INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS

ETHICS COURSE OUTLINE

Introduction
Ethics in organizations requires values-based leadership from top management,
purposeful actions that include planning and implementation of standards of
appropriate conduct, as well as openness and continuous effort to improve the
organization’s ethical performance. Although personal values are important in
ethical decision making, they are just one of the components that guide the
decisions, actions and policies of organizations. In this course, it is aimed to help
students to improve their ability to make ethical decisions in business by providing
them with a framework that they can use to identify, analyze, and resolve ethical
issues in business decision making.
The main objectives of the course are:
1) To introduce and motivate students about basic ethical concepts, principles, and examples while enhancing
their understanding and use of ethics in solving moral dilemmas.
2) To understand the main ethical-philosophical approaches.
3) To introduce the main concepts of business ethics.
4) To think about the relationship between theories of ethics and questions of business ethics.
ethical dilemmas and build a foundation to make ethical decisions in personal and professional life.
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, students should be able to achieve the
following learning outcomes:
1) Identify complex areas of business ethics.
2) Thoroughly understand major theories of business ethics.
3) Analysis of corporate governance and ethical leadership perspectives.
4) Gain knowledge to analyse
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SESSION PLAN

6. Traditional Ethical Theories

1. Introduction to Ethics 7. Management and Organizational
2. Introduction to Business Ethics Ethics
3. Business Ethics Matters 8. Models of Ethical Decision
4. Personal Values and Virtues in Making
Workplace 9. Equal Opportunity, Discrimination
5. Normative Ethical Theories and Affirmative Action
10. Internal and External
Stakeholder Issues
WHY STUDY ETHICS?
 MIGRANT WORKERS IN QATAR

Migrant workers oppressive

conditions in the in the Middle
East.

• Do they have a voice in how

their time and labour is used?
ETHICAL, LEGAL AND FINANCIAL CONSEQUENCES
OF ENGAGING IN ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR
 WHAT IS MORALITY?

• “Morality (Ethics) is an informal public system applying to all

rational persons, governing behavior that affects others, and
has the lessening of evil or harm as its goal.” (Gert, Stanford
Encycl. of Phil.)
• …. one of the most critical conditions for the survival of society
is that its members learn the difference between right and
wrong.
(Pizarro & Salovey, 2002, p. 247)
 ETHICS

• Ethics deals with individual character and the moral rules that
govern and limit our conduct. It investigates questions of right
and wrong, duty and obligation, and moral responsibility. For
example:
– How should I live my life?
– What sort of person should I strive to be?
– What goals should I pursue?
– What standards or principles should I live by?
 ETHICS

• Ethics deals with:

– individual character
– moral rules that govern our conduct
– questions of right and wrong
– fairness and unfairness
– good and bad
– duty and obligation
– justice and injustice
– the values and principles that should guide us.
 ETHICS

• Graduates usually work in a professional capacity.

• Professionals have a moral responsibility not to harm their
stakeholders.
• Stakeholders are anyone who can affect, or be affected by, any
business decision.
• Studying ethics, and the ability to apply ethical theory to a
situation, can assist us in making fair and equitable decisions.
THE NATURE
OF MORALITY
 WHAT IS MORAL REASONING?

• Rest (1979) points out that moral reasoning is “one’s

conceptual and analytical ability to frame socio-moral problems
using one’s standards and values in order to judge the proper
course of action” (p.198).
 MORAL REASONING AND MORAL DECISIONS

• According to Trevino (1992)

– “Moral decisions are explained and justified in terms of one’s own
hedonistic interests and particularly in terms of rewards and
punishments, and the exchange of favors” (p.446).
 WHERE DOES YOUR MORALITY/ETHICS COME
FROM?

• Did you get it from outside?

• Were you born with it?
• Did you construct your own morality?
 UNDERSTANDING MORALITY

• Moral standards come from:

– our early upbringing
– the behaviour of those around us
– the moral standards of our culture
– our own experiences, and our critical reflections on those experiences.
• Can our principles withstand critical scrutiny?
 UNDERSTANDING MORALITY

• We can distinguish between actual and moral questions.

• When dealing with moral questions, we appeal to moral
standards.
• These standards differ from other kinds of standards in that they
concern behaviour that is of serious consequence to human
welfare.
 UNDERSTANDING MORALITY

• Moral behaviour can profoundly benefit people, and immoral

behaviour can do harm. For instance:
– Are products healthful or harmful?
– Are work conditions safe or dangerous?
– Are personnel procedures biased or fair?
– Is privacy respected or invaded?
• Because these are matters that seriously affect human
well-being, they are all explored in this subject.
 UNDERSTANDING MORALITY

• Moral standards take priority over other standards:

– ‘Other standards’ include self-interest. Something that morality
condemns cannot be justified on non-moral grounds of self-interest.
– The soundness of moral standards depends upon the adequacy of the
reasons or the quality of the arguments that support them.
 UNDERSTANDING MORALITY

• Morality differs from etiquette.

• Morality differs from the law.
• Morality differs from professional codes of ethics.
 MORAL DILEMMA
A SITUATION IN WHICH THERE IS NOT
ONE ANSWER OR CHOICE THAT IS
CLEARLY RIGHT

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The Trolley Problem

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PRESENTED DILEMMAS TO
CHILDREN & ADULTS
• Most famous one: the Heinz dilemma.
• In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of
cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save
her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had
recently discovered. the drug was expensive to make, but the
druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make.
He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose
of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone
he knew to borrow the money and tried every legal means, but
he could only get together about $1,000, which is half of what it
cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying, and asked him
to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I
discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So,
having tried every legal means, Heinz gets desperate and
considers breaking into the man's store to steal the drug for his
wife.
 MORAL DILEMMA

Should Heinz break into the laboratory to steal the drug for his
wife?

(Why or why not?)

 MORALITY AND RELIGION

• Religious ideals are general and difficult to translate into precise

policies.
• Some religious principles are accepted purely on the basis of
faith; moral principles are accepted after careful rational analysis.
 MORALITY AND LAW

• An action that is legal can be morally wrong. For example:

– the failure of a person with knowledge of first aid to render assistance at
the scene of an accident, when there is no valid reason not to help.
– Suppose if your good friend is going through some serious health
issues…he doesn’t have money to buy medicine…would you steal for
him?
 MORALITY AND LAW

• Laws codify a society’s customs, ideals, norms and moral values.

• Laws are not sufficient to establish the moral standards to guide
us:
– The law is too blunt an instrument to provide moral guidance.
– It provides a base from which to form our moral standards, but it does not
encompass all possible breaches of moral conduct.
 PROFESSIONAL CODES

• Professional codes of conduct are rules designed to govern a

given profession.
• Professionals are understood to have agreed to be bound by
these rules.
• Violation of a professional code may result in the disapproval of
one’s peers or, in serious cases, loss of one’s licence to practise
that profession.
 PROFESSIONAL CODES

• Often, professional codes are too vague to be of practical use.

• They may consist of a mix of purely moral rules, professional
etiquette, and restrictions designed to benefit the profession’s
economic interests.
• Many professional codes are seen as mere tools for
self-promotion.
 MORAL REASONING

• In science, the scientific method tells us what steps to take if we

seek to answer a scientific question, but there is no comparable
moral method for engaging moral questions.
• There is general agreement about what constitutes good moral
reasoning.
 MORAL REASONING
• Moral judgements should be logical:
– Judgements should be based on evidence and reason, not on emotion,
sentiment or preference.
• Moral reasoning should be based on facts:
– Judgements should be based on analysis of all relevant and accurate
information.
• Moral reasoning should be based on sound moral principles:
– Judgements should be based on considered beliefs rather than on ‘gut’
responses.