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Business
Ethics MGT610
VU
LESSON
04
MORAL
DEVELOPMENTS AND MORAL
REASONING
Moral
Developments and Moral
Reasoning
This
section investigates how we
examine our own moral
standards and apply them to
concrete
situations
and issues. It first looks at
the process of moral
development itself.
We
sometimes assume that a person's
values are formed during
childhood and do not change.
In
fact, a great deal of psychological research, as
well as one's own personal
experience,
demonstrates
that as people mature, they change
their values in very deep
and profound ways.
Just
as people's physical, emotional, and
cognitive abilities develop as
they age, so also
their
ability
to deal with moral issues
develops as they move
through their lives.
Moral
Reasoning & Kohlbergs'
Resaech
Lawrence
Kohlberg identified six
stages of moral
development:
Level
One: Pre-conventional
Stages
1.
Punishment and Obedience Orientation - At
this stage, the physical
consequences of an
act
wholly determine the
goodness or badness of that
act. The child's reasons
for doing
the
right thing are to avoid
punishment or defer to the
superior physical power
of
authorities.
There is little awareness
that others have needs
similar to one's own.
2.
Instrument and Relativity Orientation- At
this stage, right actions
become those that can
serve
as instruments for satisfying
the child's own needs or
the needs of those for
whom
the
child cares.
At
these first two stages,
the child is able to respond to rules and
social expectations and can
apply
the labels good, bad,
right, and wrong. These rules,
however, are seen as
something
externally
imposed on the self. Right and
wrong are interpreted in
terms of the pleasant or
painful
consequences of actions or in terms of
the physical power of those
who set the
rules.
Level
Two: Conventional
Stages
Maintaining
the expectations of one's
own family, peer group, or
nation is now seen as
valuable
in
its own right, regardless of
the consequences.
1.
Interpersonal Concordance Orientation -
Good behavior at this early
conventional stage
is
living to the expectations of those
for whom one feels loyalty,
affection, and trust,
such
as family and friends. Right
action is conformity to what is
generally expected in
one's
role as a good son, daughter,
brother, friend, and so
on.
2.
Law and Order Orientation -
Right and wrong at this more
mature conventional
stage
now
come to be determined by loyalty to one's
own larger nation or
surrounding
society.
Laws are to be upheld except
where they conflict with
other fixed social
duties.
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Business
Ethics MGT610
VU
Level
Three: Post-conventional, Autonomous, or
Principled Stages
1.
Social Contract Orientation - At
this first post-conventional
stage, the person
becomes
aware
that people hold a variety of
conflicting personal views and
opinions and
emphasizes
fair ways of reaching
consensus by agreement, contract, and due
process.
2.
Universal Ethical Principles
Orientation - At this final
stage, right action comes to
be
defined
in terms of moral principles chosen
because of their logical
comprehensiveness,
universality,
and consistency.
At
these stages, the person no
longer simply accepts the
values and norms of the
groups to
which
he or she belongs. Instead,
the person now tries to see
situations from a point of
view
that
impartially takes everyone's
interests into account. The
person questions the laws
and
values
that society has adopted and
redefines them in terms of
self-chosen moral principles
that
can
be justified in rational
terms.
Kohlberg's
own research found that
many people remain stuck at an
early stage of moral
development.
His structure implies that
later stages are better
than the earlier ones.
Kohlberg
has
been criticized for this
implication, and for not
offering any argument to back it
up.
Carol
Gilligan, a feminist psychologist,
has also criticized Kohlberg's
theory on the grounds
that
it describes male and not
female patterns of moral
development. Gilligan claims
that there
is
a "female" approach to moral issues
that Kohlberg
ignores.
Both
Gilligan and Kohlberg agree
that there are stages of
growth in moral
development,
moving
from a focus on the self
through conventional stages and
onto a mature stage where
we
critically
and reflectively examine the adequacy of
our moral standards. Therefore, one of
the
central
aims of ethics is the stimulation of
this moral development by
discussing, analyzing,
and
criticizing the moral
reasoning that we and others
do, finding one set of
principles "better"
when
it has been examined and
found to have better and
stronger reasons supporting
it.
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