Prof.

Pradip P Chatterjjee

UNDERSTANDING ETHICS
DEFINED AS THE ABILITY TO DISTINGUISH

BETWEEN RIGHT & WRONG AND TO ACT ACCORDINGLY SYSTEM OF MORAL PRINCIPLES , RULES & CONDUCT ORIGINAL WORD ETHOS MEANING CHARACTER

Ethics The Mirror & Reality TEST

People judge THEMSELVES based on their intentions.
OTHERS are judged based on their behavior. BUT ULTIMATELY, EVERYONE is accountable for

their actions.

ORIGINATION
WHERE DOES THIS GENERATE FROM ?
HOME UPBRINGING RELIGION ENVIRONMENT

Ethical relativism OR Ethical absolutism

"What are absolute ethics?" Ethical Absolutism, is

undeviating moral discipline. Nothing is relative; a crime is a crime, regardless of circumstance.

BUT IS IT REALLY SO BLACK AND WHITE ?

ETHICS WHAT IS REALLY WANTED ?

Ethics involves a discipline that examines good or bad

practices within the context of moral duty but the good practices is not nearly as straight forward as conveyed. Many assert theres always a right thing to do based on moral principle. Others believe that the right thing to do depends on the situation ultimately its an INDIVIDUAL CHOICE.

Ethics - A Science of Conduct

Business Ethics means conducting all aspects of

business and dealing with all stakeholders in an ETHICAL MANNER Attention to ethics in the work place sensitises leaders and staff to how they should act

BUSINESS ETHICS THE GUIDE TO CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

Business Ethics... comprises principles and standards

that guide behavior in the world of business TO UNDERSTAND WHAT IS - right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable behavior within the organization as is determined by key stakeholders Knowing the difference between what you have a right to do in the organization and what is the right thing to DO !!

What is ethics?
Ethics is the branch of philosophy that focuses on

morality and the way in which moral principles are applied to everyday life. Ethics has to do with fundamental questions such as What is fair? What is just? What is the right thing to do in this situation? Ethics involves an active process of applying values, which may range from religious principles to customs and traditions.

What is business ethics?

Business ethics focuses on what constitutes right or

wrong behavior in the world of business. Corporate business executives have a responsibility to their shareholders and employees to make decisions that will help their business make a profit. But in doing so, businesspeople also have a responsibility to the public and themselves to maintain ethical principles.

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 Although ethics provides moral guidelines, individuals must apply these guidelines in making decisions. Ethics that applies to business (business ethics) is not a separate theory of ethics; rather, it is an application of ethics to business situations. Although all people have ethical responsibilities, higher ethical standards are imposed upon professionals who serve as social models, such as physicians, attorneys, and businesspeople.
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The Relationship Between Law and Ethics

The law is an expression of the ethical beliefs of our society.
Law and ethics are not the same thing. The question, Is an act legal? is different from the question, Is an act ethical? The law cannot codify all ethical requirements. Therefore, an action might be unethical, yet not necessarily

illegal. For example, it might be unethical to lie to your family, but it is not necessary illegal.
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 Similarly, just because an act is illegal does not necessarily mean it is immoral. Rosa Parks was acting illegally when she refused to give up her

seat on the bus to a white male, but that does not necessarily mean she was acting unethically. Should an individual obey the law even if it would be unethical to do so? Under the theory of civil disobedience espoused by Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and others, an immoral law deserves to be disobeyed. Can you think of any examples of acts that would be illegal, yet arguably ethical?

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THEORIES OF ETHICAL CONDUCT

Theories of ethics present standards by which a person

can analyze and evaluate his or her own moral conduct. Over the centuries, two different philosophical frameworks developed: ethical standards based on universal duties (deontology) and ethical standards based on consequences (utilitarianism).

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META ETHICS
In philosophy, meta-ethics is the branch of ethics

that seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgments. Meta-ethics is one of the three branches of ethics generally recognized by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics. Meta-ethics addresses questions such as "What is goodness?" and "How can we tell what is good from what is bad?", seeking to understand the nature of ethical properties and evaluations.
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NORMATIVE ETHICS
Normative ethics is the study of ethical action Normative ethics addresses such questions as "What

should one do?", thus endorsing some ethical evaluations and rejecting others. Investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally.

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CONSEQUENTIAL ETHICS
It is the class of normative ethical theories holding

that the consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness of that conduct. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right act (or omission) is one that will produce a good outcome, or consequence. Eg : Does damage to trees count as much as damage to human beings

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NON CONSEQUENTIAL ETHICS

A non-consequentialist theory of value judges the

rightness or wrongness of an action based on properties intrinsic to the action, not on its consequences.
Eg : People should be free to do as they like as long as

they respect the freedom of others to do the same

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ETHICS OF JUSTICE
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
Distributive justice concerns the nature of a socially

just allocation of goods in a society. A society in which incidental inequalities in outcome do not arise would be considered a society guided by the principles of distributive justice. The concept includes the available quantities of goods, the process by which goods are to be distributed, and the resulting allocation of the goods to the members of the society
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RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE Retributive justice is a theory of justice that considers punishment, if proportionate, to be the best response to crime. When an offender breaks the law, s/he thereby forfeits or suspends her/his right to something of equal value, and justice requires that this forfeit be enacted. This is sometimes taken to mean that justice involves seeking vengeance on behalf of the aggrieved party, or society as a whole

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COMPENSATORY JUSTICE
The fairness that obtains when an agent adequately

compensates a party whom he or she has injured for the losses that party suffered. Compensatory justice is sometimes wrongly confused with retributive justice, which is the fairness that obtains when a person is adequately punished for wrongdoing.

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COMPENSATORY JUSTICE
Just compensation is limited to the losses suffered by

the injured party, may imply no wrongdoing, and is focused on making the injured party whole, but just retribution may be more or less severe than the injuries inflicted on victims, always implies wrongdoing, and is focused on punishing the wrongdoer. The two notions are distinct and is recognized in contemporary torts law, which allows both punitive damages and compensatory damages.
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Deontology
Deontology is the philosophical practice of defining

and adhering to an absolute set of standards by which ethical behavior can be measured. It tries to define universal duties that serve as moral guides to decision making. When a moral dilemma arises, a person can apply these universal standards to determine a course of action that is good.

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DEONTOLOGY
In deontology, a person fulfills absolute moral duties

regardless of whether good comes from the actions. A person decides upon actions by asking if a particular action is morally right or wrong. The act of carrying out that duty is important rather than the consequences of the act.

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The Rights Model

The rights model analyzes ethical issues by focusing

on an actions impact on human rights. Under this model, human rights are the rights all people have. An action that maximizes respect for human rights and minimizes their violation is morally correct. When encountering ethical dilemmas, a person applying the rights model selects the action that minimizes the violation of stakeholders rights.

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 The two necessities to be fully human are freedom and

well-being. Thus, two basic categories of human rights exist within the model: (1) rights of liberty, and (2) rights of well-being.

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Rights of Liberty
Privacy
Free consent Free speech Freedom of conscience Right to life

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Rights of Well-Being
Employment
Food Housing Education

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 Under the rights model, each person possesses certain

fundamental human rights because of the fact that they are a human being. Each persons life has an infinite value.

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Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an approach to establishing ethical

standards based on the consequences of an action. In an ethical dilemma, a person selects the action that brings about the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. The model determines correctness in terms of social benefit. Many business people favor the cost/benefit approach of utilitarianism.

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Applying the Rights Model

Identify the facts. Identify the ethical issues. Identify the alternative courses of action. Identify the stakeholders. Determine to which extent each alternative respects the dignity and fundamental rights of stakeholders or violates their rights. Choose the alternative that maximizes the dignity of stakeholders and minimizes the violation of their rights.
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Applying Utilitarianism Identify the facts.

Identify the ethical issues. Identify the alternative courses of action. Identify the stakeholders. For each alternative, calculate the costs and benefits (identify who would be harmed and who would benefit). Choose that alternative which results in the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of stakeholders.
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Example #1
The Difference Between Ethics and Business Ethics

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Example #2
A secretary who has worked for your corporation for

fifteen years is involved in a car accident in which she permanently loses the use of her right hand. Thus, she can no longer effectively type, file, or perform many of the other functions that she previously had performed and that are included in her job description.

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 Your corporation has a very tight budget and does not

have sufficient funds to pay for an additional secretary without reallocating budget items. The injured secretary has been very loyal to your corporation, and you have been very satisfied with her work and dedication. She wants to stay at her job.

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 Moreover, she does not believe that she could find

other employment at this time. Should your corporation fire her, lay her off with compensation, or find a way to retain her? In resolving this dilemma, apply:
Utilitarianism The Rights Model Your own personal opinion

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CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
Apart from the United States, few countries use the death penalty. Only China and Iran execute more people than the U.S. No member of the European Union uses it. Under the European convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, it is regarded as a human rights violation, so no nation can be admitted to the European Union if it still has the death penalty on its books.
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 When President Bush was elected president, the

federal government had not used the death penalty for 38 years. He reinstated it. When he was governor of Texas, that state had more executions than any other, and Bush signed 152 death warrants more than any previous governor of Texas, or any other American governor in modern times.

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 Typically, he made his life-and-death decision after a

half-hour briefing with his legal counsel. Only once, as governor of Texas, did he stop an execution.

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 Is it inconsistent to oppose the killing of embryos or

foetuses, yet support the death penalty? Not necessarily. Bush has said: Some advocates of life will challenge why I oppose abortion yet support the death penalty. To me, its the difference between innocence and guilt.

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 But to hold the two positions consistently, one would

at least need to be very careful about supporting the death penalty. Since humans are fallible, any legal system that puts large numbers of people to death will risk executing people innocent of the crimes for which they were charged.

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 Several studies list people who have been condemned

to death, and in some cases executed, who were later shown to be innocent. The Death Penalty Information Center has a list of 102 people wrongfully sentenced to death in the U.S. between 1973 and 2000.

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 An investigation by the Chicago Tribune of all 682

executions in the U.S. between 1976 and 2000 found that at least 120 people were put to death while still proclaiming their innocence, and in 4 of those cases there was evidence supporting their claim of innocence.

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 When Florida Supreme Court Justice Gerald Kogan

retired, he said that there were several cases in which he had grave doubts about the guilt of people executed in Florida.

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 President Bushs attitude about the risk of putting to death innocent people is in sharp contrast to another Republican governor who was once a supporter of the death penalty. In 1999, Gov. George Ryan of Illinois became concerned about the risk of putting innocent people to death when an investigation by a journalism class at Northwestern University proved that another man committed a murder for which Anthony Porter, a death-row inmate for 16 years, was about to be executed.
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 Ryan set up a commission that, over 3 years, concluded

that 13 condemned prisoners were innocent. Ryan stated, Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error, error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty should die.

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 Just before he left office, Ryan felt that he could no

longer live with the risk of executing the innocent: he commuted all death sentences in Illinois to terms of imprisonment.

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 No matter how careful Bush may have been after all,

he did spend 30 minutes reviewing each case before he signed the death warrant it remains possible, if not probable, that at least one of the people executed during his tenure was innocent.

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 Bush has said: I support the death penalty because I

believe, if administered swiftly and justly, capital punishment is a deterrent against future violence and will save other innocent lives.

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 In the third of his debates with Al Gore, moderator Jim

Lehrer asked Bush whether he thought that the death penalty actually deters crime. Bush said, I do thats the only reason to be for it. Let me finish that I dont think you should support the death penalty to seek revenge. I dont think thats right. I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other peoples lives.

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 The problem with this defense of capital punishment

is that almost all of the evidence is against it. Since it is easy to compare murder rates before and after the abolition or reinstitution of the death penalty, or in different jurisdictions that do or do not have the death penalty, there is plenty of relevant data.

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Executing the Mentally Retarded

A person who is seriously mentally retarded is likely to be incapable of understanding right from wrong, and thus is morally innocent, even if he or she did commit the crime. As a national consensus against executing the mentally retarded began to build, Bush, as governor of Texas, came out against a bill prohibiting the use of the death penalty against profoundly mentally retarded criminals (with IQs of less than 65). His explanation: I like the law the way it is.
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 Even in Texas, a poll in 1998 showed that 73% of all

Texans were opposed to executing the mentally retarded. In May 1997, Bush denied an appeal for clemency on behalf of Terry Washington, a thirty-three-year-old mentally retarded man with the communication skills of a 7-year-old. Washington was executed.

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 In June 2002, the USSC ruled that, given the growing

national consensus, executing retarded persons is cruel and unusual punishment and hence a violation of the 8th Amendment.

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KANTIAN RIGHT
Immanuel Kant (17241804) argued that moral

requirements are based on a standard of rationality he dubbed the Categorical Imperative (CI). Immorality thus involves a violation of the CI and is thereby irrational. Kant states that ethics should begin with analysis, and that analysis is or should be an entirely a priori undertaking, this would not explain why all of the fundamental questions of moral philosophy must be pursued a priori.
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A PRIORI & A POSTERIORI

A priori knowledge or justification is independent of

experience (for example "All bachelors are unmarried"); a posteriori knowledge or justification is dependent on experience or empirical evidence (for example "Some bachelors are very happy"). A posteriori justification makes reference to experience; but the issue concerns how one knows the proposition or claim in questionwhat justifies or grounds one's belief in it.

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ETHICAL MODELS
KOHLBERG MODEL :
In Kohlberg's model, moral development is the

development of an autonomous self, capable of being motivated by abstract principles understood as a kind of "mathematical" solution to conflicts of interests.

READ HANDOUT GIVEN

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KOHLBERG'S SIX LEVELS OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

(ETHICS OF JUSTICE/RIGHTS) A. PRE-CONVENTIONAL LEVEL STAGE 1: Deferring to authority STAGE 2: Learning to satisfy ones own needs

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KOHLBERG MODEL
B. CONVENTIONAL LEVEL
STAGE 3: Conforming to stereotypical roles. STAGE 4: Sense that individual roles contribute to

social order. C. POST-CONVENTIONAL LEVEL STAGE 5: Morality thought of in terms of rights and standards endorsed by society as a whole. STAGE 6: Morality thought of as self-chosen, universal principles of justice.
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GILLIGAN MODEL :
GILLIGAN'S 6 STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT

(ETHICS OF CARE) A. PRE-CONVENTIONAL LEVEL STAGE 1: Caring for the self. STAGE 2: Stage 1 concern judged to be selfish.
B. CONVENTIONAL LEVEL STAGE 3: Goodness is caring for others, frequently

equated with self-sacrifice.

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GILLIGAN MODEL
STAGE 4: Illogic of the inequality between self and

others becomes evident. Search for equilibrium.

C. POST-CONVENTIONAL LEVEL STAGE 5: Focus on the dynamics of relationships, to eliminate the tension between self and others. STAGE 6: Care is extended beyond personal relationships to a general recognition of the interdependence of self and other, accompanied by a universal condemnation of exploitation and hurt.
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GILLIGAN MODEL
In Gilligan's model, moral development is the

development of a self-in-relation. Morality is understood in terms of the preservation of valuable human relations. Progress from stage to stage is motivated by increasing understanding of human relationships

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THANK YOU

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