Two ways of discussing ethical matters, normatively and descriptively, are often proposed. Normative discussion is concerned with rules and principles that ought to govern our thoughts and actions. Normative arguments are focused in particular on how such prescriptive claims can be shown to be legitimate or valid. Descriptive discussion focuses on how things are rather than how they should be. A descriptive approach to ethics would give an account of the values and ethics of particular groups and try to explain how they have emerged. It would analyse value systems to look for norms and the tensions between them.
The word normative is troublesome in a subject, such as business ethics, that spans both philosophy and sociology. In sociology, normative refers to that which is the norm within a group or society. The term is both descriptive – the norms are those of a particular group, and also normative – they define right and wrong within that group. In philosophy normative and descriptive are seen as opposing terms. In this book normative will be used in its philosophical sense.
Many business ethics textbooks take a normative approach. They identify ethi-cal difficulties in business, rehearse the arguments about what should be done about them and then present a resolution or a set of principles. Rather than
taking a normative and prescriptive approach this textbook takes a descriptive and analytical approach. It attempts to describe how people in organisations interpret and respond to ethical issues at work. It does not propose solutions to the many ethical dilemmas and problems that face managers and organisations.
However, by explaining how others think about and respond to ethical matters, and by providing you with the appropriate tools for thinking, we hope the book will enable you to analyse the issues and to come to your own conclusions.
The intention of the book brings us to a third way of talking about business ethics, the reflective and reflexive approach. Reflection implies careful considera-tion of ethical issues. Reflexive means to turn back on one’s own mind and to consider one’s own values and personality. This textbook therefore tries to help you examine your own positions and thoughts. This can be done in part by reflecting on the material in this book and other publications. But this is vicari-ous learning, piggy-backing on the experiences of others. Reflexive learning occurs when you use your values to challenge your actions and your experiences to challenge your values.
Reflections
One of our concerns in this book is the possibility of the existence of moral agency and ethical practice within organisations. Integrity is one of the concepts that would form part of any definition of business ethics. The importance of integrity within organisational life in general, and executive decision making in particular, is discussed by Srivastva and Cooperrider (1988), although they stress that the way forward is not easily mapped. It can only be navigated and negoti-ated through dialogue, reflection, learning, tolerance and wisdom.
Executive integrity is dialogical. Executive integrity is more than the pres-ence of morality or the appropriation of values; integrity involves the process of seeing or creating values. Whereas ethical moralism is blindly obe-dient, integrity represents the ‘insightful assent’ to the construction of human values. In this sense, organisation is not viewed as a closed, deter-mined structure but is seen as in a perpetual state of becoming. Dialogue is the transformation of mere interaction into participation, communication, and mutual empathy. Executive integrity is, therefore, a breaking out of a narrow individualism and is based on a fearless trust in what true dialogue and understanding might bring, both new responsibilities and new forms of responsiveness to the other.
(Srivastva and Cooperrider, 1988: 7)
The big weakness of a heavy reliance upon the notion of a dialectic transfor-mation of society is that the associated processes are subject to the risk of social capture. The best chance of minimising this possibility is for all of us to take our-selves seriously and to believe that our individual voices count in shaping the societies in which we live.
We end this opening chapter on a qualified, optimistic note. Spaemann (1989) refused to accept that conscience is either purely instinct or exclusively a func-tion of upbringing:
In every human being there is the predisposition to develop a conscience, a kind of faculty by means of which good and bad are known.
(Spaemann, 1989: 62–3)
However, Spaemann went on to say that conscience has to be nurtured and supported – shown good practice in order for it to flourish and mature. Fail to do this and the development of a strong conscience becomes ‘dwarfed’. The term
‘dwarfing’ is used by Seedhouse (1988) when discussing the growing attention to a ‘business mentality’ within UK health care, at the expense of a prioritising of the individual. Both Spaemann and Seedhouse saw the individual as central to any challenge to the primacy of business interests, although, as you will see in Chapter 7, conscience is often the victim of the need to maintain organisational and personal relationships.
Hannah Arendt (cited in Bauman, 1994) also placed the individual at the centre of any developments towards making ethics a live and legitimate subject for debate within organisations. Arendt wrote, ‘there are no rules to abide by … as there are no rules for the unprecedented’. Bauman continued
in other words, no one else but the moral person themselves must take responsibility for their own moral responsibility.
(Bauman, 1994: 14)
With this in mind, this book is intended to inform your understanding of some of the key issues that bear upon this critical element of modern society – the possibilities for business ethics.
Summary
In this chapter the following key points have been made:
• Business ethics issues can be illustrated through stories; sometimes these are expressed as romances, as tragedies, as satire, as comedies and sometimes as farces.
• Many writers, and indeed organisations, argue that there is a business case for companies to behave ethically and responsibly. There is an association between the two, but whether good companies are profitable because they are good, or good because their profitability means they can afford to be, is not easily proven one way or the other.
• Many business ethics issues are best understood by using a stakeholder approach.
• Four different perspectives: the classical-liberal, the corporatist, the pluralist and the critical, on the question of whether organisations, and their role within market systems, are ethically proper.
• The doubts about the classical-liberal model place a premium on the role of the moral agency of individuals within organisations. Moral agency involves reflection on what is right and wrong and working for the good within organisations.