JANE DIAZ

MR. PAJO

BS-IM

ITETHICS

BOOKREVIEW #6

FOR BUSINESS ETHICS

Cambell Jones, Martin Parker, Bene Ten Bos

HF5387 J65 2005

Chapter XII - Denying Ethics I: Bureaucracy

“Bureaucracy is both world changing and dehumanizing at the same time.”

If what we understand to be ethics is shaped by social context, then business

ethicists need to try to understand that context. That is, unless they believe that God or

reason will eventually deliver some eternal rules that will make equal sense in any place

or time. However, as we have seen in the book so far, this prospect doesn't look that

likely at the moment. So what would it mean to understand social context, business

ethicists have certainly spent quite long time writing about the things that managers

should do, and certainly spent quite a lot of time writing about the things and a certain

amount of time considering the relationship between their business and the states and

societies that they are apart.

Other philosophers, such as Aristotle who we came across, that we emphasized

the closer relationship between individual ethical action and social political action but this

isn't something that is preoccupied business ethicists too much. We will look at the

economic context of capitalism for some answers. We will open out the questions of the

relationship between individual ethical action and society issue by looking at the context

in terms of business.

The rigid attitude towards rules helps to create the so-called bureaucratic

personality, a conformist who wants to fit in and not rock the boat. Effectively, the

behavior that might help the institution to adapt to cancels is discouraged in favor of

hanging circumstances of predictable routines. The idea that there is a connection

between bureaucracy and conformity is not something new. At the start of the twentieth

century, Max Weber had been particularly interested in how social change had altered

the way that people understood what life. Sorts of authority were considered legitimate.

He suggested that there were three main ways to justify social action, which he called

traditional, charismatic and rational. In the modern world, Weber suggested, rules were

taking the place of inspirational leaders and long-standing traditions as the basis for

collective rules. Now consider the ideas of the philosophers Avishai Margalit, who

argued that decent societies have insurmountable difficulties with bureaucracies

because these institutions humiliate people. Margalit argues that decent societies are

defined by their will to keep their institutions. They endanger democracy while making

possible. In other words, democracy needs bureaucratic institutions to achieve social

justice while it must accept their humiliating and hence antidemocratic effects. The gist

of all humiliation, bureaucracy clearly dehumanize by reducing their members to mere

mechanical functionaries and by reducing customers to mere numbers. Set aside moral

outrage for a minute. What we have here is a story about the use of ends-rationality

within an organization, and this kind of rationality is widely in use in modern corporations

today.

Chapter XIII - Denying Ethics II: Global Capital

“Bad thing that should be done away with, as if capitalism could continue without the

state..”

There are two principal meanings of the term neoliberalism. The first refers to a

set of market-liberal economic policies. In the developed world neoliberalism is often

coupled with Thatcherism and grew up in opposition to Keynesianism. In the developing

world it emerged in opposition to the development strategies based on importsubstitution

industrialization which had dominated the period 1945 to the early 1980s.

Everything hinges on this insight into human limitation. There are only a few things that

we, being finite and fragile creatures, can control. This, however, does not allow us to be

lazy when it comes to morality.

The agreement does allow governments to support their rural economies, but

preferably through policies that cause less distortion to trade. It also allows some

flexibility in the way commitments are implemented. Developing countries do not have to

cut their subsidies or lower their tariffs as much as developed countries, and they are

given extra time to complete their obligations. Least-developed countries don’t have to

do this at all. Special provisions deal with the interests of countries that rely on imports

for their food supplies, and the concerns of least-developed economies.

In business ethics, discussions of interests and responsibilities of business

typically begin with a discussion of an argument between them, on the other hand, and

defenders of stakeholders theory, usually what we find in these discussions is the idea

the Friedman, a renewed Nobel prize-winner economist, claims that the only

responsibility of a business is to increase its profits, and that nothing else really matters.

If businesses act in their self-interest then the results for all will be best, as if action

were, as Adam Smith famous claimed, led by an invisible hand, against this, stakeholder

theory claims that businesses have responsibilities not only to shareholders but also to

employees, customers, the environment, and so on.

Global-Information Ethics, understood as an ethics of world-wide communication,

may be seen as a commendable effort to foster all those informational conditions that

facilitate participation, dialogue, negotiation and consensus-building practices among

people, across cultures and through generations. It is an approach concerned with new

and old problems, caused or exacerbated by global communications or affecting the flow

of information. Global-Communication Ethics is therefore a continuation of policy by

other means, and it does not have to be reduced to a mere gesture towards the

importance of mutual respect and understanding.

Chapter IX – Business Ethics Today

“in the world we want, many worlds fit.”

Human space in the twenty-first century has not merely shrunk, though. ICTs

have also created a new digital environment, which is constantly expanding and

becoming progressively more diverse. Again, the origins of this global, transnational

common space are old. They are to be found in the invention of recording and

communication technologies that range from the alphabet to printing, from photography

to television. But it is only in the last few decades that we have witnessed a vast and

steady migration of human life to the other side of the screen. One of the serious

obstacles in sharing ontology is often how the sources and targets of moral interactions

(including communication) are identified. The concept of person or human individual,

and the corresponding features that are considered essential to his or her definition,

might be central in some ontologies, marginal in others, and different in most.

Ethics is supposed to be black or white, right or wrong, but today it is many shades of

grey.

If any company does shady business you can be sure it starts at the top and

filters down because the president is the one who sets the example for the actions of the

entire company. This is as true for actions of our elected officials as it is for corporations

or individuals. The word itself has been used to describe a wide variety of things, only a

fraction of which relates to this new science. As someone who finds the developing

paradigm an intriguing element in the study of organizations and the people in them, I

nonetheless feel uncomfortable calling this new science “spirituality.” It is surprising to

discover the large number of people in public administration interested in workplace

spirituality, but more so the fact that these recognized scholars are reluctant to freely

discuss this area of their research. Certainly scholarly publications on the topic lend

professional legitimacy to substantiate their efforts.

Failure in business ethics is a real threat to the future of every corporation.

Business ethics as an issue is a hundred times more powerful than the internet or

globalization and can destroy your business in a week. To make matters worse,

standards of business ethics are changing rapidly in response to random events which

capture public imagination. In business ethics, what was good is becoming bad and what

was considered bad is now good. Standards for business ethics that have worked for

decades are looking old fashioned or immoral while other practices that raised questions

are becoming totally acceptable.