BUSINESS ETHICS

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Assignment 1

Faculty of Organisation and Management

 BUSINESS ETHICS

To what extent should we expect a higher standard of morality from someone involved in public affairs, for example a Government Minister, than someone with little or no public role?

Sheffield Hallam University, school year 2004 – 2005

Introduction

According to the dictionary Grand Robert, the term “public” means “what concerns people as a whole and what belongs to the social or political community and is done in its name”; a public figure is defined as “a person  who is invested with an official function or plays an important role in the social or political life of his or her country”.

In relation to these definitions, it is possible to identify different categories of public figures with more or less important roles : a political figure such as a government Minister who creates laws and take important decisions for his country; an intellectual and a "star" who is defined as "an artistic performer or athlete whose leading role or superior performance is acknowledged" ().

This essay will firstly attempt to explain what is the meaning of morality, its importance and the relation with virtues, with some examples and then it will identify the rights and wrongs of expecting a public figure to have a higher standard of morality than someone with little or no public role, in relation to the different moral principles and virtues explained before.

  1. Importance and meaning of morality and the relation with virtues

  1. A short  / quick definition

As Comte-Sponville defines it, "morality is composed of all duty, which means the obligations or proscriptions we impose on ourselves, independently from any / all reward or sanction and even hope" (Comte-Sponville, 2000, Dictionnaire de la philosophie, p. 390).

 To illustrate his theory he uses a very simple example : if tomorrow is  the end of the world, morality will remain as it wouldn't allow people to kill, rape or be egoist or nasty, while politics which needs a future, won't survive.

Harman (1977) argues in the same way by highlighting more precisely that morality may be something we learn as a consequence of our upbringing.

As Kant argues, an action is morally valuable only if it is selfless ("Les Grandes idées morales et les grands moralistes", 1906). Morality requires us to respect humanity inside us and in other people.

In fact, someone will impose on himself these kinds of rules in a free and selfless way, because they appear to him to be universal. That means that whatever the differences between civilisations, periods or religions, people looking for wellbeing are leading to the same values. These values are crucial as they enable people to live together with the same references of behaviour.

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  1. Differences between morality and virtue

The same word can mean both a morality principle and a virtue but there is a fundamental difference between the two. If we take the example of generosity, the idea is a moral concept, which means that we have a duty to give back a part of what we received. On the other hand, the effort of giving this generosity is the concern of virtues and it is not limited to give money but also give time, comfort and shared competences.

However, morality can lead decision-makers to ...

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