Session 3

Business Ethics & CSR

 Session Plan

S. No. Time Experiential Learning

1 15 Minutes Recap of previous session
Readings & Video Analysis
2 15 Minutes Class Activity – 1
MetaEthics
3 15 Minutes Group Discussion
4 15 Minutes Class Activity – 2
Moral Progress/Development
5 15 Minutes Group Discussion
6 15 Minutes Food for thought:
Next Session
Revise & Recap
Discussion on readings & links of Session 2
Implicit
Biases
Inclusion
 Veil of
Ignorance
 Class Activity 1
Reveal the Implicit- Make it Explicit
 MetaEthics
Moral Realism & Moral Anti-Realism
Metaethics –
An
Illustration
Metaethics
• What is morality?
• What is its nature?
• Is it an objective thing or a subjective reality?
• Or is it just a preference, an opinion or a set of cultural conventions?
• Ethics – Does ethics use a set of scientific principles that seeks to
discover moral truths whose existence are testable and provable.
• However, other set of philosophers believe that discovering moral
truths is a subjective reality.
• What if you set out to harm someone but you ended up saving their life?
• Is there something like a good lie?
 Metaethics

Moral Moral Anti-

Realism Realism

Moral Moral Moral

Absolutism Relativism Subjectivism
 • The belief that there are moral facts, in the same
way, that there are scientific facts.
• Hence, any moral proposition can only be True or
False.
Moral • Some things are just wrong, and others are
indisputably right.
Realism • Examples:
• Nurturing kids may be a right thing to do.
• Violence is seen as a wrong thing.
 • There are absolute standards against which moral
questions can be judged.

Moral • If something is wrong, it is wrong regardless of

cultural or contextual circumstances.

Absolutism • And they apply constantly to all contexts.

• They apply Universally.
• Just like other scientific facts such as gravity.
 • The UN Global Compact’s Ten Principles are derived from: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
International Labour Organization’s Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development, and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.
• Human Rights
Businesses should
• Principle 1: support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights;
• Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.

UN Global • Labour
Businesses should
• Principle 3: uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to

Compact’s Ten •
•
collective bargaining;
Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and

Principles • Environment
• Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.

Businesses should
• Principle 7: support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;
• Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and
• Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly
technologies.

• Anti-Corruption
Businesses should
• Principle 10: work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery.
 • There can be more than one moral position on a
given topic.
• And it can be correct.

Moral • Descriptive Cultural relativism – moral beliefs

differ from culture to culture.

Relativism • Normative cultural relativism – that its not the

moral beliefs that differ BUT the moral facts that
differ from culture to culture.
• 2 moral facts may be different and still be true
in two different contexts.
 • But the large assumption here is that;
Critic of • No culture can actually be wrong.

Moral • Also, then moral progress doesn’t make sense!

• Moral progress or development is no longer

Relativism needed as everyone is right in their own culture.

 • Are moral facts Testable?
• Are they Falsifiable?
Grounding • The grounding problem of ethics is the
search for a foundation for moral beliefs,
Problem something solid that would make them
true in a way that is clear, objective and
unmoving.
 • The belief that moral propositions don’t refer to
objective feature of the world at all – that there
are NO moral FACTS.
• Moral statements may be true or false – right or
Moral wrong – but they refer only to people’s attitudes,
rather their actions.

AntiRealism • There are No moral facts only moral attitudes.

• Example:
• Nurturing kids may not be the entire fact – look at
animal kingdom
• Justifiable killings of human vs animals
Philosophical Reasoning
Theories & Assumptions
Tripartite Soul
- Plato

Rational
Logical

Spirited
Emotional

Appetitive
Physical Desires
 • Rationality is our distinguishing characteristics
– it is what sets us apart from the beasts.
• According to Plato, people who were ruled by
Philosophical their rational or logical soul were better off as
they were able to keep a check on their base
Reasoning (emotional and physical) souls.
• People can be persuaded by arguments.
• Arguments need a solid foundation of logic.
Reasoning & Empirics
• Rationalism
• Belief that reason is the most reliable source of
knowledge
• Plato said ‘Ideas are the most reliable things as
propositions that can be known with pure reason’
• Philosophical logic
• Empiricism
• Belief that sense-experience is the most reliable source of
knowledge
• Aristotle (looked for evidence on the ground)
• John Locke (tabula rasa) - primary vs secondary qualities
of objects
 • Help identify the foundational assumptions
and arrive at a solution.
• So, if we reject the initial assumption, the rest
of the solution just doesn’t follow.
• Example:
Ethical Theories • Natural Law Theory
• Relies on an assumption that God created the
Universe according to a well-organized plan.
• Utilitarianism
• Assumption is that all beings share a common
desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain.
 WA, RA,
RO RO
Actions &
Outcomes
WA, RA,
WO WO
 Classification of Ethical Theories

Normative Theories

Consequentialist Non-consequentialist
(Teleological – Purpose/Outcome based) (Deontological – Duty based)

Egoism Utilitarianism Kantian ethics

Class Activity 2
MetaEthics
Illustration: Old • Listen to the story.
• For the burglar story, could you separate
Lady and the moral intentions from moral outcomes? His
moral intentions were wrong, but his moral
Burglar outcome was right. That would leave us
with four different categories.
 WI, RI,
RO RO
Intentions &
Outcomes
WI, RI,
WO WO
 Purpose-Intent-Action

Purpose Intent Action Priority

Righteous Righteous Righteous 1 (Highest)

Righteous Righteous Non-Righteous 2

Righteous Non-Righteous Righteous 3

Righteous Non-Righteous Non-Righteous 4

Non-Righteous Righteous Righteous 5

Non-Righteous Righteous Non-Righteous 6

Non-Righteous Non-Righteous Righteous 7

Non-Righteous Non-Righteous Non-Righteous 8

Task for Next Session
Storytelling
Ethics & Epics
• Narrate a story.
• Identify with characters.
• Highlight value differences.
• Why did you feel it was wrong?
• What did you do?
• Use the grid on Purpose-Intent-
Actions
• Identify the righteousness of
purpose, intent and actions.
Ethics &
Identity
Why Identity matters?
• Personal identity shapes the concept of Who you are?
• It determines your accountability and responsibility
towards other people in life.
• How can you hold someone accountable for their actions if
they are not the same person now that they were before?
• How can you be responsible for something that you did, if
you are always changing?
Identity
• The relation that a thing bears only to
itself.
• What uniquely makes it what it is, defines
its identity.
• Identical things share an identity relation.
• Indiscernibility of Identical:
• If any two things are Identical, then
they must share all the same
properties.
Fungibility
• Persistent identity
• The identity remains the same.
• Not all Tangibles have fungibility.
• If having a certain identity means possessing the same set of
properties, then how could anyone really maintain the same
identity from one moment to the other.
• Fungibility:
• The property of being interchangeable with other objects of
the same kind.
Identity
• However, over a period of time, things change…
• So, can we acquire new identity??
• Is there a limit as to how much a thing can change and still be
the same thing? Still retain its identity?
• Essential:
• Essential properties are those core elements/properties
needed for a thing to remain a thing.
• Accidental:
• Traits that can be taken away from the object without
making it a different thing.
Existentialists & Identity
• When can we exactly know when the essential properties are lost –
hence the identity is lost?
• Existentialists deny the concept of essential properties required for
identity.
• Heraclitus said – you can’t step in the same river twice.
• Nothing is identical to itself because everything – including both you
and the river – changing all the time.
• David Hume – there is No you who persists from birth to death.
• The idea of self is just an illusion.
Professional identity
• Professional identity is defined as one's professional self-concept based on
attributes, beliefs, values, motives, and experiences (Ibarra, 1999; Schein,
1978).
• Professional identity consists of the individual's alignment of roles,
responsibilities, values, and ethical standards to be consistent with practices
accepted by their specific profession.
• Professional identity formation is a complex process through which the sense of
oneness with a profession is developed, with some of the difficulty arising out
of balancing personal identity with professional identity.
• Professional identity construction under conditions of stigmatized
cultural identity presents an interesting puzzle.
Organizational
Identification
• Organizational identification (OI) is a term used in management studies
and organizational psychology.
• The term refers to the propensity of a member of an organization to identify with
that organization.
• OI is the extent to which employees experience a sense of oneness with it, it’s values,
brand, methods etc. (Ashforth and Mael, 1989; Haslam, 2004; Schuh et al, 2016).
• The research shows that when employees identify with their organisation they tend
to have higher levels of work performance, are more likely to engage in
organisational citizenship behaviors such as voicing constructive suggestions or
helping coworkers, they tend to be more satisfied with their job, and are less likely to
quit (Blader and Tyler, 2009; Dukerich et al., 2002; Van Dick et al., 2006; Riketta, 2005;
Schuh et al, 2016).
Pro-organizational
unethical behavior
• Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) is defined by
Umphress and Bingham (2011) as “actions that are intended to
promote the effective functioning of the organization or its
members and [that] violate core societal values, mores, laws, or
standards of proper conduct.
• In the name of the organization.
• May be self-interest based
• Harm the corporate reputation in the long-run
Food for Thought
For Discussion in the Next Session
 Business is about purpose by Freeman Edward.
Ted Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dugfw
Watch & Reflect JthBY
 Thank you.
You may write to me at anshu@jgu.edu.in