Part -1 THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Define Professional Ethics and the terms related to it.
Understand the importance of Professional Ethics.
Understand the relationship between Religion and Morality.
Understand the importance of having Moral principles.
Emphasize on the importance of individual integrity and responsibility and organizational norms.
Compare between morality and professional ethics.
Explain the rationale behind adoption of normative theories and professional codes of conduct.
Discuss the relation between justice, ethics and economic theories.
Answer all the following questions:
1. "Although there is no complete list of adequacy criteria for moral judgments, moral judgments have certain requirements that should be followed". Explain the three requirements for moral judgments.
2. "Before evaluating utilitarianism, one should understand some points that might lead to confusion and misapplication". Explain and comments on three points only.
3. Explain the differences between the two approaches: Utilitarian and Libertarian?
CONCEPT
Ethics is a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about fundamental query that all of us inevitably think about, such as:
what values are important?
how moral values should be determined?
how a moral outcome can be achieved in specific situations?
what moral values people actually abide by?
Ethics deals with individual character and moral rules that govern and limit our conduct. It investigates questions of right and wrong, duty and obligation, and moral responsibility.
BUSINESS ETHICS
Business ethics is the study of what constitutes right and wrong human conduct in a business context.
Example:
Is it right for a store manager to break a promise to a customer and sell the product to someone else?
Is it wrong to give private information about your company to a competitor?
MORAL STANDARDS
Moral Standards concern behavior that seriously affects human well-being.
Moral standards take priority over other standards, including self-interest.
The soundness of moral standards depends on the adequacy of the reasons that support them.
We appeal to moral standards when we answer a moral question or make a moral judgment.
Part -2 NORMATIVE THEORIES OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS
Explain the rationale behind adoption of normative theories and professional codes of conduct.
Describe normative theories of ethics.
Distinguish between the consequentialist and non-consequentialist normative theories.
Explore moral decision making in an organizational context
Normative theories propose some principles for distinguishing right actions from wrong actions.
Two kinds of theories:
Consequentialist theories
Nonconsequentialist theories
CONSEQUENTIAL THEORIES
They determine what is right by weighing the ratio of good to bad that an action will produce.
If the consequences are good then the act is right, if they are bad then act is wrong.
Consequences for whom? Only for oneself? Or for everyone affected?
The most important consequentialist theories are egoism and utilitarianism, are distinguished by their different answers to this question.
Egoism advocates individual self-interest. Utilitarianism holds that one must take into account everyone affected by the action.
NONCONSEQUENTIALIST THEORIES
Contend that right and wrong are determined by more than the likely consequences of an action.
They believe that other factors are also relevant to the moral assessment of an action.
MORAL DECISION MAKING
In a moral discussion make sure participants agree about the relevant facts .
Once there is general agreement on factual matters try to spell out the moral principles to which different people are appealing.
Despite disagreements on controversial theoretical issues, people can make significant progress in resolving practical moral problems through open-minded and reflective discussion
One useful approach is to identify the obligations, ideals and effect in a given situation and then to determine where the emphasis should lie among these different considerations.
Keep the following guidelines in mind when handling cases of conflicting obligations, ideals, and effect:
When two or more moral obligations conflict, choose the stronger one.
When two or more ideals conflict, or when ideals conflict with obligations, honor the more important one.
When rival actions will have different results, choose the action that produces the greater good or the lesser harm.
Part 3 - JUSTICE AND ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTION
Evaluate the relation between justice, ethics and economic theories.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Explain the nature of justice.
2. Understand the principles of economic distribution.
3. Explore and analyze different approaches to justice.
THE NATURE OF JUSTICE
PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMIC DISRIBUTION
Basis of distribution are:
To each an equal share
To each according to individual need
To each according to personal effort
To each according to social contribution
To each according to merit
We employ different principles of distributive justice in different circumstances.
APPROACHES TO JUSTICE IN THE WORKPLACE
The Utilitarian view
The Libertarian approach
Rawlsian Theory of justice