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Business
Ethics MGT610
VU
LESSON
13
THE
ETHICS OF CARE
(CONTD.)
The
American philosopher Alasdair
MacIntyre has claimed that a
virtue is any human
disposition
that is praised because it
enables a person to achieve the good at
which human
"practices"
aim. Pincoffs suggests that
virtues include all those
dispositions to act, feel,
and
think
in certain ways that we use
as the basis for choosing
between persons or
between
potential
future selves. In general, the
virtues seem to be dispositions
that enable people to deal
with
human life. However, it also
seems that what counts as a
moral virtue will depend on
one's
beliefs
and the situations one faces.
Virtue
theory says
that the aim of the
moral life is to develop the
dispositions that we
call
virtues,
and to exercise them as well. The
key action guiding
implication of virtue theory,
then,
can
be summed up in the claim
that:
"An
action is morally right if,
in carrying out the action,
the agent exercises, exhibits,
or
develops a morally virtuous
character, and it is morally wrong to
the extent that by
carrying
out the action the agent
exercises, exhibits, or develops a
morally vicious
character."
The
wrongfulness of an action can be
determined by examining the
character the action
tends
to
produce (or the character
that tends to produce the
action). It also provides a useful
criterion
for
evaluating our social
institutions and practices.
An
ethic of virtue, then, is
not a fifth kind of moral
principle that should take
its place alongside
the
principles of utilitarianism, rights,
justice, and caring. Instead, an
ethics of virtue fills
out
and
adds to utilitarianism, rights,
justice, and caring by looking
not at the actions people
are
required
to perform, but at the
character they are required
to have.
Morality
in International Contexts
Though
the principles discussed in
the chapter so far are
clear enough, how they
are to be
applied
in foreign countries is more
complex. Petty bribery,
which is considered unethical in
the
U.S., is standard practice in Mexico;
nepotism and sexism occur as a
matter of course in
some
Arabic business environments.
Should multinationals follow
the laws of the
less
developed
countries in which they
operate? Should they try to
introduce their own
standards?
How
do they treat their own
employees doing the same
job in two very different
countries? Do
they
pay them the same
wage?
The
following four questions can
help clarify what a
multinational corporation ought to do
in
the
face of these difficulties:
1.
What does the action
really mean in the local
culture's context?
2.
Does the action produce
consequences that are
ethically acceptable from
the point of
view
of at least one of the four ethical
theories?
3.
Does the local government
truly represent the will of all
its people?
4.
If the morally questionable
action is a common local
practice, is it possible to
conduct
business
there without engaging in
it?
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