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Business Ethics - Coggle Diagram

- - - - A stakeholder is anyone who is affected by the business, including its employees, customers and wider community
        
        Environmental CSR = businesses have a responsibility not to destroy the environment
        
        Social CSR = businesses have a responsibility to not mistreat no be involved in the mistreatment of it's employees, customers and wider community. e.g. minimum wage, health and safety provisions, not benefitting from nay kind of exploitation (e.g. sweatshops)
    - - Util: environmental CSR is valid, but social CSR might not be, it depends on the situation. If it maximises general happiness for a business to exploit, then that could be valid
        
        Kant: all violations of CSR treat people as a mere means and are therefore morally wrong
  - - - e.g. Edward Snowden - worked for the NSA in America and told the media that they were illegally spying on innocent American citizens
    - - Util: it depends on the situation. If the suffering alleviated by the whistleblowing outweighs the suffering caused by effect on the business, then whistleblowing is good, however if the conditions are reversed the whistleblowing is bad
        
        e.g. if a scientist runs a lab who is a genius and about to cure cancer, but is also a psychopath who likes to torture his employees, a utilitarian would say don't whistleblow
        
        Kant: all shady/unethical business practices are likely to treat people as a mere means, so would be wrong for that reason and deserve whistleblow
        
        Furthermore, Kant claims that lying is not universalisable - so lying is always wrong, no matter the situation. This is another reason that telling the truth during whistleblowing is morally right
  - - - The ethical issues arising from this are things like off-shore outsourcing - when a business closes a factory in a 1st world country and opens it in a 3rd world country. This loses jobs from 1st world countries, and causes exploitation in 3rd world countries
        
        A further issue is that businesses now have a lot of power and this allows them to influence a country's laws. A global corporation can bring a lot of jobs and economy to a country, which allows it to ask the politicians to change the laws to favour their business in return
        
        Ultimately globalisation leads to monopolies - businesses having power allows them to crush their competition so they dominate the market
        
        This destroyes the benefits of free market capitalism - innovation, economic growth and cheap prices
    - - Utilitarians liked Adam Smith's free market capitalism idea, but they would generally not approve of the way gloabalisation destroys competition (except in the cases where it happened to maximise happiness)
        
        Kant also liked Adam Smith's free market capitalism, but he would not approve of the way glabaisation destroys competition and leads to people being exploited (treats as ends)
- - - - They are typically what people whistleblow about
  - - - Many would criticise Utilitarianism for ignoring human rights. Human rights are deontological, like Kantian ethics. Kant would argue that it's always wrong to exploit people by treating them as a mere means. The consequences of exploiting people being good doesn't make it ok. Our society operates on human rights and it is incompatible with consequentialism. Utilitarians would say it's ok to violate rights if the consequences are good, but that could lead to allowing terrible actions against innocent people - e.g. sweatshops
  - - - Mill's rule utilitarianism claims that we don't judge every single action, we judge which rules would maximise happiness if followed
        
        Mill's main rule was the harm principle - people should be free to do what they want so long as they are not harming others
        
        Mill would likely argue that so long as people autonomously choose to work in a sweatshop, then that is fine. They are choosing to accept the risks. However Mill would likely ban children from working in them, because they cannot have informed consent
        
        Kant's approach of simply banning sweatshops seems more in-line with our moral intuitions, however when we consider that technically people would be left worse-off without them, rule utilitarianism seems the better approach
- - - - Act Util: an action is good if is maximises happiness
        
        Rule Util: an action is good if it follows a rule which will maximise happiness if everyone follows it
        
        Mill says that as a society, we should debate and figure out which social rules will best maximise happiness, and then follow those rules. Over time we can improve and change our rules
        
        e.g. on of Mill's favourite rules was the harm principle - that people should be free to do what they want so long as they are not harming others. He thought if we follow this rule, people will be happier
        
        This means we don't have to calculate the consequences of every moral action before we do it
        
        We simply need to know the moral rules our society has best juged to maximise happiness and then act on those rules
        
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