However, in its overseas operations, the company often faces substandard regulatory frameworks and weak enforcement mechanisms, which present the opportunity of obtaining benefits through practices that would be unacceptable at home. Many dilemmas arise about the moral legitimacy of capturing such benefits. This framework, developed by Lawrence Kohlberg in the 1960s and extended by Kohlberg and other researchers in the subsequent why do my nostrils burn years, helps to explain why different people make different evaluations when confronted with the same ethical issue. It posits that an individual’s level of “moral development” affects their ethical issue recognition, judgment, behavioral intentions, and behavior. Before a person can apply any standards of ethical philosophy to an issue, he or she must first comprehend that the issue has an ethical component.
In ethics, as in many other fields, the later Greek and Roman periods do not display the same penetrating insight as the Classical period of 5th- and 4th-century Greek civilization. Nevertheless, the two schools of thought that dominated the later periods, Stoicism and Epicureanism, represent important approaches to the question of how one ought to live. Aristotle’s discussion of the virtue of justice has been the starting point of almost all Western accounts. He distinguishes between justice in the distribution of wealth or other goods and justice in reparation, as, for example, in punishing someone for a wrong he has done. The key element of justice, according to Aristotle, is treating like cases alike—an idea that set for later thinkers the task of working out which kinds of similarities (e.g., need, desert, talent) should be relevant. As with the notion of virtue as a mean, Aristotle’s conception of justice provides a framework that requires fleshing out before it can be put to use.
This points to a link to stakeholder theory and corporate sustainability, e.g. Empower local managers to work with local stakeholders to analyze and experiment with ways to integrate overarching principles/values at the local level with respect for local culture. Engage local employees and stakeholders to analyze and experiment with ways to integrate overarching principles/values at the local level with respect for local culture.
However, the government has stopped short of banning print advertising. These governmental efforts have been matched by a certain level of self-regulation on the part of tobacco companies. For example, after a public outcry over its use of a cartoonish camel to sell cigarettes , Camel Cigarettes voluntarily stopped advertising in magazines in 2007. However, in 2013 Camel resumed its practice of advertising in magazines. Many people feel that advertisements for such products contain racist appeals, since they are implicitly based on promoting the superiority of white skin. Let us first consider some background to allow us to answer these questions.
It certainly sounds odd to say that a moral statement that once was false can be made true by the establishment of a new religious or political order and the consolidation of its ideas. One response a relativist could offer to this objection is simply to embrace the conclusion and insist that moral progress is a chimera; but this undeniably goes against what most people view as ethical common sense. The more common and more plausible response, therefore, is, once again, for the relativist to take the “ethnocentric” line. On this view, moral progress is possible, but not relative to objective, trans-cultural criteria. It can only be gauged by reference to some particular moral standpoint that cannot be conclusively proved superior to other points of view. Thus, relativists, like everyone else, will view the abolition of slavery as progress because they affirm values such as freedom, equality, and individual happiness.
As noted earlier, ethical non-realism, ethical non-cognitivism, emotivism, moral subjectivism, and moral skepticism are other possible responses, for the mere denial of objectivism, like the mere fact of cultural diversity, does not logically entail moral relativism. It does, however, undoubtedly make people more receptive to a relativistic outlook. The increase in skepticism towards moral objectivism is one of the most significant shifts that has taken place in moral philosophy over the past two centuries. This trend has been reinforced by the apparent contrast between natural science and moral discourse. Science is generally thought to describe an independently existing, objective reality; and scientists from all over the world largely accept the same methodology, data, theories and conclusions, except in the case of disputes at the cutting edge of research. Gilbert Harman is one of the best-known defenders of moral relativism along these lines.
The Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management, which became the major organization for those on the descriptive side of business ethics, had existed since 1976. The SBE met initially in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association. In 1989 it changed its annual meeting to precede the Academy of Management annual meeting, although it still had sessions in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association. The SBE continues to be the dominant academic venue for business ethics.
In the centuries following, further trends in modern philosophy helped prepare the way for moral relativism by chipping away at people’s faith in the objectivity of ethics. In the 17th century, Hobbes argued for a social contract view of morality that sees moral rules, like laws, as something human beings agree upon in order to make social living possible. An implication of this view is that moral tenets are not right or wrong according to whether they correspond to some transcendent blueprint; rather, they should be appraised pragmatically according to how well they serve their purpose.
