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BUCHAREST ACADEMY OF ECONOMIC STUDIESFACULTY OF ECONOMIC STUDIES IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Prof.
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Dan C
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iunBUSINESSANDMORALITYA SHORT INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS ETHICSEditu
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Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason thegood has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.
ARISTOTLE
,
Nicomachean Ethics
The creed which accepts as the foundations of morals Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions areright in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
JOHN STUART MILL
, UtilitarianismAct only on that maxim whereby you could at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
IMMANUEL KANT
, Fundamental Principlesof the Metaphysic of MoralsCorporate criminality and environmental disasters may grab the headlines, but it is business·s ordinary, everyday conductthat matters most. The specific performance which business ethics enjoins is that of ditributively just and ordinarilydecent business behaviour ² all of the time, to all those involved in the business, and by them all.
ELAINE STERNBERG
, Just Business
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As far as I know, this might be the first textbook on business ethics ever published in Romania. In any case, it is one of thefirst attempts to introduce our public to a relatively new field of research, concerned with the moral issues of businessactivities. The reader must expect to find in the next chapters nothing more than said in the title of the book. This is neithera treatise, trying to analyze all of the main issues in business ethics, from a unified standpoint, neither a monograph on aspecific topic. It is only an introduction to business ethics. A short one for reasons that will be presented below.This book has several limitations. It is fair to begin with my own weak points. In the first place, I had to write thisIntroduction in English ² a foreign language very dear to me but which I do not speak as well as I would like to and I should² because it is dedicated to my students from SELS: Economic Studies in Foreign Languages, English section. Secondly, asmost of the writers in the field of business ethics ² academics with little direct knowledge of real business activities ²I am, too, not very familiar with the theory and practice of economics. I began to study the moral philosophy since I was astudent and I have received my PhD in Ethics about fifteen years ago, at the University of Bucharest. I only recentlybecame interested in business ethics. More precisely, in the autumn of 2001 I have been offered the privilege of aresearch scholarship at Newnham College, Cambridge, UK, where I had the chance to meet dr. Onora O·Neill ² a notedinterpreter of Kantian moral philosophy and a distinguished authority in British ethics. She made me take notice of thereal boom of applied ethics in the Anglo-American academic life, less concerned in the last decades with abstract generalethical theories, and constantly more dedicated to specific moral issues, raised in medicine, biology, law or business. Myfirst trip to England happened to be coincident with my assignment at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest,where my first job is to teach business ethics. Consequently, I began to study with increasing interest the specializedliterature in the field. One year later, in March - April 2002, I was offered a new research scholarship at New College,Oxford, where I have taken full advantage of the exceptional oxonian libraries. There I had the chance to meet Roger Crisp,fellow of St. Anne·s College, a wonderful person and a distinguished ethicist, lately specialized in business ethics. Ourdiscussions helped me to realize the potential of this new field of investigation, its traps and difficulties, as well as thedifferences of approach between the American and West European schools of business ethics.
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When I began to work on this book, my intention was to divide its contents into three parts: The first, entitled ¶Moralityand business·, covers the first four chapters in the actual version. Adopting a distinction made by Tom Sorell and JohnHendry, I was planning to add two more parts: ¶Narrow business ethics· ² concerned with the close range relationships ofa business with its customers, employees, shareholders and other associated businesses, such as suppliers or creditors ²followed by a final part, ¶Broad business ethics·, concerned with the relationships of a business with the state, society orenvironment, and international business ethics. If I could achieve this plan, this book would still have been an ¶Introduction·,but not a short one. Unfortunately, I have met an unsuperable obstacle: the total lack of valuable information about themoral dilemmas of the Romanian managers and their ways to cope with them. The Anglo-American books on businessethics are full of case studies, selected, obviously, from the economic life in the Western countries. World-wide knownbusiness media, such as BusinessWeek, Fortune, Wall Street Journal or Financial Times ² especially after the Enronscandal ² publish regularly the opinions of expert comentators or representative CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) of bignational or multinational companies on various business ethics issues. Most of these opinions are relevant only becausethey are expressed by notorious and respected business leaders in the West but in themselves are rhetorical and not verysignificant. Anyway, I think it is better for my students to read these articles by themselves, in their original version.We should be much more interested in the ethical problems which confront Romanian business leaders and theirways to solve them. But where could one look for the ethical decisions taken by our CEOs? Our business reviews andnewspapers, such as Capital, Biz or Ziarul financiar never deals with business ethics issues. As for our news media, tele-vision and daily journals, they are full of scandals. As I shall argue in this book, scandals are not a good starting point inbusiness ethics, primarily because they present cases which are morally uncontroversial. There is nothing to be discussedfrom an ethical point of view when we are dealing with thieves and crooks; bribery, corruption, tax fraud and so on areillegal behaviours, that cannot be morally justified. Ethics begins with the decision to keep the law and continues with theanalysis and evaluation of those practical decisions that can be made within the limits of the law. Because of this lack ofinformation, I had to postpone the drafting of the third part, for a second edition of this book, that had to be published assoon as possible.I am a supporter of a Kantian perspective on ethics, for several reasons. One of them is the fact that, like ImmanuelKant, I have been interested in logic, which I had taught for many years and which I continue to teach. I strongly believethat ethics cannot be constructed inductively, starting from the observation of the specific behaviours of different peoplein particular circumstances, in order to obtain empirical generalizations. That is why I deny the possibility of a generalethical theory extracted from applied ethics; in other words, I simply cannot conceive of stating universal moral principlesstarting from the conclusions reached by medical ethics, bioethics, legal ethics or business ethics. On the contrary, thesespecific ethical theories imply the existence of a general ethical theory, that can be constructed only deductively. Asan applied ethics, business ethics must start with a conceptual framework, used as a paradigm for the analysis and inter-pretation of particular cases collected from the business activities. I do not underestimate the significance andimportance of case studies in business ethics, but I am convinced that they are useless or misleading in the absence of aconceptual framework that is needed for their understanding. There is much to be discussed from an ethical point ofview when dealing with ¶narrow business ethics· topics: customers, employees, shareholders or other associatedbusinesses. But when it comes to ¶broad business ethics· issues ² state, society, environment or international business ²the emphasis falls on case studies. At the general principles level, it is undisputable that a business must discharge itsduties to the state; that a business must not harm the society; that it must not destroy the environment or that theexploitation of weak countries by the strong ones is morally wrong. There is nothing to be theoretically argued about here.The interesting part is how a certain business tried and succeeded or failed to put its activities in accordance with thosegenerally accepted moral, as well as legal, rules. Consequently, in these matters the absence of valuable information aboutthe Romanian companies might be a serious obstacle, as long as the experience of the big Western corporations is not yetrelevant for our still developing capitalist economy.These premises have driven me to the conclusion that, for the time being, the most important task of teachingbusiness ethics to our students in economics is to make as clear as possible the fundamental principles of general ethicaltheories, and to analyse their applications in the most visible and controversial segments in our present economic life. Igave up the idea of dividing this book in parts, and I have decided to deal with only seven topics.The first chapter, ¶What for business ethics?·, is intended to argue the necessity of this kind of approach, as a genuineuseful instrument for decision taking in real business. Primarily I am concerned with making a clear distinction between
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