Humanizing Business through Emotions: On the Role of Emotions in Ethics

Yotam Lurie

ABSTRACT. Emotions have not received sufficient attention in business ethics. This paper identifies the positive role of emotions in human judgment and attitudes. It then argues that emotions as well as feelings on the part of managers and their employees can be positive forces for both business managers and for the organizations they lead. Allowing emotions a stronger role in business affairs could serve in putting a more human face on both managers and their organizations. KEY WORDS: emotions, evaluations, feelings, humanity, management, morality, values

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. (Dante Alighieri)

business, arguing that in order to be a business leader, one has to be first and foremost a human being. But what exactly does this entail in the context of business transactions? Likewise, what does it mean to humanize business management, and why should business managers strive for such ethical goals? In the following paper I flesh out one important and often neglected ethical feature of human life that can serve to humanize business: the possession of emotional attitudes on the part of business managers regarding the affairs of business. I then argue that having emotions, feelings, and affections is an important ethical asset for business managers and is central to humanizing management.

Introduction The metaphor of humanizing business is important and suggestive for thinking about business management. It is, however, a metaphor that does not disclose itself easily. Similarly difficult to unpack is the metaphor of business as a humanity, which Richard DeGeorge (1994) provides for arguing that the current business education fails to produce real leaders. DeGorge links business leadership to a humanized form of
Yotam Lurie is a Lecturer in Philosophy and Ethics at the Department of Management and head of the Deichmann Chair for Business Ethics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. Lurie holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. His research focuses on a variety of issues in applied ethics, particularly within the context of business and professional ethics.

1. Two contrasting types of business 1. managers Contrast the images of two business managers, Larry the Liquidator (played by Danny DeVito) and Jorgy Jorgenson (played by Gregory Peck) in Norman Jewisons 1991 movie, Other Peoples Money. Larry is smart, extremely calculated, disarmingly likable and absolutely ruthless in business. We gain insight into Larrys life, when we see the expensive corner office in the Manhattan tower, the block-long limousine, the luxurious apartment in a highrise, and the butler. Larry is also a bachelor, lacking family ties. Larry is full of emotion and desires, as expressed in his love for Kate Sullivan and his lust for successes, but he does not let them interfere with his business judgments, which are shrewd and cunning. In contrast, Jorgy the president of the New England Wire and Cable Company, a second-generation family business, is an old-

Journal of Business Ethics 49: 111, 2004. 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Yotam Lurie Likewise, I do not intend to focus on the question of who is right, Larry or Jorgy; or whose position is better supported. I focus on the images of Larry and Jorgy, as representing two types of business managers, and more particularly two types of leaders within the business community. Research on leadership, offering various typologies of leaders, dates from the most ancient times and encompasses many of the classical works of world literature such as Aristotle, Plato, Pliny and Machiavelli. In the 1920s and 1930s leadership research focused on trying to identify the traits that differentiated leaders from nonleaders. Much of this research was content with creating extensive catalogues of the desirable, enabling traits. Later leadership scholarship adopted a more behavioral approach. The behavioral theorists, identified determinants of leadership so that people could be trained to be leaders. They developed training programs to change managers leadership behaviors and assumed that the best styles of leadership could be learned. However, it is Burns (1978) Leadership, which is now regarded as the seminal work in the field. It was the first book intended to categorize and explain leadership. Although Burns is regarded a seminal work in the field, it is Bass who has become the driving force in contemporary leadership scholarship. Bass has written widely on leadership categories and greatly expands Burns pioneering distinction, which divides leadership into transformational and transactional leadership. Bass is concerned with identifying different types of leaders in terms of their effectiveness and in terms of their organizational implications (Bass, 1985, 1998, 1990, 1999).1 Not all managers are leaders (Kotter, 1990), but both Larry and Jorgy do emerge as leaders. When looking at these two characters, it is important to qualify that the distinction between Larry and Jorgy as two types of leaders is a pragmatic and literary distinction, which is made in order to demonstrate that having emotions, feelings, and affections is an important ethical asset for business managers. It is neither a metaphysical nor an organizational distinction between different types or styles of leaders. In other words, this is a different kind of distinction

fashioned stalwart and family man. He is emotionally involved in his handling of the business, which is important to him regardless of the profits he generates. He is proud of the contribution his business makes to the community, and he cares about the welfare of the people who work for him. Jorgy wants to continue making wires and cables. Larry wants to raid the company, break it up, strip it of its assets and sell the profitable divisions. Larry stands for lust and greed embodied in business. In contrast, Jorgy stands for the old-fashioned American family and community values embodied in business. The climactic strife between these two business managers breaks out in the shareholders meeting. Jorgy stands up first and defends all the old-fashioned American business values. After he sits down, Larry stands up and delivers a speech defending the shareholders rights to make a profit on their property (Ebert, 1991). The shareholders vote is in his favor, although not unanimously. At a very intuitive level, with whom would most people prefer to interact on a professional basis? It seems that though Larry is very professional and will most likely guarantee a solid profit, he is too task oriented to personify a business leader. There is something inhuman and too profit oriented about him. He is good for liquidating things, not for building up businesses. In contrast, Jorgys business assets and liabilities have to do with his humanity and his desire to build and to continue with production. There is something very human about him and his production-oriented approach to the business he manages (Yukl, 2002, p. 328). He cares not only about the bottom line, but also about the product of the business. Furthermore, he is proud of the value that the business has for the community and those who are employed by it. He has feelings both for the lives of the people with whom he works and for the business that he manages. My aim here is not to contrast the business values of Jorgy and Larry, as such. Much has been written in business ethics literature about the differences between shareholders positions to moral responsibility and broader understandings of moral responsibility as exemplified by Jorgy.

Humanizing Business through Emotions from the many typologies within the very rich leadership literature. Both Larry and Jorgy convey two very different images of business managers who are leaders within their community on the basis not only of the different values they espouse, but also on the basis of how they approach, think and feel about morally loaded business situations. They differ not only in the business values they have, but also in their psychology: in how they feel about business and ethical issues. The last remark is crucial, for it is moral feelings, and the role they play in the business life of managers, which are the focus of this paper. Philosophical studies devoted to the role of emotions in human life take on a variety of forms (e.g., Rorty, 1980; Ben-Zeev, 2000). Some studies attempt to analyze the nature of emotions in general while distinguishing emotions from other psychological states. Other studies focus on a particular emotion or a certain class of emotions, trying to identify the unique features of the given emotion or set of emotions. Finally, there are also studies that address questions regarding the connection between emotions and morality. It is this third line of inquiry about emotions that is more pertinent to what I want to explore here. Moral philosophy has had much to say about moral judgments, but has had considerably less to say about what one ought or ought not to feel in various circumstances. Feelings and emotions come in many different shapes and sizes, and they are all concrete ways of grasping and experiencing the meaning of a given situation in a very personal and immediate fashion. Most human beings are susceptible to all of them, although some more than others. Human beings who are deprived of the ability to experience certain emotions are deprived of a very human way of grasping the meaning of certain situations in an immediate, concrete and personal fashion. A deprivation of this sort affects their grasp of situations. It affects their sensitivity to the situations ramifications and how they understand those ramifications. For example, someone who is afraid of heights is apt to be careful when standing on the edge of cliff and to sympathize and identify with someone in a similar situation. Extreme fear of heights is not a feeling that is

conducive to mountain climbing. However its complete absence can lead to recklessness when climbing. Also, someone who is incapable of feeling fear might find it difficult to sympathize with others who do feel fear. Consider another example of how emotions can amplify ones understanding of a certain situation and the sense in which they have an important cognitive component. During a rough football match, fans and people who are partisans tend to be more sensitive at noticing penalties committed against their team. This certainly does not make them better referees, but it does provide them with a certain cognitive advantage in grasping the intricacy of the game. I argue that in this respect managers are no different from other human beings. While emotions may cloud their sound judgment and hinder the role they play in business leadership, these same emotions may also contribute important assets in such cases. Like all of us, business managers can both suffer and benefit from having feelings and emotions towards their affairs. The stoic attitude to human affairs notwithstanding, I argue that it is important for human beings in general and specifically for managers to be able to feel anger in certain business circumstances, and experience remorse and grief in others. It is also important that managers experience emotions such as envy, shame, anxiety, fear, disgust, pity, mercy, compassion and gratitude in connection with various business decisions. In this context we should distinguish between the importance of being able to experience all sorts of emotions, and emotional traits of character, that are possibly destructive and detrimental to both sound business transactions and valued leadership. Being mean or hateful are such traits of character, as are cowardice and vengefulness. Blind emotions, as Brentano termed the concept, such as when a person is blinded by rage or love, do not provide sound ground for judgment. The media, as we are all aware, is very fond of portraying stories of a betrayed lover, for example, the lovers rage and the tragic consequences of this rage. Nonetheless, I argue that having a rich emotional life on the part of managers, which may even lead at times to such negative emotions, is a positive quality

Yotam Lurie develop different emotions with regard to a given situation, but the same object can often provoke very different emotions in the same person. Consider an example given by Ben Zeev (ibid., pp. 12):
[. . .] a man whose wife is a top executive in a large company and who does not normally experience jealousy. One day he reads in the newspaper about another female top executive who had an affair with her employee and suddenly he begins to feel jealous.

that turns such a manager into a more sensitive human being. Much in the same way that it is not wise for managers to make judgments based totally on emotions, it is also counterproductive to totally disregard emotions. The point is that managers who succeed in maintaining a balance, whose decisions are accompanied by emotions though not based only on emotions, are managers who maintain their humanity. Hence, like all human beings, business managers should be able to experience a wide range of emotions. In particular they should be able to experience that special group of emotions and social feelings that we sometimes call moral emotions, which include compassion, empathy, pity and mercy and are directed at the fortune and especially the misfortune of others. They should be able to experience emotions of self-assessment that include pride, humiliation, regret, shame, embarrassment and guilt, in which we take account of our own personal deeds and character. They should be also experience futurelooking emotions such as hope and fear and, possibly, other groups of emotions. All of these different types of emotions are important assets that should be at the disposal of business managers, as they contribute to humanizing them and their attitudes to business affairs. More can be said about the distinction between these different groups of emotions and how each of these groups of emotions is linked to moral decision-making. I will give just one example (for other examples see Strocker, 2000, pp. 209265). Consider the emotion of shame, which is an emotion of self-assessment. A person who loses his or her self-respect, and hence does not feel shame any more, can be a very dangerous person. In this respect feeling shame can prevent many people from behaving immorally. The feeling of shame bears witness to an uncorrupted conscience, to a conscience of a person who still cares, in the sense that although the person might have violated a social norm, he or she nevertheless feels bad about it (Ben-Zeev, 2000, p. 528). Part of the difficulty in bringing emotions into ethical discussions and particularly into business ethics is their personal, sometimes irrational and contextual nature. Not only are people libel to

One might add that though this man might be jealous, this does not mean that he has stopped loving his wife. Emotions come in clusters, and people often can have conflicting emotions (ibid., p. 4). This example is useful for articulating some of the basic features of an emotion. Emotions, claims Ben-Zeev (ibid., p. 49), have both an intentional dimension and a feeling dimension. The feeling dimension, though frequently confused as an emotion, is used to refer to the awareness of tactile qualities, sensations and moods associated with an emotion (ibid., p. 64). For example, the emotion of jealousy experienced by the husband might be manifest in feelings of insecurity and anxiety or possibly in feelings of rage. The intentional feature of an emotion is divided by Ben-Zeev into three components: [1] Emotions have a cognitive content in the sense that an emotion is a propositional attitude (ibid., pp. 5256). The husband is jealous that his wife (or about the fact that his wife) might be having an affair. [2] Emotions have a motivational component in the sense that they include a readiness or inclination to act, which is due to a practical concern with a person or situation (ibid., pp. 6064). In the case of the jealous husband, if his jealousy and love persist simultaneously, he might be disposed to stalking his wife or possibly trying to be with her at the office at all times. Finally, [3] emotions have an evaluative element (ibid., pp. 5657). Thus, the jealous husband evaluates the possibility of his wife having an affair as something negative and undesirable. It thus seems that emotions are ways of judging and evaluating people and situations that even though they are reason based, they are inherently subjective. As a result, they have been

Humanizing Business through Emotions deemed to be poor candidates for sound ethical judgments.

2. Banning emotions from moral 2. discourse The philosophical view, which regards the emotions as detrimental to ethical judgments, is a key and central element within classical and modern moral philosophy. Historically there have been whole intellectual traditions that have had ascetic and unemotional ideals. Epicureanism, Stoicism and Buddhism are but three examples of cultures that in one way or another preach unemotionalness as a preferred way of life (Stocker, 1996, p. 2; Oakley, 1992). Simultaneously, many philosophers currently working within the Kantian and utilitarian traditions have tried to bring the whole process of morality under the sovereignty of reason and under the control of rationality, thus banning emotions from moral discourse. Feelings and emotions are assumed to be the opposite of reason. Such philosophers do not want to allow for any contingent element relating to sociocultural circumstance (i.e., context) or human psychology and emotions within morally loaded situations (Blackwell, 1998, p. 8). Moral judgments, as opposed to emotional judgments, are supposed to be universalizable, impartial and impersonal. Emotivism (Ayer, 1950; Stevenson, 1946) is a philosophical view about the nature of moral judgments, which has been the most serious contemporary attempt to link between moral language and emotions. It argues that the function of moral judgments is twofold: to express the emotions of the speaker and to evoke similar emotions in the hearer (Williams, 1973b, p. 208). Consequently, according to Emotivism, moral judgments are devoid of any cognitive content. Emotivism is a philosophical view that now is mentioned mainly in order to be refuted in undergraduate courses. However, if we distinguish between the erroneous reductive element in the view and its correct understanding of the emotional connotations that ethical judgments can have, we can see that emotional atti-

tudes can be relevant for moral judgments. The question is then to what degree should we rely on emotions in morally loaded situations, and to what extent are these emotional attitudes an asset for business managers? In general, the tendency in business and professional ethics has been to steer clear of the contingency of socio-cultural context and the subjective element in moral feelings. This tendency has been manifested in a number of ways. One manifestation of this tendency is a common view found in professional ethics according to which a professional relationship requires a certain form of detachment and lack of personal interest (Callahan, 1988, p. 33). According to this view, professional roles are about role-playing, not about expressing personal individual human traits of character. Some think that these non-personal traits are also the proper traits for a manager. In discussions pertaining to business ethics this position is exemplified by the claim that we should focus only on the actions of managers. As long as managers arrives at the right decision, their feelings are irrelevant. More specifically, at least three features of emotions are particularly problematic for the integration of emotions into the moral domain (Ben-Zeev, 1997; Pizarro, 2000). First, emotions are partial by their very nature, whereas moral judgments are supposed to be made from an impartial point of view. Second, emotions are non-deliberative in the sense that there is a passive element to emotions. An individual does not make a conscious decision of how to feel: Feelings arise while emotions possess and overwhelm us. For example, one can suddenly be overcome (and blinded) by rage. Consequently, feelings cannot be viewed as an aid in rational moral judgments. Finally, there is something very arbitrary and contingent about emotions. This means that, in addition to the fact that they can be chemically or psychologically induced; often some kind of totally irrelevant feature of a situation may be responsible for inducing a certain emotion (Pizzaro, 2000, p. 357). Moreover, in different cultural contexts (and in people with different characters) the same emotion might be expressed very differently. For example, as Nussbaum (2001, pp. 139140) describes, the

Yotam Lurie importantly, he lacked the ability to act accordingly. The tale of Pinocchio tells us that what Pinocchio really lacked was a conscience such as has played a central role in the ethical life of humanity. Thus Pinocchio was not really human simply because he lacked a conscience. Related to this, persons who have no conscience are sometimes called socio-paths. In psychoanalysis they are described as lacking a super-ego. Such persons might seem normal, even though they are missing a fundamental ingredient possessed by most of humanity: the ability to develop inhibiting emotions and feelings of remorse. They might look like other human beings and talk like human beings, but they lack that critical element that renders people into ethical beings. It is by virtue of our ability to feel emotions such as remorse, compassion and guilt that we have a conscience. In this view possessing a conscience is a necessary precondition for partaking in moral life. To the extent that conscience is based on emotions, so is morality. If business managers want to disassociate themselves from all emotional considerations, then they want to disassociate themselves from considerations that pertain to conscience and ethics.

Ifaluk express grief over the death of a loved one with what they call a big cry which basically amounts to a great deal of very emotional wailing, screaming and crying. In contrast, Balinese respond to loss and express grief by distracting themselves and focusing on happy events. Similarly, even within the context of a single culture, women and men tend to express emotions, such as jealousy, differently. Another possible explanation for the contempt that many moral philosophers have had towards emotions as a morally relevant feature has to do with the presumption that even animals have feelings, and hence feelings fail to distinguish humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. The presupposition here is that the superiority of humans over animals has to do with our faculty of reason and not with emotions. This is, however, a peculiar and mistaken argument. The fact that animals can feel pain, pleasure, hunger and fear is not to say that they can experience the higher-level emotions, such as compassion, regret, wishing, hoping and pity, which distinguish us as humans. For example, in order to experience regret a person must regret that something did not happen (or that something did happen): regret that I did not check the shipment, or regret that I did not pay the insurance and so forth. Such statements are called propositional attitudes, because each has a specific propositional content (Malcolm, 1972; Davidson, 2001). They are about something. Propositional attitudes require a rich mental constitution. Regret is, thus, an emotion and as such has a propositional cognitive content. One cannot regret something without looking back at the past while framing counterfactual statements about possible states of affairs: what if I had done one thing and not the other. Similarly, emotions such as hope and desire, which are also propositional attitudes, are in addition also modal statements. To hope that P or desire that P is to imagine or project possible future situations. This brings me now to the role that our conscience plays in moral deliberations and to what extent it is underlain by moral emotions. Geppettos wooden puppet Pinocchio could walk and talk, but he lacked the ability to distinguish right from wrong in ethical situations. More

3. Bringing emotions back into ethical 3. considerations In recent years the philosophical pendulum regarding the role of emotions in ethical considerations has begun to swing back. Counter to the former views that emphasize the irrelevance of emotions for the moral domain, it has recently become more fashionable to criticize modern moral theories for being overly rationalistic and insensitive to individual integrity and, hence, to moral feelings. Bernard Williams (1973a), for example, has raised this issue against utilitarianism in his well-known discussion of George and Jim. George, the chemist feels uncomfortable about doing research for a chemical and biological warfare laboratory. Similarly, Jim feels uncomfortable with the dubious offer (of shooting one of the Indians who is tied to a tree) he has just received from his host Pedro. According to Williams these examples demonstrate that we

Humanizing Business through Emotions are partially at least not utilitarian, and cannot regard our moral feelings merely as objects of utilitarian value . . . utilitarianism alienates one from ones own moral feelings (Williams, 1973a, pp. 103104). Similarly, this kind of argument when directed against Kant often focuses on the fact that Kantianism upholds the belief that being morally worthy consists of always acting out of maxims that one could will to be universal law. Thus, these actions are not borne of any desire, interest or feeling, but out of reverence for the moral law as such (Wolf, 1982; Stocker, 1976; Railton, 1984). In this sense Kantianism, like utilitarianism, is overly rationalistic and suspect of being alienated from moral feelings. These kinds of arguments have had an important impact on issues of moral deliberation. Virtue ethics reemerges in the 80s as a general strand in ethics that focuses on the character traits required of the good judge of values. Thus, for example, the ethics of care is one form of virtue ethics, which further focuses the discussion against the idea that moral decision making is about the application of abstract rules and principles. Instead, proponents of the ethics of care, like Gilligan (1982) and Nodddings (1984), elaborate on the significance of concrete and detailed knowledge of the moral situation, situational and contextual knowledge, and that dilemmas should be considered in terms of the relationships involved. Related to this, the strain of virtue ethics known as particularism, which has been articulated by, among others, McDowell (1979), Wiggins (1988), and Nussbaum (1986), is a strain of virtue ethics that identifies a connection between virtues and certain moral sensitivities, such as kindness and compassion, which implicitly serve as the reason a person acts in a certain way. It is important, claims the Particularist, to respond to the salient features of the situation. Deliberation must be informed by both desire and passion (Nussbaum, 1986, p. 308). Similarly, as Wiggins (1988, pp. 231, 236) argues, it is the mark of a person of practical wisdom to be able to respond to a particular context, not by seeking some set of maxims or rules to which he can appeal and not by intellect alone, but rather by reflection, imagination and thought experimentation, appealing to whatever concerns and

passions the situation evokes. These kinds of critical arguments against the sovereignty of detached and abstract reason in modern moral theory have, nevertheless, not had a strong enough impact on business and managerial ethics. To further demonstrate the moral significance of emotions within the public domain, consider the following examples. Imagine a person who says, I feel very strongly about the issue or this is an issue for which I have strong emotions, as opposed to other issues about which one does not feel very strongly. What is the difference? What does it mean to feel strongly about something? Usually when we say that we feel strongly about something, it means that it is an issue about which we are passionate: that it is close to our heart, not only to our brains. One feels strongly regarding things that one cares about. Consider, for example the difference between two managers: the first claims: I am of the opinion that people should be compensated for their work; while the second asserts: I feel strongly that people should be compensated for their work. At face value, they are saying pretty much the same thing. However, at a deeper level of analysis, if they are both sincere, then the second manager is speaking from the heart and asserting something that is important to him, i.e., something that not only has positive value in his eyes, but rather something he feels passionately about and is important to him. Now, consider another example, imagine two individuals who are in total agreement that it is morally wrong to hurt women and children (or any other living being) for fun. Moreover, when confronted with instances of such behavior, they usually take very similar measures against it. However, there is an important difference between these two people. The first feels no anger or resentment towards those who hurt women and children for fun. The second does feel anger when confronted with instances of cruelty towards women and children (Blackwell, 1998). In other words, though they are in complete agreement that it is wrong to be cruel towards women and children, the first is unaffected emotionally and remains totally passionless, whereas the second is in a sense more passionate and is capable of responding from the

Yotam Lurie prefer that our leaders lose sleep before sending soldiers into battle. In a game of poker not blinking is a virtue; when sending men to battle, as well as in other difficult moral dilemmas, it is not. At least in so far as politicians are concerned, it is a desirable human quality to be troubled, and we prefer such leaders and politicians. Politicians who are capable of feeling the pain of their people, those who lose sleep over such defining moments, probably have a harder time making difficult decisions, but as long as they eventually arrive at the right decision, whatever it might be,2 they are better politicians. Politicians and generals are often required to make such difficult decisions. There is a big difference in the moral constitution of those who are torn before making major decisions and those who dont bat an eyelash. Finally, a last brief example, certain forms of behavior are morally repugnant. Imagine a person who is able to judge a particular action as morally wrong, but is never repulsed or disgusted by any form of action. To feel disgust at certain actions is human, it is normal. A person who lacks this feeling lacks an important human sensitivity. Similarly, consider the difference between watching a sporting event, a football game, for example, in which one is merely intellectually interested in seeing the game, as opposed to watching a game where one is a fan and is emotionally concerned about the success or failure of the team. As a fan, one might experience emotions such as exhilaration and pleasure at the teams success or annoyance at its failures (Stocker, 2000, p. 56). These examples demonstrate how displaying and experiencing emotions can make a manager more humane. The connection, however, between this humanity and ethical decisionmaking is not obvious and requires further elaboration. Morality and humanity cannot be conflated, even though these two notions are related. As it so happens, while not all humans are moral agents (infants and insane people are not moral agents), moral agents are usually human beings. In other words, merely as an empirical description of our world and without any making any grand metaphysical assumptions, in order to be a moral agent one usually has to

heart. Clearly, these two people have a different moral constitution. They differ in their moral psychology. Cruelty, whether it is directed towards women and children, or towards any living being, is the kind of action that should not be accepted calmly, and it is very natural for human beings to feel angry at instances of such behavior. While the first type of person, the one who does not feel anger and is unaffected emotionally, does not condone such actions, they are nonetheless of a different moral constitution from people who are emotionally affected. He strikes us as inhuman in the sense that he is less compassionate. It is worthwhile to look in this context Aristotles account of anger. Aristotle claims that anger may be defined as a desire accompanied by pain, for a conspicuous revenge for a conspicuous slight at the hands of men who have no call to slight oneself or ones friends (Aristotle, 1378a31ff ). Stocker, thus, claims, anger involves value or evaluation in at least three ways: [1] the cause of anger is evaluated as a conspicuous slight, [2] the slight is evaluated as uncalled for, and [3] the target of the slight must be cared about (Stocker, 2000, p. 57). Consider a third example; imagine President Truman lying in bed the night before he is about to give the command to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Now, even if he fully and sincerely believed that he had thoroughly assessed this action and that he was doing the right thing, it would nonetheless have been natural to still be concerned and anxious about it. If President Truman never lost sleep before dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then he was no doubt a self-confident and calculated politician. I think, however, that we would prefer that our leaders not make such difficult decisions without emotion. Before our leaders or politicians send our children out to risk their lives in war, and before they make decisions that could result in the deaths of thousands of people, we would like to hope it provides a sense of assurance to know that they did not sleep well and that they are somehow restless, anxious and troubled about such an important decision. As concerned citizens, whose friends, neighbors and children might be serving in the military, we

Humanizing Business through Emotions first be a human being. On the other hand, being a human being, i.e., humanity, presupposes more than just moral agency (Wolf, 1982; Stocker, 1976). This has to do with the fact that we learn about morality and become moral beings by learning, since our very early childhood, how to react and how to respond to concrete situations and particular human relations. For example, when we learn about the meaning of concrete relations, such as friendship, we learn that it is not nice to make fun of a friend who stumbles, and instead one should show compassion and act with empathy towards the misfortunes of others an especially when these are ones friends. Moral behavior, like any other normative behavior, is shaped by training, i.e., by customs, norms and tradition, and not by learning how to employ generalizations in specific situations. Another way of articulating this connection is by emphasizing that dealing with any moral dilemma requires a great deal of factual knowledge, which is not directly connected with any ethical expertise per se. Moreover, in order to even identify an ethical problem as such, concrete and practical knowledge about the particular relations is needed. In this respect our humanity and our morality are linked.

4. The relevance of emotions for 4. business management One important aspect of moral psychology and its relationship to ethics has to do with shared emotional attitudes that are ethically relevant for a community. This aspect of moral considerations is also relevant for issues pertaining to the organization and management of cultural affairs and human resources. Shared emotional attitudes are central to creating a sense community, and a shared organizational predicament (Strawson, 1982, p. 78). An organization in which, for example, employees fail to share hope that the organization will sign a new deal; in which there is no feeling of pride at shared products, is an organization that is lacking a sense of community and a shared culture. Similarly, it is unclear what a person, and particularly a manager, who lacked any kind of reactive attitudes, would be

like. What kind of vision and motivation, pride and sense of accomplishment could such a manager inspire in employees? Imagine a manager for whom the emotion of hopefulness hoping that the new deal will materialize and be a success story comes down to: P believes that the new deal will materialize (i.e., the cognitive component), and P believes that the new deal is something good (i.e., the evaluative component), but without any reactive attitude (Stocker, 2000, p. 115). Such a person does not look forward to the new deal. He does not worry that it would really be too bad if it did not come through. Such people functioning in managerial capacities would be seriously lacking in terms of their managerial skills. Their ability to connect with other members of the organization and provide leadership would be seriously impaired. Ethics has to do with more than just the actions of people. Focusing our attention on the human (sometimes the all too human) factors of human action requires that we pay attention to the emotional facets of people. A moral reaction to a situation involves certain emotions and feelings in addition to thoughts and beliefs. Emotions such as anger, rage, pity, hope and frustration are natural moral reactions to certain situations. They provide for a more concerned manager. To be concerned is to be emotionally involved. One does not feel any emotion when one is not concerned. The last remark helps formulate a response to the question that underlies this investigation: namely, what positive contribution can emotions make to ethical deliberation? The answer can now be given by delineating three important aspects of ethical decision making to which emotions can contribute. First, emotions allow for a more particularistic and meaningful vision and attention to details and the concrete relationships. This is because emotions, like other psychological states are referentially opaque and are always under a particular description (White, 1975, p. 114). In other words, emotions are highly sensitive to personal and contextual context. The sensitivity of emotions to particular and contextual circumstance is illustrated in the example of the model who suddenly feels shame because of her

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Yotam Lurie the distinction erected between being human and being a business manager. Notes
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nudity when she realizes that the artist for whom she has been posing is thinking about her as a woman. Though the external circumstance has not changed, the special relationship, the particular meaning of the situation has changed (Ben Zeev, 2000, p. 3). Second, emotions are essential for people as evaluators of situations. Stocker (2000, pp. 133136, 326), among others, argues that emotions are epistemologically significant emotional knowledge for making certain evaluative judgments as well as constitutionally connected with values. In Stockers own words, having certain emotions is often systematically connected with being epistemologically wellplaced to make good evaluative judgments (ibid., p. 105). In contrast, Stocker argues that not having emotions is intertwined with our being epistemologically ill placed to make good evaluative judgments (ibid., p. 114). Third, emotions are affective conditions, enabling one to experience an attitude of concern, interest, attention, and care about the people and situation at stake. As argued above, emotions are not theoretical states; they involve a practical concern associated with a readiness to act and change present or future circumstance. Emotions have an important motivational component (Ben Zeev, 2000, pp. 6064). To sum up: I have been arguing that the ability to feel certain emotions is important for the manager in two respects. First, at a more selfevident level, the ability to experience such emotions helps managers sustain their humanity. If managers are to function as leaders, then having emotions makes for more humane and thus better leaders. It makes the manager more of a human being and consequently contributes to a more humane business environment. Second, emotions might at times make it more difficult for managers to make sound business decisions, but they can also bring into focus ethical considerations that otherwise might be unnoticed. In doing so they can contribute to making better and more humane business decisions. As emotions can and should have a positive impact on moral decision-making, they should also be allowed to play their ethical role in business management. By doing so they enable us to challenge

By his definition transactional leaders practice an exchange of rewards and punishments for delivery of performance or lack thereof. Transformational leaders inspire through a vision and sense of mission. This literature suggests that, though transactional leadership can be effective in times of stability, transformational leadership is considerably more effective, especially in circumstances where change or disruption is occurring. 2 The notion of making the right decision or getting it right, which I have alluded to in this example, presupposes moral realism. Moral realism is the view that in some sense there is a moral reality, a domain of moral facts, that is objective and about which we form beliefs. Accordingly, the right decision is independent of either the decision process or the moral agent.

References
Ayer, A. J.: 1950, Language Truth and Logic (Dover Publications, NY), pp. 103112. Bass, B. M.: 1985, Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectation (The Free Press, New York). Bass, B. M.: 1998, The Ethics of Transformational Leadership, in J. B. Ciulla (ed.), Ethics the Heart of Leadership (Quorum, Westport, CT), pp. 169192. Bass, B. M.: 1990, Bass and Stogdills Handbook of Leadership (The Free Press, New York). Bass, B. M. and P. Steidlmeier: 1999, Ethics, Character and Authentic Transformational Leadership Behavior, Leadership Quarterly 10, 181218. Ben-Zeev, A.: 1997, Emotions and Morality, Journal of Value Inquiry 31, 195212. Ben-Zeev, A.: 2000, The Subtlety of Emotions (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts). Blackburn, S.: 1998, Ruling Passions (Oxford University Press, Oxford). Burns, J. M.: 1978, Leadership (Harper Row, New York). Callahan, J. C.: 1988, Ethical Issues in Professional Life (Oxford University Press, New York), p. 33. Davidson, Donald: 2001, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (Clarendon Press, Oxford), pp. 95106.

Humanizing Business through Emotions

DeGeorge, Richard: 1994, Business as a Humanity: A Contradiction in Terms?, in T. Donaldson and E. Freeman (eds.), Business as a Humanity (Oxford, University Press, New York). Ebert, R.: 1991, Other Peoples Money, Chicago Sun Times, 18th October. Gilligan, C.: 1982, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Womens Development (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). Kotter, J. P.: 1990, A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs From Management (The Free Press). Malcolm, Norman: 1972, Thoughtless Brutes, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 46. McDowell, J.: 1979, Virtue and Reason, The Monist 62, 331350. Nodddings, N.: 1984, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Education (University of California Press, Berkeley). Nussbaum, M.: 1986, The Fragility of Goodness (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge), pp. 307309. Nussbaum, M.: 1993, Equity and Mercy, Philosophy and Public Affairs 22, 83125. Nussbaum, M.: 2001, Upheavals of Thought (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). Oakley, J.: 1992. Morality and the Emotions (Routledge, London). Pizarro, D.: 2000, Nothing More than Feelings: The Role of Feelings in Moral Judgment, Journal of the Social Theory of Behavior 30(4), 355375. Railton, P.: 1984, Alienation, Consequentialism and the Demands of Morality, Philosophy and Public Affairs 13, 134174. Solomon, R.: 1980, Emotions and Choice, in Rorty, A. (ed.), Explaining Emotions (University of California Press, Berkeley), pp. 251281.

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Stevenson, C. L.: 1946, Ethics and Language (Yale University Press, New Haven). Stocker, M.: 1976, The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories, Journal of Philosophy 73(14), 433466. Stocker, M. and E. Heggeman: 2000. Valuing Emotions (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). Strawson, P.: 1982, Freedom and Resentment, in G. Watson (ed.), Free Will (Oxford University Press, Oxford), p. 78. Wallace, R. J.: 2000, An Anti-Philosophy of Emotion, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60(2), 469477. White, A. R.: 1975. Model Thinking (Blackwell, Oxford), p. 114. Wiggins, D.: 1988, Needs, Values, Truth, 3rd. Edition (Clanderon Press, Oxford), pp. 215237. Williams, B.: 1973a, A Critique of Utilitarianism, J. J. C. Smart and B. Williams (ed.), Utilitarianism: For and Against (Cambridge University Press, NY), pp. 103104. Williams, B.: 1973b, Emotions and Morality, Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge), pp. 207229. Wolf, S.: 1982, Moral Saints, Journal of Philosophy 79(8), 419439. Yukl, G.: 2002, Leadership in Organizations (Prentice Hall, NJ), p. 328.

Department of Management, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel E-mail: yotam@bgumail.bgu.ac.il