Management as an Ethical Enterprise
Organizations have the potential to affect the common good in a positive way and to achieve their own goals at the same time. This potential exists within a context of the belief that there is an organizational reality identified as ethical and that there
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Management as an Ethical Enterprise
Anticipatory Summary • Organizations have the potential to affect the common good in a positive way and to achieve their own goals at the same time. This potential exists within a context of belief that there is an organizational reality identified as ethical and that there is a mode of shaping the actions of organizations identified as ethical management behavior. The core dogma of the proposed alternative management paradigm conceives Management as an Ethical Enterprise and that ethical behavior is consistent with human nature and not just a public relations strategy. • A survey of problems and perspectives in ethics provides a foundation in ethical concepts as a necessary condition for considering the role of ethics in modern organizational life. How to live a good life and relate to other creatures is one of our oldest and most enduring intellectual undertakings. Any examination of these topics necessarily returns us to Greece in the classical period, through the Enlightenment to the present day. –– Problems of logic, language and consistency are explored as questions to be answered and positions to be taken regarding ethical reality. These topics are often described as meta-ethical concepts because they stand behind or beyond theories and relate to the meaning and nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, judgments and terms. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 N. Douglas, T. Wykowski, Rethinking Management, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-41902-2_8
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N. DOUGLAS AND T. WYKOWSKI
Free will versus determinism pertains to the question of whether the idea of ethics or moral behavior in the affairs of human beings has any meaning. Potential answers depend on whether human beings have the capacity to choose between right and wrong and to act in a congruent manner. • The nature of ethical reality and judgments is explored in terms of realism versus idealism, absolutism versus relativism and universalism versus particularism. • Justification pertains to how ethical judgments are formed, supported and defended. –– Problems of criteria pertain to questions about the criteria or standards of moral judgment. “What makes a right action right? What makes a good thing good? What makes an unjust situation unjust, and what would help to make it more just?” The criteria itself are expressed as normative ethical theories. • Consequentialism refers to the class of theories based on the idea that an ethically defensible action is one that produces a good outcome, given that what qualifies as good varies by theory. Consequentialist theories addressed include Utilitarianism, Pragmatism, State Consequentialism, Libertarianism and Egoism. • Virtue as a class of ethical theories is based on the view that there are some “goods” that are virtuous or morally excellent in themselves, irrespective of results or outcomes. These intrinsic “goods” are defined as Knowledge (Wisdom), The Mean between Extremes, Kantian (duty or moral obligation), Stoicism and Hedonism. • The Conc
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