes defined as "information," this fails to distinguish it from the
type of information found in Consumer Reports. Most advertisements contain precious little
information in any case: "Got Milk?" and "Just Do It" are nearly empty statements. The primary
function of advertisements is to sell products to prospective buyers. It is publicly addressed to a
mass audience, so it has a necessarily widespread social effect. It is also intended to create desire
and a belief in consumers that the product will satisfy the desire.
Advertising's critics point out that it has several harmful effects on society. First, its
psychological effects are damaging in that it debases the tastes of consumers by inculcating
materialistic values about how to achieve happiness. Whether or not advertising has such effects
is still uncertain. Indeed, the success of advertising may depend on consumers already having the
values that the advertisements focus upon.
Another major criticism of advertising is that it is wasteful. Those who make this type of
objection point to the distinction between production costs and selling costs. Production costs
are the costs of the resources consumed in producing a product. Selling costs are the additional
costs of resources that do not go into the product itself, but rather are incurred as a result of
persuading consumers to purchase it. The resources consumed by advertising, according to this
theory, add nothing to the utility of the product.
Advertisers counter that advertisements do add information to the product, but of course, the
information could be supplied more directly and inexpensively. They also say, however, that
advertising creates desire and thus is responsible for a gradually expanding economy.
There is considerable controversy over whether advertising is responsible for the growing
economy, however. Advertising appears to be most successful at shifting consumption from one
producer to another, not at expanding consumption generally. Even if it could expand
consumption, theorists do not agree that this would be good: increased consumption leads,
among other things, to increased pollution and depletion of resources. Though some critics have
also blamed advertising for monopolies, there is no conclusive evidence that advertising and
monopolistic markets are connected.
John Kenneth Galbraith and other critics have long argued that advertising merely manipulates
consumers, creating desires solely to absorb industrial output. Physical desires, such as the desire
for food and shelter, are perfectly normal. But the psychological desires that are inspired by
advertising are not under the consumer's control in the same way that physical desires are, which
puts the firm (instead of the individual) in control. If Galbraiths view is correct, then advertising
violates the individual's right to choose freely for himself or herself. It is not clear, however, that
this view is correct, and theorists such as F. A. von Hayek have pointed out that psychic wants
have been around longer than advertising in any case.
The most common criticism of advertising concerns is its effect on the consumer's beliefs.
Because advertising is a form of communication, it can be as truthful or deceptive as any other
form of communication. Most criticisms of advertising focus on the deceptive aspects of modern
advertising. Nevertheless, even if advertising as a whole is not manipulative, there are clearly
59

some advertisements that are intended to manipulate. Such advertisements do clearly violate the
consumer's right to be treated as a free and equal rational being.
Deceptive advertising takes many forms: the "bait and switch," untrue paid testimonials, or
simulating brand names are all forms of deception. There is no controversy over whether or not
deceptive advertising is immoral: it clearly is. The problem is to understand how advertising
becomes deceptive.
All communication involves three things: the author or originator of the message, the medium
that carries the message, and the audience who receives it. Deception involves three necessary
conditions in the author:
1.
2.
3.

The author must intend to have the audience believe something false.
The author must know it to be false.
The author must knowingly do something to bring about this false belief.

Thus, an advertiser cannot be held responsible for an audience having misinterpreted a message
when the misinterpretation is unintended, unforeseen, or the result of carelessness on the part of
the audience.
The media carrying the message also has a responsibility to ensure the truth of what it carries to
the audience. Both the author and the media must take into account the interpretive skills of the
audience as well. To determine the ethical nature of an advertisement, the following points are
relevant: the intended and actual social effects of the advertisement; the informing or persuasive
character of the advertisement, and whether it creates irrational or injurious desires; and the
whether the advertisement's content is truthful or tends to mislead.

6.6 Consumer Privacy

Advances in technology have created the potential for serious harm to consumers' privacy.
Financial institutions, credit bureaus, etc., maintain detailed files on consumers, including
information about their economic activity and personal information (such as marriage,
employment, addresses, and other information). Though these files are used as an important
deciding factor in granting loans, credit cards, and jobs, a recent study found errors in 43% of
credit reports.
The individual's obvious right to privacy, both physical and psychological, is important.
Psychological privacy is privacy with respect to a person's inner life. This includes the person's
thoughts and plans, personal beliefs and values, feelings, and wants. These inner aspects of a
person are so intimately connected with the person that to invade them is almost an invasion of
the very person. Physical privacy is privacy with respect to a person's physical activities.
It must be balanced, however, with the rights and needs of others. Banks must know something
about the credit history of those to whom they are lending money, for example. Since consumers
benefit from the banking system, they also benefit from their right to privacy being balanced
against the banks' right to know their personal information.
60

To balance these two factors, the following factors are crucial:

1.
Relevance - Databases should contain only information directly relevant to the
purpose for which it is collected.
2.
Informing - Consumers should be informed that information is being collected and
told what the purpose of its collection is.
3.
Consent - Businesses should collect information only if consumers consent to
provide it.
4.
Accuracy - Agencies must ensure that the information is up to date and otherwise
accurate, quickly correcting any errors.
5.
Purpose - The purpose for which the information is collected must be legitimate,
resulting in benefits generally enjoyed by those who are having the information gathered
from them.
6.
Recipients and Security - Agencies must ensure that the information is secure and
not available to unintended users or sold to others without the individual's consent.

61

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Ethics of Job Discrimination

Overview
Introduction
This chapter discusses one of the internal conflicts that arise in business, namely the issue of job
discrimination. It begins by quoting two long passages illustrating the current state of the debate
in the U.S.one by former President Bill Clinton, one by former California Governor Pete
Wilson.
Clinton calls for the U.S. to preserve its affirmative action programs. He outlines many inequities
that still remain in American business, and argues that affirmative action is still necessary to
"give our nation a way to finally address the systematic exclusion of individuals of talent on the
basis of their gender or race." As long as there are no specific quotas, he maintains, then the
affirmative action's critics are wrong.
Wilson, on the other hand, cites Thomas Jefferson in his criticism of affirmative action. He
argues that it is unfair to award jobs based on any criteria other than merit. He sees affirmative
action as preferential treatment, "special privileges" for a select minorityin effect, a type of
reverse discrimination.
Because discrimination based on gender and race have been around for so long in business, its
consequences in this area have been substantial and persistent. This chapter examines the nature
of discrimination, discusses the ethical aspects of such behavior, and concludes by considering
affirmative action programs in particular.

7.1 Job Discrimination: Its Nature

Though more women and minorities are entering formerly white male-dominated jobs, they still
face discrimination. The experiment conducted by ABC shows that women and minorities were
systematically given less consideration in hiring: they received fewer job offers and less
desirable jobs than white males. Other research suggests that blacks and Hispanics were offered
jobs 50% fewer times than white males.
Discrimination in its root meaning is not at all wrong. It simply refers to the act of distinguishing
one object from another. However, in modern usage, the term refers to "wrongful discrimination,"
or distinguishing among people on the basis of prejudice instead of individual merit.
Discrimination in employment involves three basic elements:
1. It must be a decision not based on individual merit.
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2. The decision must derive from racial or sexual prejudice.

3. The decision must have a harmful impact on the interest of employees.
Discriminatory acts themselves can be categorized according to the extent to which they are
intentional and institutionalized. An act may be part of the isolated behavior of a single
individual who:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Intentionally discriminates based on personal prejudice.

An act may be part of the routine, institutionalized behavior of a group.
The act must intentionally discriminate out of personal prejudice.
An act may be part of the isolated behavior of a single individual who unintentionally
discriminates because he or she uncritically adopts the practices and stereotypes of his or
her society.

An act may be part of the systematic routine of a group that unintentionally discriminates
because group members uncritically incorporate the discriminatory practices of society.
Whereas in the early 1960s discrimination was generally seen an intentional and individual, by
the 1970s a shift had occurred to emphasize the effects of unintentional forms of discrimination.
A group would be guilty of discrimination if minority group representation were not
proportionate to the minority group's local availability.
Subsequently, people came to criticize this view. They argued that discrimination was the act of
individuals, and that individual minorities and women were its victims. The problem with this
criticism is that it is often difficult to know whether a specific individual, was discriminated
against. The only way of telling whether a process is fair or discriminatory is to see what
happens to minorities as a group. American society has gone back and forth on this issue ever
since. Many even believe that though businesses in the U.S. used to be discriminatory, they are
no longer so.

7.2 Discrimination: Its Extent

An indication of discrimination exists when a disproportionate number of a certain group's
members hold less desirable positions despite their preferences and abilities. We can make three
types of comparisons to provide evidence of this type: comparisons of average benefits given to
various groups, comparisons of the proportion of a group found in the lowest levels of the
institution, and comparisons of the proportion of a group found in the most advantageous
positions in the institution. When we make these three comparisons, it seems clear that some
form of discrimination is still present in the U.S., though for some groups it is not as intense as it
used to be.
Income comparisons are the most suggestive indicators of discrimination. The income gap
between whites and blacks, counter to what many think, has not decreased (black average family
income remains about 65% that of whites). There are similar inequalities found based on gender
as well. Though the ratio between male and female earnings is getting more equal, this is largely
due not to a rise in female earnings but to a drop in, male earnings. Disparities begin
63

immediately after graduation; in fact, female college graduates earn about as much as male high
school graduates. In every occupational group, women earn less than men. Blacks fare a bit
better than females, but not much. For black male college graduates, the picture is better: they
now earn about what white male college graduates do.
For most other blacks, however, the picture remains grim. Lowest income group comparisons
and desirable occupation comparisons give similar results. Statistically, larger proportions of
minorities and women are poor, and larger proportions of white males have the most desirable
occupations. In fact, the more women who work in an occupation, the lower the average pay for
that job. Though perhaps some of the disparities between white males and women or minorities
can be accounted for by the preferences of the latter (who voluntarily choose to work in the
lower paying jobs), the disparities are so large that it cannot entirely be accounted for in this way.
The difficulties for minorities seem to be getting worse. Though they will soon be a majority of
the labor force, studies indicate that many of the new jobs that will be created will require
education beyond high school, and most minorities are falling behind in their educational
attainment. For women, another obstacle exists: unwanted sexual attention.
Finding that our economic institutions generally seem to embody discrimination, as this section
proves it, does not in itself prove that any particular business is discriminatory, however.

7.3

Discrimination: Utility, Rights, and Justice

Given the inequalities found in U.S. businesses, we must address the issue of whether these
inequalities are wrong and, if they are, how they should be changed. Arguments against
discrimination fall into three groups: utilitarian arguments, rights arguments, and justice
arguments. The utilitarian argument against discrimination maintains that society's productivity
will be highest when jobs are awarded based on competence or merit. Discrimination based on
anything else is inefficient and, therefore, counter to utility.
Utilitarian arguments have been attacked on two fronts. First, if jobs should be assigned on the
basis of job-related qualifications only so long as such assignments will advance the public
welfare, then if public welfare would be advanced to a greater degree by assigning jobs on the
basis of some factor not related to job performance, then the utilitarian would have to hold that in
those situations jobs should not be assigned on the basis of job related qualifications, but on the
basis of that other factor. Second, it might be true that society as a whole would benefit by
having some group discriminated against.
Other, non-utilitarian arguments against discrimination maintain that it is wrong because it
violates people's basic human rights. Kant, for example, says that humans should be treated as
ends in themselves and never as a means to an end. Therefore, discrimination is wrong because it
violates people's rights to be treated as equals. In addition, some Kantian thinkers argue that
discrimination is wrong because the person who discriminates would not want to see his or her
behavior universalized (at least they would not want to change places with the victim of their
own discrimination).
64

A third group of arguments against discrimination views it as unjust. Rawls argues that it is
unjust arbitrarily to give some people more opportunity than others. Another related argument
sees it as a form of injustice because individuals who are equal in all relevant respects cannot be
treated differently just because they differ in other, non-relevant respects. The problem with this
argument is that it is difficult to define precisely what counts as relevant and to explain why sex
and race are not relevant, but intelligence is.
Despite the difficulties with these arguments against discrimination, there are five widely
recognized categories of discriminatory practices:
1. Recruitment practices that rely on the word-of-mouth referrals of present employees will
tend to recruit only from the groups already represented.
2. Screening practices that include qualifications not relevant to a job (such as requiring a
certain level of education for very low-level jobs).
3. Promotion practices that place groups on separate tracks or that rely solely on seniority
when past discrimination has kept women or minorities out of senior positions.
4. Conditions of employment that do not award equal wages and salaries to people doing
essentially the same work.
5. Discharging an employee based on race or gender, or layoff policies that rely solely on
seniority.
Women are victims of a different and troublesome type of discrimination: sexual harassment.
Generally, the guidelines against sexual harassment are clearly morally justified. However, there
are some aspects of the guidelines that must be examined. They prohibit more than just particular
acts of harassment, they also prohibit creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working
environment.
This raises some difficult questions. Are mechanics who hang pin-up calendars guilty of sexual
harassment? Though most people now say yes, there are a number of critics who say that these
kinds of environments were not intended to degrade women, and besides, women have the power
to take care of themselves. In addition, the guidelines say that verbal or physical contact is
harassment if it has the effect of unreasonably interfering with the victim's work performance.
This means, claim some critics, that sexual harassment depends on the purely subjective
judgments of the victim; what is unreasonable to one person may seem perfectly acceptable to
another.
A more serious objection to such guidelines is that they violate peoples right to free speech.
However, though these objections may be valid on college campuses, they are not at all relevant
to businesses, where free discussion and examination of ideas are not the focus.
A firm can be guilty of sexual harassment even if it did not know and could not have known that
the harassment was going onindeed, even if the firm had expressly forbidden the offensive act.
Supporters of the guidelines point out that the harms caused by sexual harassment should be
considered a cost of doing business, which it is proper to internalize.

65

Groups other than women and racial minorities can be the victims of discrimination. The
disabled, victims of AIDS, homosexuals, and the overweight are all discriminated against.
Currently, there are no federal laws prohibiting discrimination against many of these groups.

7.4 Affirmative Action

So far, the policies discussed in this chapter are all negative, aimed at preventing further
discrimination. Affirmative action programs, in contrast, call for positive steps designed to
eliminate the effects of past discrimination. Such programs are now legally required of all firms
holding government contracts.
Affirmative action programs begin with a detailed study, a "utilization analysis" of the major job
classifications in an organization. The analysis is designed to discover whether there are fewer
minorities or women in a particular job classification than could reasonably be expected. If the
analysis shows that women or minorities are underutilized, then the firm must establish practices
to correct these deficiencies.
The U.S. Supreme Court has not been clear about the legality of affirmative action programs.
Rulings suggest significant vacillation on the issue. The main grounds for attacking them is that,
in attempting to correct the effects of past injustice, affirmative action may actually be racially or
sexually discriminatory itself.
In the face of this objection, supporters of affirmative action make two main counterarguments.
One of these is to interpret affirmative action as a form of compensation for past injuries. The
other interprets preferential treatment as an instrument for achieving social goals. The former
arguments are backward looking, focusing on the wrongness of the past; the latter are forward
looking, instrumentalist arguments focusing on what the future ought to be.
Those who see affirmative action as a form of compensation maintain that white males must pay
reparations for unjustly injuring others by discrimination in the past. The difficulty with such
arguments is that the principle of compensatory justice requires that compensation should come
only from those specific individuals who intentionally inflicted a wrong, and should be paid only
to those specific individuals who suffered that wrong. It does not require that compensation
should come from all members of a group containing some wrongdoers, nor that compensation
should go to all members of a group containing some injured parties. Many have attempted to
counter this argument by claiming that every minority living today has been injured by
discrimination and that every white male has benefited from those injuries. Whether these
arguments are successful or not is unclear.
The second way of justifying affirmative action sees it as an instrument for social change. Based
on the statistics such as those at the beginning of this chapter, such arguments maintain that race
and gender provide an indicator of need. Since reducing this need is consistent with utilitarian
principles (as it will increase total utility), affirmative action is justified.
Objections made to this argument question whether the social costs of affirmative action
outweigh their benefits. However, even more elaborate and convincing arguments for affirmative
66

action are made. They argue that the goal of affirmative action is social justice, and that
affirmative action is a morally legitimate means for achieving this goal.
Presently, women and minorities do not have the equal opportunity that justice demands statistics
prove this. The conscious and unconscious bias that brings this injustice about must be neutralized,
along with the competitive disadvantages with which women and minorities are burdened. The
basic end, therefore, is a more just society, and preferential treatment is a morally legitimate means
to attain this end.
However, three reasons have been advanced to show that affirmative action is not, in fact,
morally legitimate. First, it is claimed that affirmative action discriminates against white males.
However, given the definition of discrimination, because the preferential treatment is not based
on contempt of white males, it cannot be said to be the same thing as discrimination against
minorities or women.
Second, some claim that preferential treatment violates the principle of equality because it takes
into consideration race, which is an irrelevant characteristic. Defenders of affirmative action
counter by saying that sexual and racial differences are actually relevant characteristics. Third,
critics claim that affirmative action actually harms minorities by implying that they are so
inferior to white males that they need special help to succeed. This claim is countered by saying
that, though affirmative action undoubtedly has some costs, the benefits of such programs
outweigh them. Moreover, they point out that affirmative action is not based on an assumption of
white male superiority but on recognition of bias in favor of white males. Finally, they point out
that though some minorities may feel inferior because of affirmative action, many more are made
to feel inferior because of racismand besides, showing preference towards them does not make
them feel inferior. The arguments on both sides are powerful, and the debate continues.
Because of concerns raised by opponents of affirmative action, guidelines have been suggested
to ensure that its more harmful effects will be lessened. Of course, the problems encountered by
minorities differ markedly from those encountered by women. Recently, some proposals that are
more radical than affirmative action have been made to deal with sexual discrimination. Since
the jobs women have historically taken pay low wages and salaries, proponents of comparable
worth programs attempt not to place women into higher paying jobs, but to increase the salaries
of those jobs where women currently are employed.
In a comparable worth program, each job in a firm is assigned a certain number of points for
difficulty, skill requirements, experience, and other factors. Then, jobs are assumed to deserve
equal pay if they score similarly. The fundamental argument in favor of comparative worth is the
principle of justice. Opponents counter that the market is the most appropriate determining factor
of wages. If the market pays a certain job a low salary, they claim, it is because there is a large
supply of workers in that category.
In the near future, only a small proportion of new workers will be white males. Because of this
demographic trend, firms' enlightened self-interest will prompt them to give women and
minorities special consideration. If they do not accommodate themselves to these workers, they
may not be able to find the workers they need to compete in the world market.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
The Individual in the Organization
Overview
Introduction
The chapter begins with the experiences of three very different individuals in the business world.
Though they each see the organization from a different vantage point, they all on some level
report problematic characteristics, from alienation and feelings of oppression to power tactics
used by upper-level managers.
This chapter examines the problems caused by living within a business organization. It does so
by describing three different models of the business organization: the traditional model of the
business as a rational organization, the model of business as a political structure, and the model
of the organization as a network of caring relationships.

8.1 The Rational Organization

The traditional, "rational" model of the business organization defines it as a structure of formal
relationships, which are designed to achieve a goal efficiently. A firm's organizational chart,
identifying the formal hierarchies of authority, exemplifies the fundamental reality of the
organization.
At the bottom of the organization is the operational layer of workers who directly produce the
goods or provide the services. Above this are levels of middle managers who direct those below
them and are, in turn, directed by those above. At the top of the pyramid is the top management:
the CEO, the board of directors, and their staff.
This model presupposes that information will be gathered from the lower levels and rise to the
top, which collects it and uses it to make policy decisions. The glue that holds these layers
together is contracts: each employee freely and knowingly agrees to accept the organization's
formal authority. Therefore, employees have a moral responsibility to obey the employer in
pursuing the organization's goals, and the employer has a moral responsibility to provide the
employee with the pay and benefits they have promised (including fair working conditions).

8.2 The Employee's Obligations to the Firm

In this model, the employee's main moral duty is to work toward the goals of the firm. This view
has made its way into what is called "the law of agency," which specifies the legal duties of
employees toward their "principles," or employer. The employee, must pursue the firm's goals
and do nothing that conflicts with them while working for the firm.
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An employee might fail to live up to this duty in several ways. He or she might steal outright
from the firm, act on a conflict of interest, or use his position to leverage illicit benefits out of
others through extortion or bribery.
Conflicts of interest arise when employees have a private interest in the outcome of a task in
which they are engaged that is possibly antagonistic to the firm's interests and substantial enough
that it might affect the employee's independent judgment on the firm's behalf. The result is that
self-interest induces employees to act in ways that may not be in the best interests of the firm.
Conflicts of interest can also arise when employees of a company hold another job or
consultancy outside the firm. These may be either actual or potential. Actual conflicts occur
when a person discharges his or her duties in a manner prejudicial to the firm. A potential
conflict occurs when a person is merely motivated or tempted to do so.
If contractual agreements impose moral duties (as we generally agree they do), then actual
conflicts of interest are clearly immoral. Potential conflicts of interest may or may not be ethical,
depending on the probability that the employee's judgment will be affected (or seem to be
affected) by the conflict of interest.
Bribes and extortion are obviously unethical and create clear conflicts of interest. Accepting gifts
may or may not be ethical, depending on a number of factors:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

What is the value of the gift?

What is the purpose of the gift?
What are the circumstances under which the gift was given?
What is the position of the recipient?
What is the accepted practice in the area?
What is the company's policy?
What is the law?

Employees have a contractual agreement to accept only specific benefits in return for their
services and to use the firm's resources for the good of the firm. Any other use of company
resources and any other appropriation of benefits by the employee counts as theft. Though theft
is often petty (such as the stealing of office supplies or the padding of expense accounts), it
extends to white-collar crimes such as embezzlement, larceny, fraud, and forgery.
More recent forms of theft involve forms of information and company computers. Copying a
company's software or data, or using a company computer for personal business (unless
explicitly allowed) are examples of unethical forms of theft. Propriety information or "trade
secrets" is information that the company owns concerning its activities, which it explicitly
indicates that it does not want others to have. Sharing such information is also unethical.
However, skills that an employee acquires by working for a company do not count as trade
secrets. Though some companies have tried to work around this by asking employees to sign
contracts agreeing not to work for competitors after leaving the firm, courts generally have
rejected the validity of such contracts.
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Information can lead to other types of unethical behavior. Insider trading, the act of buying or
selling company stock on the basis of confidential or proprietary information, is illegal and
unethical. Some have attempted to argue that insider trading is actually ethical and socially
beneficial; it does not harm anyone and helps the stock price reflect its true value, they maintain.
These arguments ignore some basic facts about insider trading, though: the insider information,
being proprietary, does not belong to the trader; it is stolen property. In addition, research shows
that insider trading harms people. It violates people's rights, is based on an unjust advantage, and
harms the overall utility of society.

8.3 The Firm's Duties to the Employee

A firm's main moral duty to its employees is to provide them with a fair wage and fair working
conditions. Setting a fair wage is both important and difficult, so employers will need to consider
these factors:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

What is the going wage in the industry and the area?

What are the firm's capabilities?
What is the nature of the job?
What are the minimum wage laws?
What are the other salaries in the firm?
Were wage negotiations fair?
What are the local costs of living?

Working conditions are equally important. Ten percent of the U.S. job force suffers a job related
injury or illness each year. Although more attention is being paid to worker safety than ever
before, occupational accident rates are not all declining, they are rising.
Risks are sometimes unavoidable and acceptable, as long as employees are fully compensated for
assuming them and they do so freely and knowingly. However, if wages are not proportional to
the risks, or the risk is accepted unknowingly or out of desperation, then the contract between
employer and employee is not fair, and is therefore unethical. Employers must offer wages that
reflect the dangers of high-risk jobs, provide employees with suitable health insurance programs,
and collect information about health hazards that accompany its jobs, making the information
available to employees.
Because the rational model of the organization puts a high value on efficiency, jobs can often be
specialized and job satisfaction can suffer as a result. Jobs can be specialized either horizontally
(by restricting the range of tasks contained in the job and increasing the repetition of this narrow
range) or vertically (by restricting the range of control and decision-making that the job
requires).
Job specialization can have debilitating effects. Adam Smith was among the first to point this out
over 200 years ago, and recent research confirms his opinion. Surprisingly, not all workers are
equally affected by job specialization. Older workers and workers in urban areas are more
tolerant; still, only about one quarter of workers would choose the same job again if they could
start over.
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Highly specialized work presents a problem of justice, especially for unskilled laborers who are
paid the least and whose level of specialization is usually greatest. Research shows that excessive
job specialization can even be detrimental to efficiency. To lessen the negative effects of
specialization, employers should expand jobs along these five dimensions:
1.
2.
3.
4.

Skill variety - the job should require a variety of challenging activities.

Task identity - the job should require a whole and identifiable piece of work.
Task significance - the job should have an impact on the lives of others.
Autonomy - the job should give the worker freedom to determine how he/she will carry it
out.
5. Feedback - the worker should get information about the value of his/her efforts.
These dimensions suggest deepening most jobs vertically and expanding them horizontally.

8.4 The Political Organization

Although much of the behavior of an organization accords with the rational model of the
organization, a great deal of organizational behavior is neither goal directed, efficient, or rational.
To understand this behavior, we need a second model of the firm: the firm as a political
organization.
This model is newer than the rational model. Unlike that model, it does not look only at the
formal lines of authority. Instead, it emphasizes the informal lines of influence and sees the
organization as a system of competing power coalitions. This model is much more complex,
focusing on the competitive nature of different factions within a firm. The goals of the firm are
the goals established by the historically most powerful or dominant coalition; the fundamental
reality of the organization is not formal authority or contract, but power.
If power is the main organizational reality, then the primary ethical problems in an organization
are connected with acquiring and exercising power. The two main questions become:
1.

What are the moral limits to the power managers acquire and
exercise over their subordinates?
2.
What are the moral limits to the power employees acquire and
exercise on each other?

8.5 Employee Rights

Corporate management is similar to a government: they are centralized decision-making bodies
who have power and authority to enforce their decisions on subordinates concerning the
distribution of resources, benefits, and burdens. Some observers hold that this power is so
comparable to the power of governmental officials that the moral limits placed on governmental
officials must extend to managers as well. As government must respect the civil rights of
citizens, managers must respect the moral rights of employees: the rights to privacy, consent, and
freedom of speech, among others.
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There are important differences between corporations and governments, however. Governmental
power is based on consent, while corporate power is based on ownership. Since managers' power
rests on property rights, they have the right to impose whatever conditions they choose on their
employees who freely and knowingly contract to work there. Moreover, managerial power
(unlike governmental power) is limited by the countervailing power of unions, and employees
can leave firms more easily than citizens can change countries. Therefore, it may not follow that
all of the safeguards afforded citizens should be carried over to employees. Employee rights
advocates counter that dispersed ownership means that managers no longer function as agents for
the owner of a firm (there is no single owner), so property rights are no longer relevant. In
addition, unions do not protect many workers, and changing jobs can be a very difficult and
traumatic experience.
Employees have some rights, in any case. Because of technical innovations, the right to privacy
is under attack more than ever before. Employees' rights to privacy must be balanced against
employers' rights to know certain information about their activities. Three elements are relevant
when considering this balance:
1. Relevance - the employer must limit his inquiry to areas that are directly relevant to the
issue at hand.
2. Consent - employees must be given the opportunity to give or withhold consent before
their private lives are investigated and should be informed of any surveillance.
3. Methods - employers must use ordinary and reasonable methods of inquiry unless
circumstances are extraordinary.
Other rights are even less certain. Workers may think they have freedom of conscience, but if
they discover that their firm is doing something that harms society, they have few legal options
available if internal management does nothing about it. The company has the legal right to
punish the employee who informs against the firm with firing or blacklisting him or her. Though
some authors have pointed out that this is a clear violation of an individual's right to freedom of
conscience, the law nevertheless maintains that the employee's duty is to maintain loyalty and
confidentiality towards the employer.
Whistle blowing, the attempt by an employee to disclose wrongdoing in an organization, can
take two forms. It is internal if it is reported only to management within the organization. If it is
reported to others (such as governmental agencies or the media), then it is external. Whistle
blowing can have heavy personal costs, but it is sometimes justified when there is clear evidence
that the firm's activity is seriously harming others and reasonable attempts to prevent it by
informing management have failed, as long as it is reasonably certain that the whistle blowing
will prevent the harm and the harm is serious enough to justify the injuries it will bring upon the
whistleblower.
However, the fact that it is sometimes justified does not mean it is obligatory. Whistle blowing is
only morally required when the employee has a moral obligation to prevent the wrong that
whistle blowing will prevent, and the wrong involves serious harm to society's overall welfare,
serious injustice against a person or group, or serious violation of people's basic moral rights.
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In a democracy, citizens have the right to participate in government, where decisions that affect
the group are made by a majority of its members after full, free, and open discussions. Some
authors have proposed that these ideals should be embodied in business organizations. As a first
step, they suggest that business decisions should be made only after open discussion with
workers. Next, individual workers should have the right to make decisions about their own
immediate work activities. Such models are not generally popular in the U.S.
Some management theorists urge managers to adopt a participatory leadership style, assuming
that employees want and can develop the capacity to accept responsibility, are ready to support
organizational goals, and can determine the best means of achieving them. Following the theory
of Douglas McGregor, Raymond Miles distinguishes three models of sets of assumptions that
managers can make about employees:
1. Traditional - employees dislike work, are not capable of being creative or self-directed,
and care only about what they earn.
2. Human relations - employees want to belong and feel recognized, useful, and important;
meeting these needs is more important than what they earn.
3. Human resources - employees like work, want to contribute to meaningful goals that they
help establish, and can be creative and responsible.
Another theorist, Rensis Likert, posits not three but four "systems of organization." If such
management styles are more effective and productive, then on utilitarian grounds firms ought to
adopt them. However, research on this issue is not yet conclusive.
Another democratic right, the right to due process of the law, is countered in business by the
principle of employment at will. According to this principle, employers may dismiss their
employees whenever they desire, for good or no cause, even for morally wrong causes. This
principle has recently come under attack, and the trend is towards the view that employees have
some right to due process, a fair process by which decisions about their employment are made.
This is a vitally important right, since if it is not respected, the employees have little chance of
seeing any other right respected. Due process plays a central role in the hearing of grievances.
Theorists identify five essential features of an effective grievance procedure:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Three to five steps of appeal

A written account of the grievance
Alternate routes of appeal beyond the immediate supervisor
A time limit for each step
Permission for the employee to be accompanied by another

On a larger level, as plant closings become more common, the rights of employees in these
situations need to be considered. Plant closings impose high costs on workers, so when plant
closings are inevitable, workers' moral rights should continue to be respected. Utilitarian
principles suggest that the harm caused by layoffs should be minimized, which means that the
costs of plant closings should be borne by those best able to bear them namely the company.
Considerations of justice further imply that workers and communities should be repaid by the
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firms not unjustly abandoning pension, health, and retirement plans. Companies that have to
close plants can minimize the harm they cause individuals and their communities by giving
advance notice, severance pay, health benefits, early retirement, transfers, retraining, allowing
employee purchase, and phasing out local taxes.
As owners have the right to associate to establish and run their business to achieve their morally
legitimate ends, so workers have the right to freely associate with each other to establish and run
unions to achieve their own morally legitimate ends. The worker's right to organize derives from
the right to be treated as a free and equal person. Unions, moreover, have traditionally been
justified as an important and legitimate countervailing means of balancing the power of large
corporations. Workers have the right to form unions and to strike as well. Though unions have
been important in the establishing of worker rights in the U.S. and around the world, unions
represent a dwindling percentage of American workers. Opposition to unions is on the rise, and
the use of illegal tactics against them is rising as well. As the effectiveness of unions shrinks, it is
likely that we will need more laws to secure the rights that unions had previously protected.

8.6 Organizational Politics

The chapter, so far, has focused primarily on formal power relationships and the ethical
constraints that must be placed on this formal power. But there are informal channels of power in
organizations as well, which can be used ethically and unethically.
For the purposes of this chapter, organizational politics is defined as the process by which
individuals or groups within an organization use non-formally sanctioned tactics (political
tactics) to advance their own aims. (Such aims are not necessarily in conflict with the best
interests of the organization.) Because organizational politics aim to advance the interests of an
individual or group, political individuals tend to be covert, which means that they can easily
become deceptive or manipulative. Some of the most frequent political tactics encountered in
business organizations are:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Blaming or attacking others.

Controlling information.
Developing a base of support for one's ideas.
Image building.
Ingratiation.
Associating with the influential.
Forming power coalitions and developing strong allies.
Creating obligations.

Such behavior can easily become abusive, manipulative, or deceptive, seriously injuring others.
It can also be used to advance laudable organizational and social goals, however, and sometimes
the only defense a person in an organization has is to fight fire with fire. The dilemma is
knowing where the line is that separates the moral from the immoral use of political tactics.
Perhaps the best way to approach them is to test them against the four standards of ethics: the
utilitarian question (are the goals of the tactics socially beneficial?); the rights question (do the
tactics treat others consistently with their moral rights?); the justice question (will the tactics lead
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to an equitable distribution of benefits and burdens?); and the caring question (what impact will
the tactics have on the web of relationships within the organization?).

8.7 The Caring Organization

So far, the chapter has examined organizations as having either hierarchical power relationships
or crisscrossing lines of power. They can also be seen as a network of connected individuals all
concerned with each other. The primary goal of the organization is not profit, but caring for those
individuals who make up the organization and with whom the organization interacts.
Some argue that business organizations in which such relationships flourish exhibit better
economic performance. There are few organizations that perfectly embody the caring model,
though W. L. Gore & Associates comes close. The essential ethical concerns that arise from this
model are the problem of caring too much (which leads to burnout) and the problem of not
caring enough because of fatigue, self-interest, or disinterest.

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