Ethics in business is a topic receiving much attention in literature. The presented master thesis is dedicated to business ethics which represent the most important tool of ethical management. The code of ethics in business is beyond legislation. An important company self-regulation, act which determines above all ethical values and principles and anchors ethical standards of the corporate society. One of the fundamental aspects of a successful and sustainable business is also the organizations goodwill that consists of how an organization treats all its stakeholders, constituencies primarily the employee’s, suppliers and customer and of the corporate social responsibility level while these topics form the basic essential parts of ethics in business. The master thesis is basically structured into two parts. In the first part would be to discuss the limit of ethical motivation strategies, and how they differ from those whose ethics are derived from utilitarianism and those that come from Kantian perspective .On the second part it will discuss similarities and differences of Kantian ethical motivation, with what biblical principle of love would say about ethical motivation.
Keywords: ethical motivation strategies, utilitarianism and Kantian perspective.
Introduction
Business ethics is the study of proper business policies and practices regarding potentially controversial issues such as corporate governance, insider trading, and bribery discrimination among others. Ethical employees make for an ethical company, which will receive many benefits from its good reputation. Not only does it attract more customers, an ethical company will also be able to entice and retain a more skilled workforce.
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that states that best action is the one that minimizes utility. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism described utility as the sum of all pleasure that results from an action. Utilitarianism is an effort to provide an answer to the practical question “what ought a man to do? “Its answer is that he ought to act so as to produce the best consequences possible.
Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory ascribed to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. The theory, developed as a result of enlightenment rationalism, is based on the view that the only intrinsically good thing is a good will. An action can only be good if its maxim. This paper examines some of the differences between limitations of ethical motivational strategies and how they differ to ethics derived from utilitarianism and those whose ethics comes from Kantian perspective .The paper will also compare and contrast Kantian ethical motivation with that of biblical principle of love and how it would say about ethical motivation.
Utilitarianism vs Kantian ethics
Business ethics is one of the major parts of philosophy that will always have an important literature review and like most subject in philosophy. There are so many cultures that have different believe on how a person is ought to live their lives. Issues like religion, poverty and mental health all boil down to beliefs in ethics. This issues shows that happiness seems to be of importance and benefits a few already wealthy individuals who do not justify the harm caused to employees. Utilitarianism act is the view that morally right action is the one that will yield the highest amount of social utility under the right condition in place. In acts of utilitarianism it considers only the results or consequences of an action. Utilitarianism is generally is an ethical system where the outcome is said to justify the act and if the act is good for everyone. Some people however, believe that the mental state of a person or the motive of that person committing a given crime should be key factors when punishment time comes. While others think that crime is always crime and no mercy should be shown for the guilty.
The problem with utilitarianism is that it could involve using good people as mere means and this may lead to sacrifice of lives for greater good (O’Neill 413-415) utilitarianism sometimes involves sacrifice of one’s happiness or that of a loved one.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) had an interesting ethical system. It stated that a belief to a reason is the final authority for morality. Actions of any kind he believed should be taken from a sense of duty dictated by reason, and no action performed in solely obedience of the law or custom can be considered as moral. Kant went further to describe two types of common commands given by reason the first one is the hypothetical imperative which dictates a given course of action, to reach a specific end. The second one is categorical imperative which dictates the basis of morality which was stated by Kant in these in these words “act as if the maxim of your action were to become through and the general law”.
It is easier to determine an action as morally right in Kantian ethics than in utilitarian ethics.
Compare and contrast Kantian ethics with Christian ethics
Kant’s ethical philosophy is more appealing in that he believes in treating people as ends instead of means. Kant also asserted that the only way that an act could be truly good was when that act was do without expectation of any reward. Christian faith on the other hand is based on faith as opposed to knowledge this would make any positive act one did inspired by Christianity truly good merely beautiful .although you may hope to receive a reward in heaven, you can never be truly certain. With regard to the bible, what you could say is that there is very little support for anything resembling utilitarianism, maximizing happiness, greater good for the maximum number .in the bible there is a sermon of the mount, there is a lot to do with “do not worry and do what is right and worry less about the consequences “which is certainly typical to deontological ethics.
Your motive for an action matters a lot when it is associated with Jesus. Doing stuff that is prohibited on a Sabbath has no bigger consequences as long as the motive is sincere and good.
Presumably there exist bad motives as well working on a Sabbath day for reasons such as economical gain but Jesus does not mention those apart from castigating those who display religiosity in order to gain admiration from humans .I suppose an act is not really good there but the motive which makes it bad.
While am not sure that the person of good will that Kant speaks of could be reflective of the feeling person, it turns out that the person whose intensions is good really doesn’t want to help but he/she is forcing himself I will leave that to u to decide.
References
Bennett, C. (2010). Utilitarianism: what is this thing called ethics? London: Routledge.
O, Neill Onora (October 19, 2014). “A simplified account of Kant’s ethics” 411-415. Blackboard.Web.
