Business Question

All answers are to be typed (12 pt. font, double-spaced), with a proper heading at the top of your submission (name, student ID, semester and year, subject and section).

Proper reference to the course material should be given throughout, whether paraphrasing or quoting directly (i.e. use footnoting, parenthetical citation, and/or in-context reference). Only assigned readings, supplements, and lecture material may be used. Outside sources are not permitted.

I will attach the textbook that is needed to complete these essays. Next to each question, the textbook chapter is given to help in writing each essay. Only the chapter assigned is needed for each essay question. All essays must only use the textbook. No outside sources. Each essay should be between 500 to 700 words. No more is needed. For any other questions just let me know.

Answer all of the following with clear, detailed essaysProvide an account of Arrington’s analysis of the four central concepts at work in the debate over advertising and manipulation. What conclusions does he draw? (Chapter 5)

What is Bowie’s “minimalist” account of business obligations regarding the natural environment? Provide a summary account of Arnold and Bustos’ criticism of Bowie’s view. (Chapter 8)

What is Freeman’s “managing for stakeholders” conception of corporate social responsibility, and how is it argued for? (Chapter 2)

What, according to Werhane and Radin, are the difficulties facing the employment-at-will principle? (Chapter 3)

What is Dushka’s criticism of the standard view? (Chapter 3)

What is Holley’s “mutual benefit rule”, and how does he employ it in the debate over advertising and manipulation? (Chapter 5)

Pearson New International Edition
Ethical Theory and Business
Denis Arnold Tom Beauchamp Norman Bowie
Ninth Edition
Pearson Education Limited
Edinburgh Gate
Harlow
Essex CM20 2JE
England and Associated Companies throughout the world
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© Pearson Education Limited 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
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issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. The use of any trademark
in this text does not vest in the author or publisher any trademark ownership rights in such
trademarks, nor does the use of such trademarks imply any affiliation with or endorsement of this
book by such owners.
ISBN 10: 1-292-02677-4
ISBN 10: 1-269-37450-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-292-02677-0
ISBN 13: 978-1-269-37450-7
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States of America
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Table of Contents
1. Ethical Theory and Business Practice
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
1
2. Corporate Responsibility
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
47
3. Ethical Treatment of Employees
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
141
4. Diversity and Discrimination in the Workplace
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
207
5. Marketing and the Disclosure of Information
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
259
6. Ethical Issues in Finance and Accounting
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
335
7. Ethical Issues regarding Emerging Technologies
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
401
8. Environmental Sustainability
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
459
9. Social and Economic Justice
Denis G. Arnold/Tom L. Beauchamp/Norman L. Bowie
539
Index
599
I
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Ethical Theory and
Business Practice*
Introduction
Can business organizations be just? Should the chief obligation of managers be to look out
for the bottom line, or do managers also have obligations to other stakeholders such as
customers and employees? Should business organizations be environmentally sustainable?
Do global business organizations have obligations to protect human rights wherever they
do business? How much influence can businesses legitimately exert over public policy?
These are some of the many questions that permeate discussions of the role of ethics in
business.
The goal of this chapter is to provide a foundation in ethical theory. The first part
of this chapter introduces basic and recurring distinctions, definitions, and issues. The
second part examines influential and relevant types of normative ethical theory.
Fundamental Concepts and Problems
Morality and Ethical Theory
A distinction between morality and ethical theory is employed in several essays in this
volume. Morality is concerned with social practices defining right and wrong. These practices—together with other kinds of customs, rules, and mores—are transmitted within
cultures and institutions from generation to generation. Similar to political constitutions and natural languages, morality exists prior to the acceptance (or rejection) of its
standards by particular individuals. In this respect, morality cannot be purely a personal
policy or code and is certainly not confined to the rules in professional codes of conduct
adopted by corporations and professional associations.
*© 2012 Tom L. Beauchamp, Norman E. Bowie, and Denis G. Arnold.
From Chapter 1 of Ethical Theory and Business, Ninth Edition. Denis G. Arnold, Tom L. Beauchamp, Norman
E. Bowie. Copyright © 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Ethical Theory and Business Practice
In contrast with morality, the terms ethical theory and moral philosophy point to reflection on the nature and justification of right actions. These words refer to attempts to introduce clarity, substance, and precision of argument into the domain of morality. Although
many people go through life with an understanding of morality dictated by their culture,
other persons are not satisfied to conform to the morality of society. They want difficult
questions answered: Is what our society forbids wrong? Are social values the best values?
What is the purpose of morality? Does religion have anything to do with morality? Do the
moral rules of society fit together in a unified whole? If there are conflicts and inconsistencies in our practices and beliefs, how should they be resolved? What should people do
when facing a moral problem for which society has, as yet, provided no instruction?
Moral philosophers and other ethics scholars seek to answer such questions and to put
moral beliefs and social practices of morality into a unified and defensible shape. Sometimes this task involves challenging traditional moral beliefs by assessing the quality of
moral arguments and suggesting modifications in existing beliefs. Morality, we might say,
consists of what persons ought to do in order to conform to society’s norms of behavior,
whereas ethical theory concerns the philosophical reasons for and against aspects of social morality. Usually the latter effort centers on justification: philosophers seek to justify
a system of standards or some moral point of view on the basis of carefully analyzed and
defended concepts and principles such as respect for autonomy, distributive justice, equal
treatment, human rights, beneficence, and truthfulness.
Most moral principles are already embedded in public morality, but usually in a vague
and underanalyzed form. Justice is a good example. Recurrent topics in the pages of the
Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, and other leading business journals
often discuss the justice of the present system of corporate and individual taxation as well
as the salaries and bonuses paid to executives, especially at firms that lost money for shareholders or that require taxpayer bailouts to survive, and the offshore outsourcing of jobs
from one country to another. However, an extended or detailed analysis of principles of
justice is virtually never provided in the media. Such matters are left at an intuitive level,
where the correctness of a particular moral point of view is assumed, without argument.
Yet, the failure to provide anything more than a superficial justification, in terms of
intuitive principles learned from parents or peers, leaves people unable to defend their
principles when challenged or to persuade others of their position. In a society with many
diverse views of morality, one can be fairly sure that one’s principles will be challenged.
A business person who asserts that a particular practice is morally wrong (or right) can
expect to be challenged within her organization by colleagues who disagree. She will have
little influence within her organization if she cannot also explain why she believes that action is wrong (or right). To defend her assertion, she must be able to justify her position by
providing reasoned arguments. The tools of moral philosophy, then, can be of significant
value to students of business.
Morality and Prudence
Many students do not encounter philosophical ethics as a topic of study until college or
graduate school. Morality, however, is learned by virtually every young child as part of the
acculturation process. The first step in this process is learning to distinguish moral rules
from rules of prudence (self-interest). This task can be difficult, because the two kinds of
rules are taught simultaneously, without being distinguished by the children’s teachers.
For example, people are constantly reminded in their early years to observe rules such
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as “Don’t touch the hot stove,” “Don’t cross the street without looking both ways,” “Brush
your teeth after meals,” and “Eat your vegetables.” Most of these “oughts” and “ought nots”
are instructions in self-interest—that is, rules of prudence, but moral rules are taught at
the same time. Parents, teachers, and peers teach that certain things ought not to be done
because they are “wrong” (morally) and that certain things ought to be done because they
are “right” (morally): “Don’t pull your sister’s hair.” “Don’t take money from your mother’s pocketbook.” “Share your toys.” “Write a thank-you note to Grandma.” These moral
instructions seek to control actions that affect the interests of other people. As people
mature, they learn what society expects of them in terms of taking into account the interests of other people.
One common observation in business is that self-interest and good ethics generally
coincide, because it is usually in one’s interest to act morally. We continually hear that
good ethics is good business. This fact makes evaluating another’s conduct difficult and
may tend to confuse moral reasoning with prudential reasoning. An example of how
moral and prudential reasoning can run together is evident in the decision BB&T bank
made about its home lending practices. During the sub-prime mortgage lending craze
that lead to the credit crisis and the great recession, banks and other lenders issued lucrative mortgages to borrowers who could not hope to repay the loans, often using deceptive
or predatory means. In the short term, borrowers were able to own homes they could not
otherwise afford, and lenders made a lot of money. But in the end, many borrowers lost
their homes and lenders became unprofitable, went out of business, or required the government to bail them out. North Carolina based BB&T, with 1,800 regional banking outlets, declined to issue these bad loans and remained profitable throughout the years of the
credit crisis and the great recession. In explaining their lending practices, John Allison,
the retired CEO of BB&T, said “Absolutely never do anything that is bad for your client.
Maybe you’ll make a profit in the short term, but it will come back to haunt you. . . . We
knew that housing prices wouldn’t go up forever, and we were setting up a lot of young
people to have serious economic problems.”1
Another example of moral and prudential reasoning running together in business is
found in the decision of the Marriott Corporation to make a concerted effort to hire persons who had been on welfare. These individuals had often been considered high risk as
employees, but changes in the U.S. welfare system forced many welfare recipients to seek
work. Marriott was one of the few major companies to take the initiative to hire them in
large numbers. Such behavior might be considered an example of moral goodwill and ethical altruism. Although corporate officials at Marriott clearly believed that their decision
was ethically sound and promoted the public good, they also believed that their initiative
to hire former welfare recipients was good business. J. W. Marriott, Jr., said, “We’re getting
good employees for the long term, but we’re also helping these communities. If we don’t
step up in these inner cities and provide work, they’ll never pull out of it. But it makes bottom line sense. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t do it.”2
The mixture of moral language with the language of prudence is often harmless. Many
people are more concerned about the actions businesses take than with their motivations
to perform those actions. These people will be indifferent as to whether businesses use
the language of prudence or the language of morality to justify what they do, as long as
they do the right thing. This distinction between motives and actions is very important
to philosophers, however, because a business practice that might be prudentially justified might also lack moral merit or might even be morally wrong. History has shown that
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some actions that were long accepted or at least condoned in the business community
were eventually condemned as morally dubious. Examples include pollution of the air and
water, forced labor, deceitful marketing, and large political contributions and lobbying directed at people of political influence.
Businesspeople often reflect on the morality of their actions not because it is prudent
to do so but because it is right to do so. For example, Elo TouchSystems Inc., a subsidiary
of Raychem Corporation that manufactures computer and other monitors, decided to relocate the company from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to Freemont, California. As a matter of
fidelity to its 300 employees, the company attempted to find new jobs for them in the Oak
Ridge area by placing advertisements, sponsoring job fairs, and the like. It also offered
generous bonuses for those who would relocate to California. In light of the pool of talent known to the company to be available in California, none of this activity in Tennessee
seemed in the company’s prudential interest. It simply seemed the morally appropriate
policy.
It is widely believed that acting morally is in the interest of business, and thus prudence seems to be one strong motive—perhaps the main motive—for acting ethically.
However, throughout this text we will repeatedly see that prudence often dictates a different business decision than does morality.
Morality and Law
Business ethics is currently involved in an entangled, complex, and mutually stimulating
relationship with the law in various countries and international agreements such as the
World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights. Morality and law share concerns over matters of basic social importance and often
have in common certain principles, obligations, and criteria of evidence. Law is the public’s agency for translating morality into explicit social guidelines and practices and for
stipulating punishments for offenses. For example, case law (judge-made laws expressed
in court decisions), statutory law (federal and state statutes and their accompanying administrative regulations), and international law (treaties and agreements among nations).
In these forms, law has forced vital issues before the public and is frequently the source of
emerging issues in business ethics. Case law, in particular, has established influential precedents in the United States that provide material for reflection on both legal and moral
questions.
Some have said that corporate concern about business ethics can be reduced or eliminated by turning problems over to the legal department. The operative idea is “Let the
lawyers decide; if it’s legal, it’s moral.” Although this tactic would simplify matters, moral
evaluation needs to be distinguished from legal evaluation. Despite an intersection between morals and law, the law is not the sole repository of a society’s moral standards and
values, even when the law is directly concerned with moral problems. A law-abiding person is not necessarily morally sensitive or virtuous, and the fact that something is legally
acceptable does not imply that it is morally acceptable. For example, forced labor and slavery have been legal in many nations and are still sanctioned in some rouge nations but are
clearly unjust. In Saudi Arabia, current laws systematically discriminate against women.
“If you’re a Saudi woman, you can’t board an airplane, get a job, go to school or get married without the permission of a male ‘guardian,’ whether a husband, father or, if they’re
both out of the picture, your son.”3 Currently “at will” employees in the United States and
“casual workers” in Australia can be legally fired for morally unacceptable reasons.
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Consider the following examples: It was perfectly legal when beer distributor CJW Inc.
fired its employee, 24-year-old Isac Aguero of Racine, Wisconsin, for drinking a Bud Light
at a local bar after work. CJW is the local distributor of Miller beer, and Aguero’s bosses
disliked his supporting the competition. Because Aguero was an “at-will” employee, he
had no legal recourse.4 So too, it was legal when Houston financier Charles E. Hurwitz
doubled the rate of tree cutting in the nation’s largest privately owned virgin redwood forest. He did so to reduce the debt he incurred when his company, the Maxxam Group, borrowed money to complete a hostile takeover of Pacific Lumber Company, which owned
the redwoods. Before the takeover, Pacific Lumber had followed a sustainable cutting
policy but nonetheless had consistently operated at a profit. Despite the legality of the new
clear-cutting policy initiated by the new owner, it has been criticized as immoral.5 Lastly,
it may have been legal for Merrill Lynch executives to pay themselves millions of dollars in
bonuses after losing billions of dollars in shareholder value by making imprudent investments, but most outside observers believe this compensation was unfair.
A related problem involves the belief that a person found guilty under law is therefore
morally guilty. Such judgments are not necessarily correct, as they depend on either the
intention of the agents or the moral acceptability of the law on which the judgment has
been reached. For example, if a chemical company is legally liable for polluting the environment, or a pharmaceutical firm is liable for a drug that has harmed certain patients, it
does not follow that any form of moral wrongdoing, culpability, or guilt is associated with
the activity.
Asbestos litigation is a well-known example. Because of the strength, durability, and
fire resistance of asbestos, it was used in thousands of consumer, automotive, scientific,
industrial, and maritime processes and products. Virtually no serious social attention
was paid to asbestos in the United States until 1964, when a strong link was established
between asbestos dust and disease. As many as 27 million U.S. workers may have been
exposed to this fiber, and 100 million people may have been exposed to asbestos in buildings. Manufacturers did not know about these problems of disease until around 1964; but
beginning with the 1982 bankruptcy of the Johns-Manville Corporation, many corporations were successfully sued. The problem continues to escalate today, especially owing
to cases brought by mesothelioma patients and by persons who worked with asbestos but
actually have no asbestos-related illness. Over the years of litigation, at least 8,000 companies have been sued, 95 corporations have been bankrupted, and costs have exceeded $70
billion. Although asbestos manufacturers and their customers originally had good intentions and good products, they paid a steep price under the law.6
Furthermore, the courts have often been accused of causing moral inequities through
court judgments rendered against corporations.7 For example, Dow Corning was successfully sued by plaintiffs alleging that personal injuries resulted from Dow’s silicone breast
implants, leading the company to file bankruptcy. In 2006, after an exhaustive study, the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded that there is no evidence that silicone
breast implants present health risks. In another case, Chevron Oil was successfully sued
for mislabeling its cans of the herbicide paraquat, although the offending label conformed
exactly to federal regulations, which permitted no other form of label to be used. In both
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cases, it is easy to understand why critics have considered various regulations, legislation,
and case-law decisions unjustified.
Taken together, these considerations lead to the following conclusions: If something
is legal, it is not necessarily moral; if something is illegal, it is not necessarily immoral. To
discharge one’s legal obligations is not necessarily to discharge one’s moral obligations.
The Rule of Conscience
The slogan “Let your conscience be your guide” has long been, for many, what morality is
all about. Yet, despite their admiration for persons of conscience, ethicists have typically
judged appeals to conscience alone as insufficient and untrustworthy for ethical judgment. Consciences vary radically from person to person and time to time; moreover, they
are often altered by circumstance, religious belief, childhood, and training. One example
is found in the action of Stanley Kresge, the son of the founder of S. S. Kresge Company—
now known as the K-Mart Corporation—who is a teetotaler for religious reasons. When
the company started selling beer and wine, Kresge sold all of his stock. His conscience,
he said, would not let him make a profit on alcohol. The company, though, dismissed his
objection as “his own business” and said that it saw nothing wrong with earning profits on
alcohol.8 A second example is that of factory farming animals in confined conditions that
cause them significant pain and suffering and that require the use of antibiotics to prevent
disease. Many consumers don’t believe that there is anything morally objectionable about
these practices since it provides them with inexpensive protein, but increasing numbers of
consumers believe that the pain caused to animals is unjustified and that the use of antibiotics is harmful to human health. Their consciences lead them to choose pasture farmed
animal products or to adopt vegetarian diets. The consciences of some people lead them
to take further action and to join activist groups and to protest factory farming. In rare
cases, activists have physically destroyed factory farm facilities.
In any given classroom, the consciences of students will lead them to have different
views about the moral legitimacy of using marijuana, hacking, or lying on one’s resume.
The reliability of conscience, in short, is not self-certifying. Moral justification must be
based on a source external to individual conscience.
Approaches to the Study of Morality and Ethical Theory
Morality and ethical theory can be studied and developed by a variety of methods, but
three general approaches have dominated the literature. Two of these approaches describe
and analyze morality, presumably without taking moral positions. The other approach
takes a moral position and appeals to morality or ethical theory to underwrite judgments.
These three approaches are (1) descriptive, (2) conceptual, and (3) normative (prescriptive). These categories do not express rigid and always clearly distinguishable approaches.
Nonetheless, when understood as broad positions, they can serve as models of inquiry
and as valuable distinctions.
Social scientists often refer to the first approach as the descriptive approach, or the
scientific study of ethics. Factual description and explanation of moral behavior and beliefs,
as performed by sociologists, psychologists, and organization science scholars are typical
of this approach. Moral attitudes, codes, and beliefs that are described include corporate
policies on sexual harassment and codes of ethics in trade associations. Examples of this
approach can be found in Harvard Business Review articles and Forbes magazine polls that
report what business executives believe is morally acceptable and unacceptable.
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The second approach involves the conceptual study of significant terms in ethics. Here,
the meanings of terms such as right, obligation, justice, good, virtue, and responsibility are
analyzed. Crucial terms in business ethics such as liability, deception, corporate intention,
and stakeholder can be given this same kind of careful conceptual attention. The proper
analysis of the term morality (as defined at the beginning of this chapter) and the distinction
between the moral and the nonmoral are typical examples of these conceptual problems.
The third approach, normative (prescriptive) ethics, is a prescriptive study attempting to
formulate and defend basic moral norms. Normative moral philosophy aims at determining what ought to be done, which needs to be distinguished from what is, in fact, practiced.
Ideally, an ethical theory provides reasons for adopting a whole system of moral principles or virtues.Utilitarianism and Kantianism are widely discussed theories, but they are
not the only such theories. Utilitarians argue that there is but a single fundamental principle determining right action, which can be roughly stated as follows: “An action is morally right if and only if it produces at least as great a balance of value over disvalue as any
available alternative action.” Kantians, by contrast, have argued for principles that specify
obligations rather than a balance of value. For example, one of Kant’s best-known principles
of obligation is “Never treat another person merely as a means to your own goals,” even if
doing so creates a net balance of positive value. Both forms of these theories, together with
other dimensions of ethical theory, are examined in the second part of this chapter.
Principles of normative ethics are commonly used to treat specific moral problems
such as fairness in contracts, conflicts of interest, environmental pollution, mistreatment of animals, and racial and sexual discrimination. This use of ethical theory is often
referred to, somewhat misleadingly, as applied ethics. Philosophical treatment of business
ethics involves the focused analysis of a moral problem and the use of careful reasoning that employs general ethical principles to attempt to resolve problems that commonly
arise in the professions.
Substantially the same general ethical principles apply to the problems across professional fields, such as engineering and medicine, and in areas beyond professional ethics,
as well. One might appeal to principles of justice, for example, to illuminate and resolve
issues of taxation, health care distribution, responsibility for environmental harm, criminal punishment, and racial discrimination. Similarly, principles of veracity (truthfulness)
apply to debates about secrecy and deception in international politics, misleading advertisements in business ethics, balanced reporting in journalistic ethics, and disclosure of
illness to a patient in medical ethics. Increased clarity about the general conditions under
which truth must be told and when it may be withheld would presumably enhance understanding of moral requirements in each of these areas.
The exercise of sound judgment in business practice, together with appeals to ethical
theory, are central in the essays and cases in this volume. Rarely is there a straightforward
“application” of principles that mechanically resolves problems. Principles are more commonly specified, that is, made more concrete for the context, than applied. Much of the
best work in contemporary business ethics involves arguments for how to specify principles to handle particular problems.
Relativism and Objectivity of Belief
Some writers have contended that moral views simply express the ways in which a culture
both limits and accommodates the desires of its people. In the early part of the twentieth
century, defenders of relativism used the discoveries of anthropologists in the South Sea
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Islands, Africa, and South America as evidence of a diversity of moral practices throughout
the world. Their empirical discoveries about what is the case led them to the conclusion
that moral rightness is contingent upon cultural beliefs, and that the concepts of rightness
and wrongness are meaningless apart from the specific historical and cultural contexts in
which they arise. The claim is that patterns of culture can be understood only as unique
wholes and that moral beliefs about moral behavior are closely connected in a culture.
Descriptive claims about what is the case in cultures have often been used by relativists
to justify a normative position as to what should be the case or what ought to be believed.
That is, some ethical relativists assert that whatever a culture thinks is right or wrong really is right or wrong for the members of that culture. This thesis is normative, because it
makes a value judgment; it delineates which standards or norms correctly determine right
and wrong behavior. Thus, if the Swedish tradition allows abortion, then abortion really is
morally permissible in Sweden. If the Irish tradition forbids abortion, then abortion really
is wrong in Ireland.
Ethical relativism provides a theoretical basis for those who challenge what they consider to be the imposition of Western values on the rest of the world. Specifically, some
spokespersons in Asia have criticized what they regard as the attempts of Westerners to
impose their values (as the normatively correct values) on Asian societies. For example,
it is argued that Asians give more significant value than do Westerners to the welfare of
society when it is in conflict with the welfare of the individual. However, it has also been
pointed out that, because of the range of values embraced by and within Asian nations,
it is all but impossible to say that there is such an entity as “Asian values.” Secular Asian
societies such as India, for example, have long traditions of respect for individual rights
and embrace values consonant with Western societies. Also, younger generations tend
to have significantly different views about the rights of individuals from those of older
generations.
Despite the influence of relativism and multiculturalism, there have been many recent
attempts by government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and multinational corporations to promulgate international codes of business conduct that surmount relativism.
In the era of economic globalization, these efforts are increasing rather than diminishing.
Ethical theorists have tended to reject relativism, and it is important to understand
why. First, we need to ask, What does the argument from the fact of cultural diversity
reveal? When early anthropologists probed beneath surface “moral” disagreements, they
often discovered agreement at deeper levels on more basic values. For example, one anthropologist discovered a tribe in which parents, after raising their children and when
still in a relatively healthy state, would climb a high tree. Their children would then shake
the tree until the parents fell to the ground and died. This cultural practice seems vastly
different from Western practices. The anthropologist discovered, however, that the tribe
believed that people went into the afterlife in the same bodily state in which they left this
life. Their children, who wanted them to enter the afterlife in a healthy state, were no less
concerned about their parents than are children in Western cultures. Although cultural
disagreement exists concerning the afterlife (a disagreement about what is or is not the
case), there is no ultimate moral disagreement over the moral principles determining how
children should treat their parents.
A contemporary business example can also help illustrate this point. Bribery is widely
used by businesses to obtain contracts in Afghanistan and Russia, but is regarded as an
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unacceptable means to secure contracts in Canada and Australia. This might be taken to
show that bribery really is morally permissible in Afghanistan and Russia and wrong in
Canada and Australia. However, the fact that bribery is widely practiced in Afghanistan
and Russia does not necessarily mean that it is regarded as morally acceptable behavior
by most people in those nations. It is more likely the case that those who engage in bribery
simply have greater power than do most people in those nations and so can engage in the
behavior without repercussions.
Despite their many obvious differences of practice and belief, people often do actually
agree about what may be called ultimate moral standards. For example, both Germany
and the United States have laws to protect consumers from the adverse affects of new
drugs and to bring drugs to the market as quickly as possible so that lives are saved. Yet,
Germany and the United States have different standards for making the trade-off between
protecting consumers from side effects and saving lives as soon as possible. This suggests
that two cultures may agree about basic principles of morality yet disagree about how to
implement those principles in particular situations.
In many “moral controversies,” people seem to differ only because they have different
factual beliefs. For instance, individuals often differ over appropriate actions to protect the
environment, not because they have different sets of standards about environmental ethics, but because they hold different factual views about how certain discharges of chemicals and airborne particles will or will not harm the environment. Climate change is a
good example. A warming climate will cause harm to many people through, for example,
droughts in some areas and rising seas in other areas. The vast majority of climate scientists, as well as scientists in related fields, believe that currently occurring climate change
is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions (for example, the use of fossil fuels) and
deforestation. However, many politicians claim that the science is inconclusive and that
current climate change is a natural phenomenon. This difference in factual beliefs leads to
differences about what public policies and business policies should be followed. Identical
sets of normative standards may be invoked in their arguments about environmental protection, yet different policies and actions may be recommended.
It is therefore important to distinguish relativism of judgments from relativism of standards. Differing judgments may rely on the same general standards for their justification.
Relativism of judgment is so pervasive in human social life that it would be foolish to
deny it. People may differ in their judgments about whether one policy regarding keeping
sensitive customer information confidential is more acceptable than another, but it does
not follow that they have different moral standards regarding confidentiality. The people
may hold the same moral standard(s) on protecting confidentiality but differ over how to
implement the standard(s).
However, these observations do not determine whether a relativism of standards provides the most adequate account of morality. If moral conflict did turn out to be a matter
of a fundamental conflict of moral standards, such conflict could not be removed even if
there were perfect agreement about the facts, concepts, and background beliefs of a case.
Suppose, then, that disagreement does in fact exist at the deepest level of moral thinking—
that is, suppose that two cultures disagree on basic or fundamental norms. It does not
follow, even from this relativity of standards, that there is no ultimate norm or set of norms
in which everyone ought to believe. To see why, consider the following analogy to religious
disagreement: From the fact that people have incompatible religious or atheistic beliefs,
it does not follow that there is no single correct set of religious or atheistic propositions.
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Nothing more than skepticism seems justified by the facts about religion that are adduced
by anthropology. Similarly, nothing more than such skepticism about the moral standards
would be justified if fundamental conflicts of moral standards were discovered in ethics.
The evident inconsistency of ethical relativism with many of our most cherished
moral beliefs is another reason to be doubtful of it. No general theory of ethical relativism is likely to convince us that a belief is acceptable merely because others believe in it
strongly enough, although that is exactly the commitment of this theory. At least some
moral views seem relatively more enlightened, no matter how great the variability of beliefs. The idea that practices such as slavery, forced labor, sexual exploitation under severe
threat, employment discrimination against women, and grossly inequitable salaries cannot be evaluated across cultures by some common standard seems morally unacceptable,
not morally enlightened. It is one thing to suggest that such beliefs might be excused (and
persons found nonculpable), still another to suggest that they are right.
When two parties argue about some serious, divisive, and contested moral issue—for
example, conflicts of interest in business—people tend to think that some fair and justified judgment may be reached. People seldom infer from the mere fact of a conflict
between beliefs that there is no way to judge one view as correct or as better argued or
more reasonable than the other. The more absurd the position advanced by one party, the
more convinced others become that some views are mistaken, unreasonable, or require
supplementation.
Moral Disagreements
Whether or not ethical relativism is a tenable theory, we must confront the indisputable fact of moral disagreement. In any pluralistic culture, many conflicts of value exist.
In this volume, a number of controversies and dilemmas are examined, including tradeoffs between cost cutting and protecting workers, blowing the whistle on the unethical
or illegal activities of one’s company versus company loyalty, deceptive marketing versus
lower profits, insider trading, exploitation of labor in sweatshops, and the like. Although
disagreements run deep in these controversies, there are ways to resolve them or at least
to reduce levels of conflict. Several methods have been employed in the past to deal constructively with moral disagreements, each of which deserves recognition as a method of
easing disagreement and conflict.
Obtaining Objective Information
Many moral disagreements can be at least partially resolved by obtaining additional factual information on which moral controversies turn. Earlier, it was shown how useful such
information can be in trying to ascertain whether cultural variations in belief are fundamental. It has often been assumed that moral disputes are by definition produced solely
by differences over moral principles or their application and not by a lack of scientific
or factual information. This assumption is misleading inasmuch as moral disputes—that
is, disputes over what morally ought or ought not to be done—often have nonmoral elements as their main ingredients. For example, debates over the allocation of tax dollars to
prevent accidents or disease in the workplace often become bogged down in factual issues
of whether particular measures such as the use of protective masks or lower levels of toxic
chemicals actually function better to prevent death and disease.
Another example is provided by the dispute between Greenpeace and Royal Dutch
Shell. After lengthy investigation, Royal Dutch Shell proposed to sink a loading and
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storage buoy for oil deep in the North Sea (off the coast of England). Despite evidence
that such an operation posed no environmental danger, Greenpeace conducted protests
and even used a group of small boats to thwart the attempt. Royal Dutch Shell yielded
to its critics, and the buoy was cut up and made into a quay in Norway. Later, however,
Greenpeace came to the conclusion that new facts indicated that there had never been
any serious environmental danger. Furthermore, it appears that Greenpeace’s recommended method of disposing of the buoy caused environmental harm that would have
been avoided by sinking it, as Shell had originally planned.
Controversial issues such as the following are laced with issues of both values and
facts: how satisfactorily toxic substances are monitored in the workplace; how a start-up
company has “appropriated” an established company’s trade secrets; what effects access to
pornography through the Internet produces; whether an extension of current copyright
laws would reduce sharing of copyrighted recordings on the Internet; and how vaccines
for medical use should be manufactured, disseminated, and advertised. The arguments
used by disagreeing parties may turn on a dispute about liberty, harm, or justice and
therefore may be primarily moral; but they may also rest on factual disagreements over,
for example, the effects of a product, service, or activity. Information may thus have only
a limited bearing on the resolution of some controversies, yet it may have a direct and almost overpowering influence in others.
Definitional Clarity
Sometimes, controversies have been settled by reaching conceptual or definitional agreement over the language used by disputing parties. Controversies about ethical issues regarding diversity and sexual harassment, for example, are often needlessly complicated
because different senses of these expressions are employed, and yet disputing parties may
have a great deal invested in their particular definitions. If there is no common point of
contention in such cases, parties will be addressing entirely separate issues through their
conceptual assumptions. Often, these parties will not have a bona fide moral disagreement
but, rather, a purely conceptual one.
Although conceptual agreement provides no guarantee that a dispute will be settled,
it will facilitate direct discussion of the outstanding issues. For this reason, many essays in
this volume dwell at some length on problems of conceptual clarity.
Example–Counterexample
Resolution of moral controversies can also be aided by posing examples and opposed
counterexamples, that is, by bringing forward cases or examples that are favorable to
one point of view and counterexamples that are in opposition. For instance, a famous
case against AT&T involving a dispute over discriminatory hiring and promotion
between the company and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC)
was handled through the citation of statistics and examples that (allegedly) documented the claims made by each side. AT&T showed that 55 percent of the employees on its payroll were women and that 33 percent of all management positions were
held by women. To sharpen its allegation of discriminatory practices in the face of this
evidence, the EEOC countered by citing a government study demonstrating that 99
percent of all telephone operators were female, whereas only 1 percent of craft workers
were female. Such use of example and counterexample serves to weigh the strength of
conflicting considerations.
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Analysis of Arguments and Positions
Finally, a serviceable method of philosophical inquiry is that of exposing the inadequacies in and unexpected consequences of arguments and positions. A moral argument
that leads to conclusions that a proponent is not prepared to defend and did not previously anticipate will have to be changed, and the distance between those who disagree
will perhaps be reduced by this process. Inconsistencies not only in reasoning but in organizational schemes or pronouncements can be uncovered. However, in a context of
controversy, sharp attacks or critiques are unlikely to eventuate in an agreement unless
a climate of reason prevails. A fundamental axiom of successful negotiation is “reason
and be open to reason.” The axiom holds for moral discussion as well as for any other
disagreement.
No contention is made here that moral disagreements can always be resolved or that
every reasonable person must accept the same method for approaching disagreement.
Many moral problems may not be resolvable by any of the four methods that have been
discussed. A single ethical theory or method may never be developed to resolve all disagreements adequately, and the pluralism of cultural beliefs often presents a barrier to
the resolution of issues. Given the possibility of continual disagreement, the resolution
of cross-cultural conflicts such as those faced by multinational corporations may prove
especially elusive. However, if something is to be done about these problems, a resolution
seems more likely to occur if the methods outlined in this section are used.
The Problem of Egoism
Attitudes in business have often been deemed fundamentally egoistic. Executives and corporations are said to act purely from prudence—that is, each business is out to promote
solely its own interest in a context of competition. Some people say that the corporation
has no other interest, because its goal is to be as economically successful in competition
as possible.
The philosophical theory called egoism has familiar origins. We have all been confronted with occasions in which we must make a choice between spending money on
ourselves or on some worthy charitable enterprise. When one elects to purchase new
clothes for oneself rather than contribute to famine relief in Africa, one is giving priority
to self-interest over the interests of others. Egoism generalizes beyond these occasions to
all human choices. The egoist contends that all choices either do involve or should involve
self-promotion as their sole objective. Thus, a person’s or a corporation’s goal, and perhaps
only obligation, is self-promotion. No sacrifice or obligation is owed to others.
There are two main varieties of egoism: psychological egoism and ethical egoism. We
will discuss each in turn.
Psychological Egoism
Psychological egoism is the view that everyone is always motivated to act in his or her
perceived self-interest. This factual theory regarding human motivation offers an
explanation of human conduct, in contrast with a justification of human conduct. It
claims that people always do what pleases them or what is in their interest. Popular ways
of expressing this viewpoint include the following: “People are at heart selfish, even if
they appear to be unselfish”; “People look out for Number One first”; “In the long run,
everybody does what he or she wants to do”; and “No matter what a person says, he or she
acts for the sake of personal satisfaction.”
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If psychological egoism is true, it would present a serious challenge to normative moral
philosophy. If this theory is correct, there is no purely altruistic moral motivation. Yet,
normative ethics appears to presuppose that people ought to behave in accordance with
the demands of morality, whether or not such behavior promotes their own interests. If
people must act in their own interest, to ask them to sacrifice for others would be absurd.
Accordingly, if psychological egoism is true, the whole enterprise of normative ethics is
futile. However, psychologists have shown that humans act on a variety of motives.
Those who accept psychological egoism are convinced that their theory of motivation is correct. Conversely, those who reject the theory do so not only because they see
many examples of altruistic behavior in the lives of friends, colleagues, saints, heroes, and
public servants, but also because contemporary anthropology, psychology, and biology
offer some compelling studies of sacrificial behavior. Even if people are basically selfish,
critics of egoism maintain that there are at least some compelling examples of preeminently unselfish actions such as corporations that cut profits to provide public services
and employees who “blow the whistle” on unsafe or otherwise improper business practices even though they could lose their jobs and suffer social ostracism.
The defender of psychological egoism is not impressed by the exemplary lives of saints
and heroes or by social practices of corporate sacrifice. The psychological egoist maintains
that all who expend effort to help others, to promote fairness in competition, to promote
the general welfare, or to risk their lives for the welfare of others are, underneath it all,
acting to promote themselves. By sacrificing for their children, parents seek the satisfaction that comes from their children’s development or achievements. By following society’s
moral and legal codes, people avoid both the police and social ostracism.
Egoists maintain that no matter how self-sacrificing one’s behavior may at times seem,
the desire behind the action is self-regarding. One is ultimately out for oneself, whether in
the long or the short run, and whether one realizes it or not. Egoists view self-promoting
actions as perfectly compatible with behavior that others categorize as altruistic. For
example, many corporations have adopted “enlightened self-interest” policies through
which they respond to community needs and promote worker satisfaction to promote
their corporate image and ultimately their earnings. The clever person or corporation can
appear to be unselfish, but the action’s true character depends on the motivation behind
the appearance. Honest corporate leaders will, in the view of the egoist, emulate General
Electric chairman and CEO Jeffery Immelt, who announced GE’s new “ecoimagination”
environmental initiative, saying “we can improve the environment and make money
doing it. We see that green is green.”9 According to the egoist, apparently altruistic agents
who are less honest than Immelt may simply believe that an unselfish appearance best
promotes their long-range interests. From the egoist’s point of view, the fact that some
(pseudo?) sacrifices may be necessary in the short run does not count against egoism.
Consider the following example. Since the late 1980s, the pharmaceutical company
Merck has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help eradicate diseases such as river
blindness (onchocerciasis) and elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis) in the developing world.
Partly as a result of these activities, Merck had enjoyed a “sterling reputation” as “the
most ethical of the major drug companies.” 10 However, in 2004, Merck’s chairman
and CEO, Raymond Gilmartin, was called before the U.S. Senate Finance Committee to testify about his company’s problematic arthritis drug Vioxx (rofecoxib) which
was subsequently withdrawn from the market. Observers noted that Gilmartin was
treated gently—even kindly—by the senators. They attributed the gentle treatment to
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Merck’s past record of ethical leadership. (This treatment contrasted significantly with the
harsh criticism executives at companies involved in the financial crisis of 2008 received
from Congress.) From the perspective of egoists, Merck’s efforts at combating diseases in
the developing world should be understood entirely as self-interested activity. As evidence
of this claim they point to the favorable treatment Merck received by Congress as a direct
result of those and other allegedly altruistic activities.
Even if Merck’s behavior is best explained as motivated by self-interest, it need not
follow that all human behavior can be best explained as motivated by self-interest. The
question remains: Is psychological egoism correct? At one level, this question can be answered only by empirical data—by looking at the facts. Significantly, there is a large body
of evidence both from observations of daily practice and from experiments in psychological laboratories that counts against the universality of egoistic motivation. The evidence
from daily practice is not limited to heroic action, but includes such mundane practices as
voting and leaving tips in restaurants and hotels where a person does not expect to return
and has nothing to gain.
It is tempting for the psychological egoist to make the theory necessarily true because
of the difficulties in proving it to be empirically true. When confronted with what look
like altruistic acts, egoists may appeal to unconscious motives of self-interest or claim that
every act is based on some desire of the person performing the act. For example, the egoist will note that people will feel good after performing allegedly altruistic acts and then
claim that it is the desire to feel good that motivated the person in the first place.
The latter explanation seems to be a conceptual or verbal trick: the egoist has changed
the meaning of self-interest. At first, self-interest meant “acting exclusively on behalf of
one’s own self-serving interest.” Now the word has been redefined to mean “acting on any
interest one has.” In other words, the egoist has conceptualized “interest” to always entail
self-interested motivation. If psychological egoists are right, we never intend impartially
to help a child, loved one, friend, or colleague, but only to achieve our own satisfaction.
But even if an act brings satisfaction, it does not follow that one was motivated by the
goal of satisfaction or intended some form of satisfaction. Finally, notice one other feature
about psychological egoism. If it is an accurate description of human nature, then humans
are incapable of acting out of any interest but self-interest. Principled action based on motives, such as respect for other persons, the greater good, or justice, are not, in this view,
motives humans are capable of acting from.
Ethical Egoism
Ethical egoism is a theory stating that the supreme principle of conduct is to promote one’s
well-being above everyone else’s. Whereas psychological egoism is a descriptive, psychological
theory about human motivation, ethical egoism is a normative theory about what people
ought to do. According to psychological egoism, people always do act on the basis of perceived
self-interest. According to ethical egoism, people always ought to act on the basis of self-interest.
Ethical egoism contrasts sharply with common moral beliefs. Consider the maxim
“You’re a sucker if you don’t put yourself first and others second.” This maxim is generally
thought morally unacceptable, because morality obligates people to return a lost wallet
to an owner and to correct a bank loan officer’s errors in their favor. Nevertheless, questions about why people should look out for the interests of others on such occasions have
troubled many reflective persons. Some have concluded that acting against one’s interest
is contrary to reason. These thinkers, who regard conventional morality as tinged with
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irrational sentiment and indefensible constraints on the individual, are the supporters of
ethical egoism. It is not their view that one should always ignore the interests of others
but, rather, that one should take account of and act on the interests of others only if it suits
one’s own interests to do so.
What would society be like if ethical egoism were the conventional, prevailing
theory of proper conduct? Some philosophers and political theorists have argued that
anarchism and chaos would result unless preventive measures were adopted. A classic
statement of this position was made by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679).
Imagine a world with limited resources, he said, where persons are approximately equal
in their ability to harm one another and where everyone acts exclusively in his or her interest. Hobbes argued that in such a world everyone would be at everyone else’s throat,
and society would be plagued by anxiety, violence, and constant danger. As Hobbes declared, life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”11 However, Hobbes also
assumed that human beings are sufficiently rational to recognize their interests. To
avoid the war of all against all, he urged his readers to form a powerful government to
protect themselves.
Egoists accept Hobbes’ view in the following form: Any clever person will realize that
she or he has no moral obligations to others besides those obligations she or he voluntarily
assumes because it is in one’s own interest to agree to abide by them. Each person should
accept moral rules and assume specific obligations only when doing so promotes one’s
self-interest. In agreeing to live under laws of the state that are binding on everyone, one
should obey these laws only to protect oneself and to create a situation of communal living that is personally advantageous. One should also back out of an obligation whenever
it becomes clear that it is to one’s long-range disadvantage to fulfill the obligation. When
confronted by a social revolution, the questionable trustworthiness of a colleague, or an
incompetent administration at one’s place of employment, no one is under an obligation
to obey the law, fulfill contracts, or tell the truth. These obligations exist only because one
assumes them, and one ought to assume them only as long as doing so promotes one’s
own interest.
An arrangement whereby everyone acted on more or less fixed rules such as those
found in conventional moral and legal systems would produce the most desirable state
of affairs for each individual from an egoistic point of view. The reason is that such rules
arbitrate conflicts and make social life more agreeable. These rules would include, for
example, familiar moral and legal principles of justice that are intended to make everyone’s situation more secure and stable.
Only an unduly narrow conception of self-interest, the egoist might argue, leads critics to conclude that the egoist would not willingly observe conventional rules of justice. If
society can be structured to resolve personal conflicts through courts and other peaceful
means, egoists will view it as in their interest to accept those binding social arrangements,
just as they will perceive it as prudent to treat other individuals favorably in personal
contexts.
The egoist is not saying that his or her interests are served by promoting the
good of others but, rather, is claiming that his or her personal interests are served by
observing impartial rules that protect one’s interest, irrespective of the outcome for
others. Egoists do not care about the welfare of others unless it affects their welfare,
and this desire for personal well-being alone motivates acceptance of the conventional
rules of morality.
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Egoistic Business Practices and Utilitarian Results
A different view from that of Hobbes’, and one that has been influential in some parts of
the business community, is found in Adam Smith’s (1723–1790) economic and moral writings. Smith believed that the public good—especially in the commercial world—evolves
out of a suitably restrained clash of competing individual interests. As individuals pursue
their self-interest, the interactive process is guided by an “invisible hand,” ensuring that
the public interest is achieved. Ironically, according to Smith, egoism in commercial transactions leads not to the war of all against all but, rather, to a utilitarian outcome—that is,
to the largest number of benefits for the largest number of persons. The free market is,
Smith thought, a better method of achieving the public good, however inadvertently, than
the highly visible hand of Hobbes’ all-powerful sovereign state.
Smith believed that government should be limited in order to protect individual freedom. At the same time, he recognized that concern with freedom and self-interest could
get out of control. Hence, he proposed that minimal state regulatory activity is needed to
provide and enforce the rules of the competitive game. Smith’s picture of a restrained egoistic world has captivated many people interested in the business and economic community.12 They, like Smith, do not picture themselves as selfish and indifferent to the interests
of others, and they recognize that a certain element of cooperation is essential if their interests are to flourish. They recognize that when their interests conflict with the interests
of others, they should pursue their interests within the established rules of the competitive
game. (Smith was writing about small businesses and privately held companies, since the
modern, publicly held corporation did not yet exist.)
Such a restrained egoism is one form of defense of a free-market economy; competition among individual firms advances the utilitarian good of society as a whole. Hence,
a popular view of business ethics is captured by the phrase “Ethical egoism leads to utilitarian outcomes.” As Smith said, corporations and individuals pursuing their individual
interests thereby promote the public good, so long as they abide by the rules that protect
the public.
Some people believe that a contemporary example is found in the way world hunger
can be alleviated as a result of capitalistic behavior. They claim that capitalistic investment
and productivity increase jobs, social welfare, social cooperation, wealth in society, and
morally responsible behavior. The thesis is that these benefits accrue widely across the
society, affecting both poor and wealthy, even if the goal of capitalists is purely their own
economic gain.13
Critics of this argument note that although global capitalism can generate significant
benefits, the ability to generate many of those benefits presumes that certain regulatory
controls are in place in the nations in which business is conducted. At the very least, there
must be regulation to ensure that there is a free market. Also, developing nations often
lack the framework of laws, policing authorities, and judicial review presumed by Smith.
In such circumstances, the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest can result in the exploitation of workers, and environmental practices that are harmful to human welfare and
increase rather than decrease poverty. For example, a business may take advantage of the
fact that a developing nation has no means of occupational safety enforcement and, to
save money, may choose not to put in place standards for protecting workers from injury
by exposure to toxic chemicals or poorly maintained machinery.
An important and neglected aspect of Smith’s defense of capitalism is that it was
predicated on his theory of ethics.14 (Smith held the Chair in Moral Philosophy at the
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University of Glasgow for over 10 years.) Egoists typically neglect important features of
Smith’s thinking about ethics and human behavior. Smith did argue that prudence, or the
careful pursuit of one’s self-interest, is a virtue. But he also argued that benevolence, or actions directed at the good of others, is an equally important virtue, one that is necessary
for social welfare. And he warned against the self-interested partiality in our judgments. A
minimal regulatory environment for business was possible without resulting in the anarchy predicted by Hobbes, Smith argued, because of the sympathetic nature of persons and
our capacity for benevolence.
Normative Ethical Theory
The central question discussed in this section is: What constitutes an acceptable ethical
standard for business practice, and by what authority is the standard acceptable? One
time-honored answer is that the acceptability of a moral standard is determined by prevailing practices in business or by authoritative, profession-generated documents such as
codes. Many businesspersons find this viewpoint congenial and therefore do not see the
need for revisions in practices that they find already comfortable and adequate.
Professional standards do play a role in business ethics. Ultimately, however, the internal morality of business does not supply a comprehensive framework for the many
pressing questions of business ethics. Morality in the world of business evolves in the face
of social change and critical philosophical argument; it cannot rely entirely on its own
historical traditions. Its standards, therefore, need to be justified in terms of independent
ethical standards such as those of public opinion, law, and philosophical ethics—just as
the moral norms of a culture need to be justified by more than an appeal to those norms
themselves. The following two parts of this section are devoted to two ethical theories that
have been particularly influential in moral philosophy: utilitarianism and Kantianism.
Some knowledge of these theories is indispensable for reflective study in business ethics,
because a sizable part of the field’s literature draws on methods and conclusions found in
these theories.
Utilitarian Theories
Utilitarian theories hold that the moral worth of actions or practices is determined by
their consequences. An action or practice is right if it leads to the best possible balance
of good consequences over bad consequences for all affected parties. In taking this perspective, utilitarians believe that the purpose or function of ethics is to promote human
welfare by minimizing harms and maximizing benefits.
The first developed philosophical writings that made the category of “utility” central
in moral philosophy were those of David Hume (1711–1776), Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832),
and John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). Mill’s Utilitarianism (1863) is still today considered the
standard statement of this theory. Mill discusses two foundations or sources of utilitarian
thinking: a normative foundation in the “principle of utility” and a psychological foundation in human nature. He proposes his principle of utility—the “greatest happiness
principle”—as the foundation of normative ethical theory. Actions are right, Mill says, in
proportion to their tendency to promote happiness or absence of pain, and wrong insofar as
they tend to produce pain or displeasure. According to Mill, pleasure and freedom from
pain are alone desirable as ends. All desirable things (which are numerous) are desirable
either for the pleasure inherent in them or as means to promote pleasure and prevent pain.
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Mill’s second foundation derives from his belief that most persons, and perhaps all,
have a basic desire for unity and harmony with their fellow human beings. Just as people
feel horror at crimes, he says, they have a basic moral sensitivity to the needs of others.
Mill sees the purpose of morality as tapping natural human sympathies to benefit others
while controlling unsympathetic attitudes that cause harm to others. The principle of utility is conceived as the best means to these basic human goals.
Essential Features of Utilitarianism
Several essential features of utilitarianism are present in the theories of Mill and other
utilitarians. First, utilitarianism is committed to the maximization of the good and the
minimization of harm and evil. It asserts that society ought always to produce the greatest possible balance of positive value or the minimum balance of disvalue for all persons affected. The means to maximization is efficiency, a goal that persons in business
find congenial, because it is highly prized throughout the economic sector. Efficiency is
a means to higher profits and lower prices, and the struggle to be maximally profitable
seeks to obtain maximum production from limited economic resources. The utilitarian
commitment to the principle of optimal productivity through efficiency is, in this regard,
an essential part of the traditional business conception of society and a standard part of
business practice.
Many businesses, as well as government agencies, have adopted specific tools such
as cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, or management by objectives—all of which are
strongly influenced by a utilitarian philosophy. Other businesses do not employ such
specific tools but make utililitarian judgments about the benefits and costs of having
layoffs, conducting advertising campaigns, hiring lobbyists, paying CEOs, and providing employee benefits. Though unpopular in the short term, many adjustments are often
welcomed because they are directed at long-term financial improvement, favorable government regulation, and job security. In this respect, business harbors a fundamentally
utilitarian conception of the goals of its enterprise. Much the same is true of the goals of
public policy in many countries.
A second essential feature of the utilitarian theory is a theory of the good. Efficiency
itself is simply an instrumental good; that is, it is valuable strictly as a means to something
else. Even growth and profit maximization are only means to the end of intrinsic goods.
But what is “good” according to the utilitarian? An answer to this question can be formed
by considering the New York stock market. Daily results on Wall Street are not intrinsically good. They are extrinsically good as a means to other ends, such as financial security
and happiness. Utilitarians believe that people ought to orient their lives and frame their
goals around conditions that are good in themselves without reference to further consequences. Health, friendship, and freedom from pain are among such values.
However, utilitarians disagree concerning what constitutes the complete range of
things or states that are good. Bentham and Mill are hedonists. They believe that only
pleasure or happiness (synonymous for the purposes of this discussion) can be intrinsically good. Everything besides pleasure is instrumentally good to the end of pleasure.
Hedonistic utilitarians, then, believe that any act or practice that maximizes pleasure
(when compared with any alternative act or practice) is right. Later utilitarian philosophers have argued that other values besides pleasure possess intrinsic worth, for example,
friendship, knowledge, courage, health, and beauty. Utilitarians who believe in multiple
intrinsic values are referred to as pluralistic utilitarians.
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In recent philosophy, economics, and psychology, neither the approach of the
hedonists nor that of the pluralists has prevailed. Both approaches have seemed relatively
unhelpful for purposes of objectively stating and arraying basic goods. Another and competitive theory appeals to individual preferences. From this perspective, the concept of
utility is understood not in terms of states of affairs such as happiness or friendship, but in
terms of the satisfaction of individual preferences, as determined by a person’s behavior. In
the language of business, utility is measured by a person’s purchases. More generally, utility may be said to be measurable by starting with a person’s actual pursuits. To maximize a
person’s utility is to provide that which he or she has chosen or would choose from among
the available alternatives. To maximize the utility of all persons affected by an action or a
policy is to maximize the utility of the aggregate group.
Although the preference utilitarian approach to value has been viewed by many as superior to its predecessors, it is not trouble free as an ethical theory. A major problem arises
over morally unacceptable preferences. For example, an airline pilot may prefer to have
a few beers before going to work, or an employment officer may prefer to discriminate
against women, yet such preferences are morally intolerable. Utilitarianism based purely on
subjective preferences is satisfactory, then, only if a range of acceptable preferences can be
formulated. This latter task has proved difficult in theory, and it may be inconsistent with a
pure preference approach. Should products such as cigarettes, fireworks, heroin, and automatic rifles be legally prohibited because they cause harm, even though many people would
prefer to purchase them? How could a preference utilitarian answer this question?
One possible utilitarian response is to ask whether society is better off as a whole when
these preferences are prohibited and when the choices of those desiring them are frustrated. If these products work against the larger objectives of utilitarianism (maximal public welfare) by creating unhappiness and pain, the utilitarian could argue that preferences
for these products should not be counted in the calculus of preferences. Preferences that
serve to frustrate the preferences of others would then be ruled out by the goal of utilitarianism. But would the resulting theory be one entirely based on preferences and only
preferences?
A third essential feature of utilitarianism is its commitment to the measurement and
comparison of goods. In a hedonistic theory, people must be able to measure pleasurable
and painful states and be able to compare one person’s pleasures with another’s to decide
which is greater. Bentham, for example, worked out a measurement device that he called
the hedonic calculus. He thought he could add the quantitative units of individual pleasure, subtract the units of individual displeasure, and thereby arrive at a total measure of
pleasure (or happiness). By the use of this system, it is allegedly possible to determine the
act or practice that will provide the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people.
When Bentham’s hedonic calculus turned out to be of limited practical value, Mill
shifted to a criterion that we would today call a panel of experts (persons of requisite
experience). Because Mill believed that some pleasures were better or higher order than
others, a device was needed to decide which pleasures were in fact better. The experts
were designated to fill that role. Subsequently, this idea of Mill’s also turned out to be of
limited practical value, and notions like that of consumer choice were substituted in some
utilitarian theories. Consumer behavior, in this conception, can be empirically observed
as prices change in the market. If one assumes that consumers seek to rationally order and
maximize their preferences, given a set of prices, an objective measurement of utility is
possible.
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Act and Rule Utilitarianism
Utilitarian moral philosophers are conventionally divided into two types—act utilitarians
and rule utilitarians. An act utilitarian argues that in all situations one ought to perform
the act that leads to the greatest good for the greatest number. The act utilitarian regards
rules such as “You ought to tell the truth in making contracts” and “You ought not to
manipulate persons through advertising” as useful guidelines, but also as expendable in
business and other relationships. An act utilitarian would not hesitate to break a moral rule
if breaking it would lead to the greatest good for the greatest number in a particular case.
Rule utilitarians, however, reserve a more significant place for rules, which they do not
regard as expendable on grounds that utility is maximized in a particular circumstance.
There are many applications of both types of utilitarianism in business ethics.15 Consider the following case in which U.S. business practices and standards run up against
the quite different practices of the Italian business community. The case involves the tax
problems encountered by an Italian subsidiary of a major U.S. bank. In Italy, the practices
of corporate taxation typically involve elaborate negotiations among hired company representatives and the Italian tax service, and the tax statement initially submitted by a corporation is regarded as a dramatically understated bid intended only as a starting point for
the negotiating process. In the case in question, the U.S. manager of the Italian banking
subsidiary decided, against the advice of locally experienced lawyers and tax consultants,
to ignore the native Italian practices and file a conventional U.S.-style tax statement (that
is, one in which the subsidiary’s profits for the year were not dramatically understated).
His reasons for this decision included his belief that the local customs violated the moral
rule of truth telling.16
An act utilitarian might well take exception to this conclusion. Admittedly, to file an
Italian-style tax statement would be to violate a moral rule of truth telling; but the act
utilitarian would argue that such a rule is only a guideline and can justifiably be violated
to produce the greatest good. In the present case, the greatest good would evidently be
done by following the local consultants’ advice to conform to Italian practices. Only by
following those practices would the appropriate amount of tax be paid. This conclusion
is strengthened by the ultimate outcome of the present case: the Italian authorities forced
the bank to enter into the customary negotiations, a process in which the original, truthful
tax statement was treated as an understated opening bid, and a dramatically excessive tax
payment was consequently exacted.
In contrast with the position of act utilitarians, rule utilitarians hold that rules have
a central position in morality that cannot be compromised by the demands of particular
situations. Compromise threatens the general effectiveness of the rules, the observance of
which maximizes social utility. For the rule utilitarian, then, actions are justified by appeal
to abstract rules such as “Don’t kill,” “Don’t bribe,” and “Don’t break promises.” These rules,
in turn, are justified by an appeal to the principle of utility. The rule utilitarian believes that
this position can avoid the objections of act utilitarianism, because rules are not subject to
change by the demands of individual circumstances. Utilitarian rules are, in theory, firm
and protective of all classes of individuals, just as human rights are rigidly protective of all
individuals regardless of social convenience and momentary need.
Act utilitarians have a reply to these criticisms. They argue that there is a third
option beyond ignoring rules and strictly obeying them, which is that the rules should
be regarded as “rules of thumb” to be obeyed only sometimes. In cases in which adhering
to the rule of thumb will result in a decline in overall welfare, the rule should be ignored.
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Criticisms of Utilitarianism
A major problem for utilitarianism is whether preference units or some other utilitarian value such as happiness can be measured and compared to determine the best action
among the alternatives. For example, in deciding whether to open a pristine Alaskan wildlife preserve to oil exploration and drilling, how does one compare the combined value of
an increase in the oil supply, jobs, and consumer purchasing power with the value of wildlife preservation and environmental protection? How does a responsible official—at, say,
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—decide how to distribute limited funds allocated
for charitable contributions (for example, as this foundation has decided, to international
vaccination and children’s health programs)? If a corporate social audit (an evaluation of
the company’s acts of social responsibility) were attempted, how could the auditor measure and compare a corporation’s ethical assets and liabilities?
The utilitarian reply is that the alleged problem is either a pseudo-problem or a problem that affects all ethical theories. People make crude, rough-and-ready comparisons of
values every day, including those of pleasures and dislikes. For example, workers decide to
go as a group to a bar rather than have an office party because they think the bar function
will satisfy more members of the group. Utilitarians acknowledge that accurate measurements of others’ goods or preferences can seldom be provided because of limited knowledge and time. In everyday affairs such as purchasing supplies, administering business, or
making legislative decisions, severely limited knowledge regarding the consequences of
one’s actions is often all that is available.
Utilitarianism has also been criticized on the grounds that it ignores nonutilitarian
factors that are needed to make moral decisions. The most prominent omission cited is
a consideration of justice: the action that produces the greatest balance of value for the
greatest number of people may bring about unjustified treatment of a minority. Suppose
society decides that the public interest is served by denying health insurance to those testing positive for the AIDS virus. Moreover, in the interest of efficiency, suppose insurance
companies are allowed to weed out those covered because they have some characteristics
that are statistically associated with an enhanced risk of injury or disease—for example,
genetic disorders. Suppose such policies would, on balance, serve the public’s financial
interest by lowering insurance costs. Utilitarianism seems to require that public law and
insurance companies deny coverage to persons with genetic disorders and to many others
at higher risk of disease or injury. If so, would not this denial be unjust to those who are at
high risk through no fault of their own?
Utilitarians insist, against such criticisms, that all entailed costs and benefits of an
action or practice must be weighed, including, for example, the costs that would occur
from modifying a statement of basic rights. In a decision that affects employee and consumer safety, for example, the costs often include protests from labor and consumer
groups, public criticism from the press, further alienation of employees from executives,
the loss of customers to competitors, and the like. Also, rule utilitarians deny that narrow
cost-benefit determinations are acceptable. They argue that general rules of justice (which
are themselves justified by broad considerations of utility) ought to constrain particular
actions and uses of cost-benefit calculations. Rule utilitarians maintain that the criticisms
of utilitarianism previously noted are short-sighted because they focus on injustices that
might be caused through a superficial or short-term application of the principle of utility.
In a long-range view, utilitarians argue, promoting utility does not eventuate in overall
unjust outcomes.
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Kantian Ethics
CNN reported that online shoppers who visited the Internet auction site eBay were
surprised to find a “fully functional kidney” for sale by a man giving his home as
“Sunrise, Florida.” He was proposing to sell one of his two kidneys. The price had been
bid up to more than $5.7 million before eBay intervened and terminated the (illegal)
auction.17 Although it was never determined whether this auction was genuine, it is
known that kidneys are for sale in some parts of Asia, notably India. One study showed,
after locating 305 sellers, that Indians who sold their kidneys actually worsened rather
than bettered their financial position as a result of the sale. The study also showed that
some men forced their wives to sell a kidney and that many sellers suffered a permanent
decline in health.18 Irrespective of the consequences of a kidney sale, many people look
with moral indignation on the idea of selling a kidney, whether in the United States
or in India.19 They see it as wrongful exploitation, rather than opportunity, and they
don’t care whether it has strong utilitarian benefits for society. What is it about selling a
kidney that provokes this sense of moral unfairness, and can a moral theory capture the
perceived wrongness?
Kantian Respect for Persons
Many have thought that Immanuel Kant’s (1724–1804) ethical theory helps clarify the basis
of such moral concern as well as what should be done about it. A follower of Kant could
argue that using human organs as commodities is to treat human beings as though they
were merely machines or capital, and so to deny people the respect appropriate to their
dignity as rational human beings. Kant argued that persons should be treated as ends and
never purely as means to the ends of others. That is, failure to respect persons is to treat
another as a means in accordance with one’s own ends, and thus as if they were not independent agents. To exhibit a lack of respect for a person is either to reject the person’s considered judgments, to ignore the person’s concerns and needs, or to deny the person the
liberty to act on those judgments. For example, manipulative advertising that attempts to
make sales by interfering with the potential buyer’s reflective choice violates the principle
of respect for persons. In the case of kidney sales, almost all sellers are in desperate poverty and desperate need. Potentially all organ “donations” will come from the poor while
the rich avoid donating their kidneys even to their relatives. In effect, the organ is treated
as a commodity and the owner of the organ as merely a means to a purchaser’s ends.
In Kantian theories, respect for the human being is said to be necessary—not just
as an option or at one’s discretion—because human beings possess a moral dignity and
therefore should not be treated as if they had merely the conditional value possessed by
machinery, industrial plants, robots, and capital. This idea of “respect for persons” has
sometimes been expressed in corporate contexts as “respect for the individual.”
An example in business ethics is found in the practices of Southwest Airlines,
which has the reputation of treating its employees and customers with unusual respect.
Employees report that they feel free to express themselves as individuals and that they
feel a strong loyalty to the airline. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,
Southwest was the only airline that did not lay off employees or reduce its flight schedule.
As a consequence, some employees offered to work overtime, without pay, to save the
company money until people resumed flying.20 The firm prides itself on a relationship
with all stakeholders that is a relationship of persons, rather than simply a relationship of
economic transactions.
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Another example is found at Motorola, where respect for individual persons is one of
the “key beliefs” that has served as a foundation for their Code of Conduct for decades.
As understood by Motorola, “Constant respect for people means we treat everyone with
dignity, as we would like to be treated ourselves. Constant respect applies to every individual we interact with around the world.”21 The Motorola Code of Conduct specifies how this
principle should be applied to “Motorolans,” customers, business partners, shareholders,
competitors, communities, and governments. All employees at Motorola are evaluated, in
part, on the extent to which they demonstrate respect for each of these stakeholders.
Some have interpreted Kant to hold categorically that people can never treat other
persons as a means to their ends. This interpretation is mistaken. Kant did not categorically prohibit the use of persons as means to the ends of other people. He argued only that
people must not treat another exclusively as a means to their ends. An example is found in
circumstances in which employees are ordered to perform odious tasks. Clearly, they are
being treated as a means to an employer’s or a supervisor’s ends, but the employees are not
exclusively used for others’ purposes because they are not mere servants or objects. In an
economic exchange, suppose that Jones is using Smith to achieve her end, but similarly
Smith is using Jones to achieve her end. So long as the exchange is freely entered into
without coercion or deception by either party, neither party has used the other merely for
her end. Thus, even in a hierarchical organization, an employer can be the boss without
exploiting the employee, so long as the employee freely entered into that relationship. The
key to not using others merely as a means is to respect their dignity.
This interpretation suggests that the example of the kidney sale does not necessarily
show any disrespect for persons. Kant seems to require only that each individual will the
acceptance of those principles on which he or she is acting. If a person freely accepts a
certain form of action and it is not intrinsically immoral, that person is a free being and
has a right to so choose. Selling a kidney might fall into this category. It is conceivable, for
example, that if as a condition of the exchange, kidney sellers were guaranteed first-rate
medical care for the rest of their lives to help prevent sickness and death from complications related to transplant surgery, purchasing a kidney might be regarded as permissible.22 However, because kidney sellers are seldom provided with such care, they develop
serious medical complications and their life span is often reduced as a result. In this way,
they are literally regarded as disposable. It is this judgment that informs the assessment
some Kantians make today that unregulated kidney sales are immoral.
Respecting others does not merely entail a negative obligation to refrain from treating
others as mere objects; it also entails positive obligations to help ensure the development
of rational and moral capacities. For example, some Kantians argue today that employers
of low-skill workers in the developing world have obligations to ensure that the workers
enjoy sufficient free time and the wages to develop their capacities to function as moral
agents. Accordingly, workers who are paid more than they would make if they were living
on the street, but not enough to live decent human lives, are treated with impermissible
disrespect.
Kant’s theory finds motives for actions to be of the highest importance, in that it expects persons to make the right decisions for the right reasons. If persons are honest only
because they believe that honesty pays, their “honesty” is cheapened. It seems like no
honesty at all, only an action that appears to be honest. For example, when corporate
executives announce that the reason they made the morally correct decision was because
it was good for their business, this reason seems to have nothing to do with morality.
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According to Kantian thinking, if a corporation does the right thing only when (and for
the reason that) it is profitable or when it will enjoy good publicity, its decision is prudential, not moral.
Consider the following three examples of three people making personal sacrifices to
raise money to help pay for a cancer-stricken co-worker to receive an extremely expensive new drug therapy that is not covered by health insurance. Fred makes the sacrifices
only because he fears the criticism that would result if he failed to do so. He hates doing
it and secretly resents being involved. Sam, by contrast, derives no personal satisfaction
from helping raise money. He would rather be doing other things and makes the sacrifice
purely from a sense of obligation. Bill, by contrast, is a kindhearted person. He does not
view his actions as a sacrifice and is motivated by the satisfaction that comes from helping
others. Assume in these three cases that the consequences of all the sacrificial actions are
equally good and that the co-worker receives the drug therapy, as each agent intends. The
question to consider is which persons are behaving in a morally praiseworthy manner. If
utilitarian theory is used, this question may be hard to answer, especially if act utilitarianism is the theory in question, because the good consequences in each case are identical.
The Kantian believes, however, that motives—in particular, motives of moral obligation—
count substantially in moral evaluation.
It appears that Fred’s motives are not moral motives but motives of prudence that spring
from fear. Although his actions have good consequences, Fred does not deserve any moral
credit for his acts because they are not morally motivated. To recognize the prudential
basis of an action does not detract from the goodness of any consequences it may have.
Given the purpose or function of the business enterprise, a motive of self-interest may be
the most appropriate motive to ensure good consequences. The point, however, is that a
business executive derives no special moral credit for acting in the corporate self-interest,
even if society is benefited by and satisfied with the action.
If Fred’s motive is not moral, what about Bill’s and Sam’s? Here moral philosophers
disagree. Kant maintained that moral action must be motivated by a maxim (rule) of
moral obligation. From this perspective, Sam is the only individual whose actions may be
appropriately described as moral. Bill deserves no more credit than Fred, because Bill is
motivated by the emotions of sympathy and compassion, not by obligation. Bill is naturally kindhearted and has been well socialized by his family, but this motivation merits no
moral praise from a Kantian, who believes that actions motivated by self-interest alone
or compassion alone cannot be morally praiseworthy. To be deserving of moral praise, a
person must act from obligation.
To elaborate this point, Kant insisted that all persons must act for the sake of obligation—not merely in accordance with obligation. That is, the person’s motive for action
must involve a recognition of the duty to act. Kant tried to establish the ultimate basis for
the validity of rules of obligation in pure reason, not in intuition, conscience, utility, or
compassion. Morality provides a rational framework of principles and rules that constrain
and guide all people, independent of their personal goals and preferences. He believed
that all considerations of utility and self-interest are secondary, because the moral worth
of an agent’s action depends exclusively on the moral acceptability of the rule according to
which the person is acting.
An action has moral worth only if performed by an agent who possesses what Kant
called a “good will.” A person has a good will only if the motive for action is moral obligation, as determined by a universal rule of obligation. Kant developed this notion into
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a fundamental moral law: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I can also will
that my maxim should become a universal law.” Kant called this principle the categorical
imperative. It is categorical because it admits of no exceptions and is absolutely binding.
It is imperative because it gives instruction about how one must act. He gave several examples of imperative moral maxims: “Help others in distress,” “Do not commit suicide,”
and “Work to develop your abilities.”
Universalizability
Kant’s strategy was to show that the acceptance of certain kinds of action is self-defeating,
because universal participation in such behavior undermines the action. Some of the
clearest cases involve persons who make a unique exception for themselves for purely selfish reasons. Suppose a person considers breaking a promise to a co-worker that would
be inconvenient to keep. According to Kant, the person must first formulate her or his
reason as a universal rule. The rule would say, “Everyone should break a promise whenever keeping it is inconvenient.” Such a rule is contradictory, Kant held, because if it were
consistently recommended that all individuals should break their promises when it was
convenient for them to do so, the practice of making promises would be senseless. Given
the nature of a promise, a rule allowing people to break promises when it becomes convenient makes the institution of promise-making unintelligible. A rule that allows cheating
on an exam similarly negates the purpose of testing.
Kant’s belief was that the conduct stipulated in these rules could not be made universal
without the emergence of some form of contradiction. During the run-up to the U.S. housing bubble, Beazer Homes USA used deceptive and illegal lending practices to sell more
houses to consumers who could not afford the mortgages. Beazer eventually settled with
the U.S. Justice Department and agreed to pay $50 million in restitution and its CEO agreed
to return $6.5 million in compensation and tens of thousands of shares of the company.23
In this example, the company made an exception of itself by engaging in predatory lending,
thereby cheating the system, which is established by certain lending rules that help ensure
most borrowers can pay back their loans. This conduct, if carried out by other corporations, violates the rules presupposed by the system, thereby rendering the system inconsistent. Because many companies did engage in predatory lending practices and passed on
bad loans to other investors, a housing bubble was created and eventually burst, undermining the global financial system and causing massive hardship. Kant’s point was not that
such practices lead to bad consequences, although they often do, but that such conduct
constitutes making an unfair exception of oneself. Kant’s view was that actions involving
invasion of privacy, theft, line cutting, cheating, kickbacks, bribes, and the like are contradictory in that they are not consistent with the institutions or practices they presuppose.
Criticisms of Kantianism
Despite Kant’s contributions to moral philosophy, his theories have been criticized as narrow and inadequate to handle various problems in the moral life. He had little to say regarding moral emotions or sentiments such as sympathy and caring. Some people also
think that Kant emphasized universal obligations (obligations common to all people) at
the expense of particular obligations (obligations that fall only on those in particular relationships or who occupy certain roles, such as those of a business manager). Whereas
the obligation to keep a promise is a universal obligation, the obligation to grade students
fairly falls only on teachers responsible for submitting grades.
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Ethical Theory and Business Practice
Many managerial obligations result from special roles played in business. For example,
businesspersons tend to treat customers according to the history of their relationship. If a
person is a regular customer and the merchandise being sold is in short supply, the regular
customer will be given preferential treatment because a relationship of commitment and
trust has already been established. Japanese business practice has conventionally extended
this notion to relations with suppliers and employees: after a trial period, the regular employee has a job for life at many firms. Also, the bidding system is used less frequently in
Japan than in the West. Once a supplier has a history with a firm, the firm is loyal to its
supplier, and each trusts the other not to exploit the relationship.
However, particular obligations and special relationships may not be inconsistent with
Kantianism, because they may not violate any universal ethical norms. Although Kant
wrote little about such particular duties, he would agree that a complete explanation of
moral agency in terms of duty requires an account of both universal and particular duties.
A related aspect of Kant’s ethical theory that has been scrutinized by philosophers is
his view that moral motivation involves impartial principles. Impartial motivation may
be distinguished from the motivation that a person might have for treating a second person in a certain way because the first person has a particular interest in the well-being of
the second person (a spouse or valued customer, for example). A conventional interpretation of Kant’s work suggests that if conflicts arise between one’s obligation and one’s other
motivations—such as friendship, reciprocation, or love—the motive of obligation should
always prevail. In arguing ag…