Business ethics field guide free pdf download

Business Ethics is a thorough yet accessible exploration of the main ethical theories and how these apply to the major stakeholders facing this question. Written from a truly international perspective and supported by diverse and innovative learning features, this book provides the tools and concepts necessary to understand and effectively manage ethical challenges wherever you are in the world.

Step into the shoes of a decision-maker with 'Ethical Dilemma' boxes and hear from them first hand with new 'Practitioner Spotlight' boxes, which feature fascinating insights from real-life practitioners on how they manage ethical decisions and what skills they consider to be crucial to success. The fourth edition offers a wealth of new cases and examples as well as updates of favourites from previous editions, including features on AirBnB, TOMS, and McDonalds. Bespoke video interviews with the practitioners from the book and new multiple-choice questions enhance the online resources for students, while workshop and flipped classroom activity ideas support lecturers.

In addition, content has been thoroughly updated across the book and online to reflect the latest developments and issues surrounding corporate citizenship, globalization, and sustainability. Award-winning, best-selling, and up-to-date; this is the textbook of choice for those wishing to excel in business ethics. The book is supported by an extensive range of online resources: For students: Practitioner Spotlight videos and web links Additional Case Study web links Additional Ethics in Action web link.

Journalists and activists are involved every minute of their lives to disclose and take action against the wrongful practices done by various businesses to provide relief and aware the customers about the same.

This is the reason why it becomes essentially important to follow business ethics to make sure that all the businesses are doing the right things morally. Moral values are one of the strongest basis to make sure that customers nowadays base their buying and choice of products and services.

Business ethics are very necessary for any business and customer relationships to flourish and grow to the best of their abilities. Global Business Ethics cuts through the confusion to provide a coherent basis for ethical decision-making within the complications of the international business landscape.

Underpinned by theory and including worked-through examples of ethical dilemmas and their solutions, this textbook will guide the reader beyond theory to real-world business decisions. Practical tools such as decision trees and suggested principles to apply in dilemma situations give readers the skills and confidence to tackle the ethical challenges they face.

Global Business Ethics offers a unique working code of ethics provided as a model with guidance to readers for adaptation and implementation. A chapter on the legal aspects of ethics provides guidance on the complex relationship between law and ethics in international business. The final part takes an in-depth look at the practical application of ethics in business life.

Covering all the major theories of ethics, including an examination of the role of quantification of ethics, Global Business Ethics demonstrates how their principles can be applied to inform better business decisions. Online supporting resources for this book include instructor's manual, lecture slides and appendices. This Encyclopedia spans the relationships among business, ethics, and society by including more than entries that feature broad coverage of corporate social responsibility, the obligation of companies to various stakeholder groups, the contribution of business to society and culture, and the relationship between organizations and the quality of the environment.

Business Ethics Author : Alan R. Controversy surrounding such issues as the environment, rewards to senior managers and international labour standards have made business ethics front page news, as well as helping it emerge as a fully fledged part of the business and management landscape.

This set brings together a cross section of material from both philosophy and business journals. It includes: what is business ethics and how has it developed; are ethics compatible with the free market?

The text offers ways to design organizations that reinforce ethical behavior and reduce risks. It's organized based on an "Optimal Ethics Systems Model" which includes ethical job candidates, decision making, training, officers and hotlines, leadership, work goals and performance appraisals, environmental management, and community outreach.

Early chapters present types of ethical issues organizations face, history of government regulation, the importance and extent of codes of ethics and conduct, an ethical decision-making framework, and the importance and extent of managing the natural environment and being a good corporate citizen - as well as new ideas and models. In addition, Collins provides a much broader array of best practices in business ethics to immediately implement many of the management techniques.

Score: 1. It develops an awareness of the many ways in which ethical considerations can manifest in commercial domains, thereby helping prepare students for their professional careers. Business Ethics shows how theory works in practice. It includes hundreds of real-world examples that will help engage students. Maintaining a balance in business often requires compromises or tradeoffs. Ethical misconducts are under greater scrutiny today by stakeholders. Misuse of company resources, abusive behavior, harassment, accounting fraud, conflicts of interest, defective products, bribery, and employee theft are evidences of declining ethical standards.

If society judges it to be unethical, whether correctly or not, that judgment directly affects business goals. Business ethics is not merely an extension of personal ethics. Having good personal ethics may not prevent a person from violating the law in an organization context. The values from family, religion, and school is not enough for complex business decisions on product quality, advertising, pricing, sales techniques, hiring practices, and pollution control.

Studying business ethics helps you begin to identify ethical issues and recognize the approaches available to resolve them. MCQ Which of the following is generally not considered a business ethics issue?

Harassment B. Accounting fraud C. Employee theft D. Misuse of organizational resources E. Poor ethics will have a serious impact on your bottom line. People seek compensation for their losses as a result of business people making unethical decisions. Huge organizations like Enron have been destroyed by unethical decisions, and others seriously damaged like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Competitiveness, innovation and ambition are critical for a business to succeed, but they need to be supplemented with a strong moral compass. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Beginning in the late s, executives pay at these two companies became tied almost solely to earnings growth.

To reap maximum bonus payouts, top management cooked the books to produce enough corporate earnings. Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies. He was sentenced to years in prison.

It was the largest bankruptcy in history and triggered a worldwide financial crisis. Convicted in , he was sentenced to 25 years in prison before he was granted conditional release on Jan 17, Total SA French oil and gas company Total has been accused of building a pipeline with the aid of slave labor in Myanmar. In , one of the company's oil tankers, the Erika, which had 30, tons of oil on board, sunk off of the coast of Brittany.

Here are 12 principles and values that form the basis of business ethics. Do not misrepresent the facts, exaggerate or only give partial truths. Integrity means having a consistent character that is demonstrated by an alignment of your thoughts, words and action. Show that you place a high value on advancing the interests of both the company and your colleagues. Being fair means being open minded, admitting mistakes, and adjusting beliefs and positions when it is appropriate.

Be committed to employ justice in your decisions and treat all people equally, with tolerance and acceptance of diversity. Aim to reach goals while causing the least amount of harm and the greatest amount of good. Always consider the financial, emotional and long term business consequences of an action on every stakeholder. Demonstrate this by being courteous. Deliver the highest quality of service or products and always have the endeavor to improve. Demonstrate the ethics you want your team to live by.

Create a business environment that values ethical decisions. Holding yourself to these standards will impress customers and staff, and build a strong sense of trust with all of your stakeholders. Unintentional Unethical Behavior People view themselves as more ethical, fair, and objective than others, yet often act against their moral compass. This unintentional unethical behavior or ethical blind spots lead good people to cross ethical boundaries.

There are four avenues along which unintentional unethical behavior may be developed. A decision maker is bias against a person by relying on unconscious stereotypes or the unconscious comparison to a person in the past that had similar characteristics. For example, a manager may be more helpful to subordinates who have a good personal relationship with him.

Or, you stay late to finish a presentation yet your team member accepts all the praise. Or, you lead a long overdue project to completion and your boss tells the higher-ups it was his doing. MCQ Which unintentional unethical behavior occurs when a decision maker supports a decision based on relying on unconscious stereotypes? Implicit Prejudice B. In-Group Favoritism C.

Some authors argue that they are still deontic norms, while others argue for a close connection between them and institutional facts see Raz , Ruiter Linguistic conventions, for example, the convention in English that "cat" means cat or the convention in Portuguese that "gato" means cat, are among the most important norms.

Games completely depend on norms. The fundamental norm of many games is the norm establishing who wins and loses. In other games, it is the norm establishing how to score points.

Some people say they are "prescriptively true" or false. Whereas the truth of a descriptive statement is purportedly based on its correspondence to reality, some philosophers, beginning with Aristotle, assert that the prescriptive truth of a prescriptive statement is based on its correspondence to right desire.

Other philosophers maintain that norms are ultimately neither true or false, but only successful or unsuccessful valid or invalid , as their propositional content obtains or not see also John Searle and speech act. There is an important difference between norms and normative propositions, although they are often expressed by identical sentences. Some ethical theories reject that there can be normative propositions, but these are accepted by cognitivism. One can also think of propositional norms; assertions and questions arguably express propositional norms they set a proposition as asserted or questioned.

Another purported feature of norms, it is often argued, is that they never regard only natural properties or entities. Norms always bring something artificial, conventional, institutional or "unworldly". This might be related to Hume's assertion that it is not possible to derive ought from is and to G. Moore's claim that there is a naturalistic fallacy when one tries to analyse "good" and "bad" in terms of a natural concept. In aesthetics, it has also been argued that it is impossible to derive an aesthetical predicate from a non-aesthetical one.

The acceptability of non-natural properties, however, is strongly debated in present-day philosophy. Some authors deny their existence, some others try to reduce them to natural ones, on which the former supervene. Other thinkers Adler, assert that norms can be natural in a different sense than that of "corresponding to something proceeding from the object of the prescription as a strictly internal source of action".

Rather, those who assert the existence of natural prescriptions say norms can suit a natural need on the part of the prescribed entity. More to the point, however, is the putting forward of the notion that just as descriptive statements being considered true are conditioned upon certain self-evident descriptive truths suiting the nature of reality such as: it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time and in the same manner , a prescriptive truth can suit the nature of the will through the authority of it being based upon self-evident prescriptive truths such as: one ought to desire what is really good for one and nothing else.

Recent works maintain that normativity has an important role in several different philosophical subjects, not only in ethics and philosophy of law see Dancy, Philosophy of business The philosophy of business considers the fundamental principles that underlie the formation and operation of a business enterprise; the nature and purpose of a business, and the moral obligations that pertain to it.

Moral obligation The term moral obligation has a number of meanings in moral philosophy, in religion, and in layman's terms. Generally speaking, when someone says of an act that it is a "moral obligation," they refer to a belief that the act is one prescribed by their set of values.

Obligation being a set code by which a person is to follow. Obligations can be found by an individual's peers that set a code that may go against the individual's own desires. The individual will express their morality by the person following the set code s through seeing it as good to appease society. Ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is the branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct. The branch of philosophy axiology comprises the sub-branches of ethics and aesthetics, each concerned with values.

As a branch of philosophy, ethics investigates the questions "What is the best way for people to live? As a field of intellectual enquiry, moral philosophy also is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory. Three major areas of study within ethics recognised today are: Meta-ethics, concerning the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions, and how their truth values if any can be determined 1. Normative ethics, concerning the practical means of determining a moral course of action 2.

Richard William Paul and Linda Elder define ethics as "a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures".

The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy states that the word ethics is "commonly used interchangeably with 'morality' The word "ethics" in English refers to several things. It can refer to philosophical ethics or moral philosophy—a project that attempts to use reason in order to answer various kinds of ethical questions.

As the English philosopher Bernard Williams writes, attempting to explain moral philosophy: "What makes an inquiry a philosophical one is reflective generality and a style of argument that claims to be rationally persuasive. As bioethicist Larry Churchill has written: "Ethics, understood as the capacity to think critically about moral values and direct our actions in terms of such values, is a generic human capacity.

For example: "Joe has strange ethics. A meta-ethical question is abstract and relates to a wide range of more specific practical questions. For example, "Is it ever possible to have secure knowledge of what is right and wrong?

Meta-ethics has always accompanied philosophical ethics. For example, Aristotle implies that less precise knowledge is possible in ethics than in other spheres of inquiry, and he regards ethical knowledge as depending upon habit and acculturation in a way that makes it distinctive from other kinds of knowledge. Meta-ethics is also important in G. Moore's Principia Ethica from In it he first wrote about what he called the naturalistic fallacy.

Moore was seen to reject naturalism in ethics, in his Open Question Argument. This made thinkers look again at second order questions about ethics. Earlier, the Scottish philosopher David Hume had put forward a similar view on the difference between facts and values. Studies of how we know in ethics divide into cognitivism and non- cognitivism; this is similar to the contrast between descriptivists and non-descriptivists.

Non- cognitivism is the claim that when we judge something as right or wrong, this is neither true nor false. We may for example be only expressing our emotional feelings about these things. The ontology of ethics is about value-bearing things or properties, i.

Non-descriptivists and non- cognitivists believe that ethics does not need a specific ontology, since ethical propositions do not refer. This is known as an anti-realist position. Realists on the other hand must explain what kind of entities, properties or states are relevant for ethics, how they have value, and why they guide and motivate our actions.

Normative ethics Normative ethics is the study of ethical action. It is the branch of ethics that investigates the set of questions that arise when considering how one ought to act, morally speaking. Normative ethics is distinct from meta-ethics because it examines standards for the rightness and wrongness of actions, while meta-ethics studies the meaning of moral language and the metaphysics of moral facts. Normative ethics is also distinct from descriptive ethics, as the latter is an empirical investigation of people's moral beliefs.

To put it another way, descriptive ethics would be concerned with determining what proportion of people believe that killing is always wrong, while normative ethics is concerned with whether it is correct to hold such a belief. However, on certain versions of the meta-ethical view called moral realism, moral facts are both descriptive and prescriptive at the same time. Traditionally, normative ethics also known as moral theory was the study of what makes actions right and wrong.

These theories offered an overarching moral principle one could appeal to in resolving difficult moral decisions. At the turn of the 20th century, moral theories became more complex and are no longer concerned solely with rightness and wrongness, but are interested in many different kinds of moral status. During the middle of the century, the study of normative ethics declined as meta-ethics grew in prominence.

This focus on meta-ethics was in part caused by an intense linguistic focus in analytic philosophy and by the popularity of logical positivism. In John Rawls published A Theory of Justice, noteworthy in its pursuit of moral arguments and eschewing of meta-ethics. This publication set the trend for renewed interest in normative ethics. Virtue ethics Virtue ethics describes the character of a moral agent as a driving force for ethical behavior, and is used to describe the ethics of Socrates, Aristotle, and other early Greek philosophers.

Socrates — BC was one of the first Greek philosophers to encourage both scholars and the common citizen to turn their attention from the outside world to the condition of humankind. In this view, knowledge bearing on human life was placed highest, while all other knowledge were secondary. Self-knowledge was considered necessary for success and inherently an essential good. A self-aware person will act completely within his capabilities to his pinnacle, while an ignorant person will flounder and encounter difficulty.

To Socrates, a person must become aware of every fact and its context relevant to his existence, if he wishes to attain self-knowledge.

He posited that people will naturally do what is good, if they know what is right. Evil or bad actions are the result of ignorance. If a criminal was truly aware of the intellectual and spiritual consequences of his actions, he would neither commit nor even consider committing those actions. Any person who knows what is truly right will automatically do it, according to Socrates.

While he correlated knowledge with virtue, he similarly equated virtue with joy. The truly wise man will know what is right, do what is good, and therefore be happy. Aristotle — BC posited an ethical system that may be termed "self-realizationism. At birth, a baby is not a person, but a potential person. To become a "real" person, the child's inherent potential must be realized. Unhappiness and frustration are caused by the unrealized potential of a person, leading to failed goals and a poor life.

Aristotle said, "Nature does nothing in vain. Happiness was held to be the ultimate goal. All other things, such as civic life or wealth, are merely means to the end. Self- realization, the awareness of one's nature and the development of one's talents, is the surest path to happiness. Physical nature can be assuaged through exercise and care, emotional nature through indulgence of instinct and urges, and mental through human reason and developed potential.

Rational development was considered the most important, as essential to philosophical self-awareness and as uniquely human. Moderation was encouraged, with the extremes seen as degraded and immoral.

For example, courage is the moderate virtue between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness. This is regarded as difficult, as virtue denotes doing the right thing, to the right person, at the right time, to the proper extent, in the correct fashion, for the right reason.

Stoicism The Stoic philosopher Epictetus posited that the greatest good was contentment and serenity. Peace of mind, or Apatheia, was of the highest value; self-mastery over one's desires and emotions leads to spiritual peace.

The "unconquerable will" is central to this philosophy. The individual's will should be independent and inviolate. Allowing a person to disturb the mental equilibrium is in essence offering yourself in slavery.

If a person is free to anger you at will, you have no control over your internal world, and therefore no freedom. Freedom from material attachments is also necessary. If a thing breaks, the person should not be upset, but realize it was a thing that could break.

Similarly, if someone should die, those close to them should hold to their serenity because the loved one was made of flesh and blood destined to death. Stoic philosophy says to accept things that cannot be changed, resigning oneself to existence and enduring in a rational fashion.

Death is not feared. People do not "lose" their life, but instead "return", for they are returning to God who initially gave what the person is as a person. Epictetus said difficult problems in life should not be avoided, but rather embraced.

They are spiritual exercises needed for the health of the spirit, just as physical exercise is required for the health of the body. He also stated that sex and sexual desire are to be avoided as the greatest threat to the integrity and equilibrium of a man's mind.

Abstinence is highly desirable. Epictetus said remaining abstinent in the face of temptation was a victory for which a man could be proud. Contemporary virtue ethics Modern virtue ethics was popularized during the late 20th century in large part as a response to G.

Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy". Anscombe argues that consequentialist and deontological ethics are only feasible as universal theories if the two schools ground themselves in divine law. As a deeply devoted Christian herself, Anscombe proposed that either those who do not give ethical credence to notions of divine law take up virtue ethics, which does not necessitate universal laws as agents themselves are investigated for virtue or vice and held up to "universal standards," or that those who wish to be utilitarian or consequentialist ground their theories in religious conviction.

Alasdair MacIntyre, who wrote the book After Virtue, was a key contributor and proponent of modern virtue ethics, although MacIntyre supports a relativistic account of virtue based on cultural norms, not objective standards. Martha Nussbaum, a contemporary virtue ethicist, objects to MacIntyre's relativism, among that of others, and responds to relativist objections to form an objective account in her work "Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach. There are several schools of Hedonist thought ranging from those advocating the indulgence of even momentary desires to those teaching a pursuit of spiritual bliss.

In their consideration of consequences, they range from those advocating self-gratification regardless of the pain and expense to others, to those stating that the most ethical pursuit maximizes pleasure and happiness for the most people.

Cyrenaic hedonism Founded by Aristippus of Cyrene, Cyrenaics supported immediate gratification or pleasure. There was little to no concern with the future, the present dominating in the pursuit for immediate pleasure. Cyrenaic hedonism encouraged the pursuit of enjoyment and indulgence without hesitation, believing pleasure to be the only good.

Epicureanism Epicurean ethics is a hedonist form of virtue ethics. Epicurus "presented a sustained argument that pleasure, correctly understood, will coincide with virtue".

He rejected the extremism of the Cyrenaics, believing some pleasures and indulgences to be detrimental to human beings. Epicureans observed that indiscriminate indulgence sometimes resulted in negative consequences. Some experiences were therefore rejected out of hand, and some unpleasant experiences endured in the present to ensure a better life in the future.

To Epicurus the summum bonum, or greatest good, was prudence, exercised through moderation and caution. Excessive indulgence can be destructive to pleasure and can even lead to pain. For example, eating one food too often will cause a person to lose taste for it. Eating too much food at once will lead to discomfort and ill-health. Pain and fear were to be avoided. Living was essentially good, barring pain and illness. Death was not to be feared. Fear was considered the source of most unhappiness.

Conquering the fear of death would naturally lead to a happier life. Epicurus reasoned if there was an afterlife and immortality, the fear of death was irrational. If there was no life after death, then the person would not be alive to suffer, fear or worry; he would be non- existent in death. It is irrational to fret over circumstances that do not exist, such as one's state in death in the absence of an afterlife. State consequentialism State consequentialism, also known as Mohist consequentialism, is an ethical theory that evaluates the moral worth of an action based on how much it contributes to the basic goods of a state.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes Mohist consequentialism, dating back to the 5th century BC, as "a remarkably sophisticated version based on a plurality of intrinsic goods taken as constitutive of human welfare.

During Mozi's era, war and famines were common, and population growth was seen as a moral necessity for a harmonious society. The "material wealth" of Mohist consequentialism refers to basic needs like shelter and clothing, and the "order" of Mohist consequentialism refers to Mozi's stance against warfare and violence, which he viewed as pointless and a threat to social stability.

Stanford sinologist David Shepherd Nivison, in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, writes that the moral goods of Mohism "are interrelated: more basic wealth, then more reproduction; more people, then more production and wealth The importance of outcomes that are good for the community outweigh the importance of individual pleasure and pain. Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as the aphorism "The ends justify the means".

The term "consequentialism" was coined by G. Anscombe in her essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" in , to describe what she saw as the central error of certain moral theories, such as those propounded by Mill and Sidgwick.

The defining feature of consequentialist moral theories is the weight given to the consequences in evaluating the rightness and wrongness of actions. In consequentialist theories, the consequences of an action or rule generally outweigh other considerations. Apart from this basic outline, there is little else that can be unequivocally said about consequentialism as such. One way to divide various consequentialisms is by the types of consequences that are taken to matter most, that is, which consequences count as good states of affairs.

According to utilitarianism, a good action is one that results in an increase in a positive effect, and the best action is one that results in that effect for the greatest number.

Closely related is eudaimonic consequentialism, according to which a full, flourishing life, which may or may not be the same as enjoying a great deal of pleasure, is the ultimate aim. Similarly, one might adopt an aesthetic consequentialism, in which the ultimate aim is to produce beauty. However, one might fix on non-psychological goods as the relevant effect. Thus, one might pursue an increase in material equality or political liberty instead of something like the more ephemeral "pleasure".

Other theories adopt a package of several goods, all to be promoted equally. Whether a particular consequentialist theory focuses on a single good or many, conflicts and tensions between different good states of affairs are to be expected and must be adjudicated. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are influential proponents of this school of thought.

In A Fragment on Government Bentham says 'it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong' and describes this as a fundamental axiom. In An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation he talks of 'the principle of utility' but later prefers "the greatest happiness principle".

Utilitarianism is the paradigmatic example of a consequentialist moral theory. This form of utilitarianism holds that what matters is the aggregate positive effect of everyone and not only of any one person. John Stuart Mill, in his exposition of utilitarianism, proposed a hierarchy of pleasures, meaning that the pursuit of certain kinds of pleasure is more highly valued than the pursuit of other pleasures.

Other noteworthy proponents of utilitarianism are neuroscientist Sam Harris, author of The Moral Landscape, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of, amongst other works, Practical Ethics. There are two types of utilitarianism, act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism.

In act utilitarianism the principle of utility is applied directly to each alternative act in a situation of choice. The right act is then defined as the one which brings about the best results or the least amount of bad results.

In rule utilitarianism the principle of utility is used to determine the validity of rules of conduct moral principles. A rule like promise-keeping is established by looking at the consequences of a world in which people broke promises at will and a world in which promises were binding.

Right and wrong are then defined as following or breaking those rules. This is in contrast to consequentialism, in which rightness is based on the consequences of an act, and not the act by itself. In deontology, an act may be considered right even if the act produces a bad consequence, if it follows the rule that "one should do unto others as they would have done unto them", and even if the person who does the act lacks virtue and had a bad intention in doing the act.

According to deontology, we have a duty to act in a way that does those things that are inherently good as acts "truth-telling" for example , or follow an objectively obligatory rule as in rule utilitarianism. For deontologists, the ends or consequences of our actions are not important in and of themselves, and our intentions are not important in and of themselves.

Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics is considered deontological for several different reasons. First, Kant argues that to act in the morally right way, people must act from duty deon. Second, Kant argued that it was not the consequences of actions that make them right or wrong but the motives maxime of the person who carries out the action. Something is 'good in itself' when it is intrinsically good, and 'good without qualification' when the addition of that thing never makes a situation ethically worse.

Kant then argues that those things that are usually thought to be good, such as intelligence, perseverance and pleasure, fail to be either intrinsically good or good without qualification. Pleasure, for example, appears to not be good without qualification, because when people take pleasure in watching someone suffer, they make the situation ethically worse. He concludes that there is only one thing that is truly good:Nothing in the world—indeed nothing even beyond the world—can possibly be conceived which could be called good without qualification except a good will.

Pragmatic ethics Associated with the pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and especially John Dewey, pragmatic ethics holds that moral correctness evolves similarly to scientific knowledge: socially over the course of many lifetimes. Thus, we should prioritize social reform over attempts to account for consequences, individual virtue or duty although these may be worthwhile attempts, provided social reform is provided for. Role ethics Role ethics is an ethical theory based on family roles.

Unlike virtue ethics, role ethics is not individualistic. Morality is derived from a person's relationship with their community. Confucian roles center around the concept of filial piety or xiao, a respect for family members.

Confucian roles are not rational, and originate through the xin, or human emotions. Anarchist ethics Anarchist ethics is an ethical theory based on the studies of anarchist thinkers. The biggest contributor to the anarchist ethics is the Russian zoologist, geographer, economist and political activist Peter Kropotkin. Kropotkin argues that Ethics is evolutionary and is inherited as a sort of a social instinct through History, and by so, he rejects any religious and transcendental explanation of ethics.

Kropotkin suggests that the principle of equality which lies at the basis of anarchism is the same as the Golden rule:This principle of treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself, what is it but the very same principle as equality, the fundamental principle of anarchism? And how can any one manage to believe himself an anarchist unless he practices it? We do not wish to be ruled. And by this very fact, do we not declare that we ourselves wish to rule nobody?

And by this very fact, do we not de- clare that we ourselves do not wish to deceive anybody, that we promise to always tell the truth, nothing but the truth, the whole truth? We do not wish to have the fruits of our labor stolen from us. And by that very fact, do we not declare that we respect the fruits of others' labor? By what right indeed can we demand that we should be treated in one fashion, reserving it to ourselves to treat others in a fashion entirely different?

Our sense of equality revolts at such an idea. Antihumanists such as Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault and structuralists such as Roland Barthes challenged the possibilities of individual agency and the coherence of the notion of the 'individual' itself. As critical theory developed in the later 20th century, post-structuralism sought to problematize human relationships to knowledge and 'objective' reality. Jacques Derrida argued that access to meaning and the 'real' was always deferred, and sought to demonstrate via recourse to the linguistic realm that "there is nothing outside context" "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" is often mistranslated as "there is nothing outside the text" ; at the same time, Jean Baudrillard theorised that signs and symbols or simulacra mask reality and eventually the absence of reality itself , particularly in the consumer world.

Post-structuralism and postmodernism argue that ethics must study the complex and relational conditions of actions. A simple alignment of ideas of right and particular acts is not possible.

There will always be an ethical remainder that cannot be taken into account or often even recognized. Such theorists find narrative or, following Nietzsche and Foucault, genealogy to be a helpful tool for understanding ethics because narrative is always about particular lived experiences in all their complexity rather than the assignment of an idea or norm to separate and individuated actions.

Zygmunt Bauman says Postmodernity is best described as Modernity without illusion, the illusion being the belief that humanity can be repaired by some ethic principle. Postmodernity can be seen in this light as accepting the messy nature of humanity as unchangeable. David Couzens Hoy states that Emmanuel Levinas's writings on the face of the Other and Derrida's meditations on the relevance of death to ethics are signs of the "ethical turn" in Continental philosophy that occurred in the s and s.

Hoy describes post-critique ethics as the "obligations that present themselves as necessarily to be fulfilled but are neither forced on one or are enforceable" , p.

Hoy's post-critique model uses the term ethical resistance. Examples of this would be an individual's resistance to consumerism in a retreat to a simpler but perhaps harder lifestyle, or an individual's resistance to a terminal illness.

Hoy describes Levinas's account as "not the attempt to use power against itself, or to mobilize sectors of the population to exert their political power; the ethical resistance is instead the resistance of the powerless. Hoy concludes that; The ethical resistance of the powerless others to our capacity to exert power over them is therefore what imposes unenforceable obligations on us. The obligations are unenforceable precisely because of the other's lack of power. Those actions are at once obligatory and at the same time unenforceable is what put them in the category of the ethical.

Obligations that were enforced would, by the virtue of the force behind them, not be freely undertaken and would not be in the realm of the ethical. In present-day terms the powerless may include the unborn, the terminally sick, the aged, and the insane and non-human animals. Until legislation or the state apparatus enforces a moral order that addresses the causes of resistance these issues will remain in the ethical realm.

For example, should animal experimentation become illegal in a society, it will no longer be an ethical issue on Hoy's definition. Likewise one hundred and fifty years ago, not having a black slave in America would have been an ethical choice. This later issue has been absorbed into the fabric of an enforceable social order and is therefore no longer an ethical issue in Hoy's sense. Applied ethics Applied ethics is a discipline of philosophy that attempts to apply ethical theory to real-life situations.

The discipline has many specialized fields, such as engineering ethics, bioethics, geoethics, public service ethics and business ethics. Applied ethics is used in some aspects of determining public policy, as well as by individuals facing difficult decisions.

The sort of questions addressed by applied ethics include: "Is getting an abortion immoral? But not all questions studied in applied ethics concern public policy. For example, making ethical judgments regarding questions such as, "Is lying always wrong? People in-general are more comfortable with dichotomies two opposites. However, in ethics the issues are most often multifaceted and the best proposed actions address many different areas concurrently.

In ethical decisions the answer is almost never a "yes or no", "right or wrong" statement. Many buttons are pushed so that the overall condition is improved and not to the benefit of any particular faction. Particular fields of application Bioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy.

It also includes the study of the more commonplace questions of values "the ethics of the ordinary" that arise in primary care and other branches of medicine. Bioethics also needs to address emerging biotechnologies that affect basic biology and future humans. These developments include cloning, gene therapy, human genetic engineering, astroethics and life in space, and manipulation of basic biology through altered DNA, RNA and proteins,e. Correspondingly, new bioethics also need to address life at its core.

With such life-centered principles, ethics may secure a cosmological future for life. Business ethics has both normative and descriptive dimensions. For example, today most major corporations promote their commitment to non-economic values under headings such as ethics codes and social responsibility charters.

Machine ethics In Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong, Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen conclude that issues in machine ethics will likely drive advancement in understanding of human ethics by forcing us to address gaps in modern normative theory and by providing a platform for experimental investigation. The effort to actually program a machine or artificial agent to behave as though instilled with a sense of ethics requires new specificity in our normative theories, especially regarding aspects customarily considered common-sense.

For example, machines, unlike humans, can support a wide selection of learning algorithms, and controversy has arisen over the relative ethical merits of these options.