Business ethics

1. Business Ethics and CSR

2. Yi XU (Mark)
PhD Associate professor
Deputy director of EMBA programs
School of Management
University of Scienceand Technology of China
Email: xuyi@ustc.edu.cn

3. 《说文解字》“伦，从人，仑声，辈也。”
军发车百两为辈，引伸之同类之次曰辈
伦，道也，理也。按粗言之曰道，精言之曰理

4. “理，从玉，里声，治玉也”。

5. What is Ethics?
Ethics are moral guidelines（common rules, disciplines or
advices) which govern everyone's behaviors.
Ethics: Discipline of dealing with:
What is good and bad
What is right and wrong
Moral duty and obligation

6. What is Ethics?
 Ethics are values, but not merely facts.
• Case 1
1. Tom told Mary that Richard is an orphan.
2. Tom told Mary that Richard is an orphan. It is a secret that should not
be told by anyone except Richard himself. Tom did a wrong thing.

7. • Case 2
1. Mary ate all the ice-cream in the refrigerator because she loves
ice- cream.
2. Mary ate all the ice-cream in the refrigerator because the
refrigerator had been broken this afternoon and she didn't want to
waste food.
Ethics are not only about behaviors (obvious facts), but also
about reason, motivation and culture identification.

8. What is Business?

9. Business is Business?
TEDxLondonBusinessSchool||YouTube搬运||Alex Edmans
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1c741167h5/?spm_id_from=333.788.recommend_more_video.6

10. Business
• A business is a productive organization—an organization whose
purpose is to create goods and services for sale, usually at a profit.
Business is also an activity.
• One entity (e.g., a person, an organization) “does business” with
another when it exchanges a good or service for valuable
consideration.

11. Business Ethics
• Business ethics can be understood as the study of the ethical
dimensions of productive organizations and commercial activities.
This includes ethical analyses of the production, distribution,
marketing, sale, and consumption of goods and services.

12. Wrong understanding of
Business Ethics

13. Law can take place of ethics ×
Law
• About what is lawful and what is
unlawful.
• a system of enforced rules
• Law should refer to important
ethical issues concerning equality,
fairness, and justice and so on.
Ethics
• About what is right and what is
wrong.
• Basic ideas and methods about
good and bad
• Normative standards
Question:
What law is created for?
Could law regulate every aspect of human being activities?

14. Business Ethics is Different from General Ethics ×
• Business ethics involves the application of general ethical
principles to the actions and decisions of business.
• Ethical principles in business are not different from ethical
principles in general because business actions have to be judged
in the context of social moral standards

15. It is just a matter of doing the right thing ×
Do we agree on what is right all the time?
• The job of ethics is to reach rational consensus on how we
should live (work) together.
• We have to agree on the ground rules and we can not debate or
fight all the time.

16. Ethics is subjective ×
• Ethics is not about personal values, but interpersonal values.
• We live in ethics so we have to care.
• Ethics is to reach consensus. It can not do its job if it is purely personal.
Law, morality, ethics
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1HA411u7Xp?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click

17. Why Business Ethics? What to Expect
R a t i o n a l
logica l and co nsisten t
O b j e c t i v e
analytic and profes sional
P r a c t i c a l
framewo rk fo r pr acti ce

18. Two Basic Frameworks To
Make Ethical Decision

19. Consequential Ethics
• The ends justify the means
• The consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid
moral judgment about that action. Morally right actions are to
produce good outcome/consequence.

20. Mill's utilitarianism
• The utility principle: “pleasure and freedom from pain are the only
things desirable as ends”
• The Greatest Happiness principle: “actions are right in proportion as
they tend to produce happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the
reverse of happiness
• Happiness= pleasure + the absence of pain
• Unhappiness = pain + the absence of pleasure
Talben Shahal：Happiness
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Gt411G7nH?spm_id_from=333.337.search-card.all.click
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ct4y167fM?p=2&vd_source=e2811626642ab8e08cc8e9b1e25384c
2

21. Questions
• Case 1: Firing an innocent and qualified middle-aged employee, the
HR manager then could offer two more job opportunities to two
young candidates (do not harm or benefit the company any way).
Should the manager do it?
• We may think that it is not right to harm an innocent person on
purpose anyway, but why?

22. Deontology Ethics
• Morality is a matter of duty. Consequences do Not matter.
• It looks at the intention (reason, motivation and so on) of the person
performing the act.

23. Kant's categorical imperative
• We act on Maxims (duty): principle of action, what we intend.
• Negative formulation: One should never act in such a way that one
could not be willing to do that one's maxim should be a universal
law.
• Positive formulation: Act only according to that maxim by which you
can at the same time be willing to do, and that should become a
universal law.
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ct4y167fM?p=6&vd_source=e2811626642ab8e08cc8e9b1e25384
c2

24. Two Basic Frameworks
•consistency: make decisions consistent to most
desirable ends
•generalization: make decisions only if you want them
to be generalized.