Understanding Ethics and Morality

Ethics and Morality

• Ethics and morality are terms often used without a clear understanding of their meanings or differences.
• Ethics and morality differ in opinion and example.

Defining Ethics

• Ethics comprises moral principles and rules of conduct.
• Ethics involves systems of moral principles determining right and wrong behavior.
• Ethics addresses right and wrong in general including how one should act towards others.
• Ethics, derived from the Greek "ethos" (customs, character, habits), is a branch of philosophy studying the rightness and wrongness of human actions.
• The Rotary 4-test is recommended for determining appropriate ethical behavior:
  • Is it the truth?
  • Is it fair to all concerned?
  • Will it build goodwill and better friendship?
  • Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

Defining Morality

• Morality refers to personal moral standards.
• High moral standards involve following strict ethical rules such as those found in religious texts like the Bible or Quran.
• Codes of conduct encourage people to maintain order, peace, and protect the rights and safety of others in society.

Where Morality Comes From

• Innate: Morality is something people are born with.
• Learned: Morality is gained through experience and socialization.
• Combination: Morality is a mix of both nature and nurture.

The Conflict Between Ethics and Morals

• Morality is what a person believes, while ethics is what a person does.
• Conflicting morals and ethics can occur.
• Morals are based on religion or culture whereas ethics are based on logic and reason.
• Ethical systems can differ even among those who share the same morals.
• Morals relate to personal conduct while ethics relate to professional conduct.

Key Differences Between Ethics and Morals

• Ethics is a formal belief system guiding behavior; Morality is personal and varies individually.
• Ethics is based on logical reasoning and shared values; Morality is based on instinct or religious beliefs.
• Ethics tend to be objective; Morality is often subjective.
• Ethics are universal; Morality is culture-specific.
• Ethics are transcendent, governing all aspects of life; Morality deals with specific issues, and immoral actions relate to specific areas while unethical actions have broader implications.
• Ethics applies to groups and organizations; Morality applies to individuals.
• Ethics asks people to think before acting; Morality asks people to examine actions after the facts.
• Ethics provide behavioral guidelines, while morality reflects on past actions.
• Ethics help determine if behavior was good or bad , while morality helps decide if intentions were good or bad.
• Ethics and morality play important roles in shaping human civilization.

EVMA Interrelated

• Character is closely related to morals.
• Morality is often used to refer to personal moral standards for himself or herself.
• Values are the worth and importance allocated to something.
• Values are general determinants of behavior, and not specific determinants of behaviour.
• Attitude are values applied to a specific object
• Attitude refers to a positive or negative reaction to an object, event, people, or idea
• Attitude are values when objectified
• Attitude are specific predictors of behaviour.
• Ethics can be used when making personal values.
• Ethics are a formal system of belief that guides behavior
• Ethics are closely related to norms

Ethics and the Law

• Ethics are distinct from following the law.
• The law has difficulty enforcing standards and addressing new problems.
• Something considered unethical might be legal, for example, marital rape.

Types of Ethics

• Normative Ethics: Prescriptive and establish norms for good or bad behavior.

  • Theories or moral values describe what people ought to do in a situation.
  • Based on assumptions about what is good or bad and right or wrong.
  • Often take the form of rules or guidelines stating what should and should not be done.
  • Many theories are codified into legal systems and religious texts, but also found in philosophy and literature.
  • Utilitarianism involves actions that should produce the greatest happiness for the greatest good.
  • Kantianism involves a person's intentions that are irrelevant if their actions violate a moral value.
  • Normative ethics can mean living up to societal or religious standards.

• Meta Ethics: Descriptive in nature studying the nature of ethics.

  • Meta-ethics analyzes the meaning of words like good, bad, right, and wrong and deals with the nature of ethics and morality.

• Meta-ethics investigates the origins and meaning of moral principles.

  • Meta-ethics deals with the definition of right and wrong.
  • Meta-ethics addresses questions such as "What is good?", "What is justice?", and "Why should I be moral?".

• Applied Ethics: Applies ethical principles and moral theories to real-life moral issues.

Applied Ethics

• Applied ethics decides on ethical or moral actions appropriate in situations.
• Casuists, or adherents of applied ethics, deal with individual moral problems like abortion or euthanasia, and resolve conflicting issues.
  • Casuists act in an advisory capacity, guiding individuals in their choice of actions.
• Characteristics
  • The most practical ethics.
  • Deals with ethical questions specific to a practical field.
  • Includes bioethics, legal ethics, business ethics, and medical ethics.
  • Applied ethics applies ethical theory to real-life situations and can focus such as business ethics.

Business Ethics

• Business ethics deals with ethical behavior in the corporate world and explores the implications of general ethics for the conduct of business.

Bio-Medical and Environmental Ethics

• Bio-Medical and Environmental Ethics deals with issues relating to health, welfare, and the responsibility we have towards people and the environment.

Social Ethics

• Social Ethics deals with principles and guidelines that regulate corporate welfare within societies.

Descriptive Ethics (Comparative Ethics)

• Descriptive or comparative ethics describes and explains people's moral attitudes, norms, and practices of societies.
• Characteristics
  • Deals with people's beliefs about morality.
  • Deals with what society thinks is good or bad.
  • Empirical investigation of the moral beliefs of various groups.

Why Study Ethics

• The study of ethics helps individuals evaluate their actions/choices/decisions.
• Ethics corresponds to basic human needs such that managers, supervisors, or CEOs would like their employees to be proud of their organization by being ethically oriented.
• Ethics assists a person in knowing what is best for them in order to attain it.
• Values create credibility with the public.
• The study of ethics or moral philosophy can help better thinking about morality, clarifying moral positions, and improving judgement.
• Values give management and leadership credibility with employees.
• Organizational ethics create common goals, values, and language.
• The study of moral philosophy can help sharpen general thinking processes and help with moral issues.
• Values help better decisions making.
• Ethics and profits go together as ethically-driven companies are more likely to be successful in the long run.
• Laws cannot protect society but ethics can because ethics can reach out to agitated employees and quell trouble.

Sources of Ethics

• Religious Morality involves religion and morals.

  • Morality pertains to human affairs and relationships, while religion primarily involves the relationship between being and a transcendent reality.
  • Religious morality concerns the applicability of religious law to business.

• Genetic or Biological Inheritance

  • Passing on traits from parents to their offspring through sexual reproduction
  • Three types of Biological inheritance include autosomal dominant, autosomal recessive, X-linked dominant and X-linked recessive.

• Philosophical System

  • A belief (or system of belief) accepted by authoritative by some group or school of thought, or the quality of pleasure to be derived from an act measure of its goodness.

• Cultural Experience

  • Rules, constitution and guideline transmitted from generation for guide for appropriate individual conduct and the one that shape in norms of society.
  • The ability to understand, communicate with, and effectively interact with people across cultures.

• Legal System

  • Law serves and educates mankind on ethical behavior and morality.

Types of Legal Systems Around the World

• Common law system
• Judge-made law, Anglo-American law
• Civil Law
• Continental, European, and Roman law
• Religious Law
  • Sharia (Islamic law), Halakha Jewish law, and Customary law Religion and differ by area, ethnicity, and tribe.

Code of Conduct (COC)

• Code of conduct contains a high level summary of the most important standard of business practice and conduct, split into 3 key categories:
  • General code of conduct (GCOC) relates to "fit"
  • Operating policies relate to organization/company policy
  • Professional/association code of conduct (PACOC): guides the conduct of members

Professional Code of Conduct Include:

• Confidentiality: The state of keeping or being kept secret or private.
• Fair hearing: A right to give facts to support your case in hearing.
• Self-Development: Activities that develop capabilities and potentials.
• Development of Others: Actions to teach and guide another to broaden skills. Accuracy of advice and guardian; providers of guidance are responsible for the accuracy and quality of information
• Integrity: Honesty and strong morals principles, moral uprightness
• Rules of law: A principle under which all persons, institutes, and entitles, are accountable to laws.

Ethical Behavior

• In recent years there has been an increased emphasis on ethical behavior and ethical conduct on behalf of manager
• Ethics serves much of the same purpose in society because of their premise about what is right and what is wrong, what is good or what is bad.
• Ethical behavior is accepted as morally "good" and "right".

Ethical Behavior Examples

• Accountability: responsibility about the extent at which individual or organizations have met the responsibility for action.
• Transparency: Organizational activities more feasible to the society at large.
• Due Process: Systematic procedure established by the organization to execute or implement certain task or obligation.
• Integrity: Moral character and honesty that yields the level of productivity in the organization
• Obedience: Dutiful or submissive behavior with respect to another person, or doing the right thing when willing to obey.
• Punctuality: Adhering to an appointed time
• Probity: Complete and confirmed integrity; having strong moral principles
• Dedication: Complete and wholehearted fidelity

Unethical Employee Behaviors

• Sexual harassment: Unwelcome sexual advances, request for sexual favor, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature.
• Lying on report or falsifying records: Making false or incorrect statements in order to deceive.
• Conflict of interests: Incompatible parties
• Theft: The action or crime of stealing
• Lying to supervisor: Lying at work that is classified as misconduct and should be addressed under the company's normal disciplinary procedure
• Discrimination: Prejudice at the workplace that occurs when an employee is treated unfavorably because of gender, sexuality, race, religion, pregnancy, maternity, or disability
• Drugs or alcohol abuse, involving legal or illegal substances.
• Improper accountant procedure: Financial fraud from tracking fees or notes.
• Violations of environmental laws: littering, improper waste disposal, the use of illegal pesticides in agriculture, releasing sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
• Gifts/ entertainment violations, bribery of government officials and commercial bribery.
• Nepotism
• Corruption

Moral Philosophy And Moral Justification

• Moral Philosophy: Principles or rules that people use to decide what is right or wrong.
• Moral Justification: Morality is used to describe a societal phenomenon involving existence in a society of rules and standard of conduct.

Theories of Ethics

• Theories are a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.

Teleological Theory

• Variations of utilitarianism determine the rightness of actions solely by the amount of good consequences they produce.
• Derived from the Greek word “telos” actions on virtue rather than some virtue.

Teleological Philosophies:

• Utilitarian Theory: Ethically right actions result in a greater number of utilities than other actions.
• Egoism Theory: The person must always perform in their own interest, a considered ethically right only when it promotes personal self-interest.
• Critique: What is right and just are relative, can vary from organisation or person.

Alternative Theories:

• Relativism Theory: Ethics are relative to a particular environment. Different societies may have different ethical codes.
• Divine Command Theory: Ethically right means commanded by bad and ethically wrong means forbidden by god.
• Deontology Theory: Underlines those duties of moral category which can be seen as right or wrong judgement, focuses on individual rights and intentions.
• Deontological Theory: Focuses on the right of the individual and intentions associated with behavior not on the consequences that is based on the governed decisions.
• W.D. Ross Set out 7 duties.
  • Duties of fidelity, reparation, gratitude,
  • Further duties are duties of justice, beneficence, self improvement, and non-maleficence
• Virtue Ethics Theory
  • This theory focuses on what makes a good individual or person with a civility, cooperativeness, courage, fairness, friendliness.

Bad Apple and Barrel Theories

• Bad Apple Theory: Blame for unethical behaviour rest on a few opportunistic individual
• Bad Barrel Theory: Corporate culture can influence otherwise ethical behaviour.