I will start by proposing that if Business Ethics is not simply a sales trick, then it is part of Ethics, and therefore it is a study of the awkward old question of how best to live, but simply focused on a business-man. I am insisting that for the term to mean anything, it must be Ethics first, and business second, for logical reasons.
The passions which motivate business include distilled versions of all the same murderous passions which motivated our ancestors to kill each other's families, and indeed Jane Goodall's chimps. It might be said that the laws of modern liberal democracies force businesses to compete for control and access to resources, and for status, without killing, and even without ruining the lives of others, at least not openly and deliberately. But that hardly seems to be quite enough to justify bothering with a special term, "Business Ethics".
Business Ethics can not simply be forced avoidance of killing and inflicting pain, and for similar reasons it can't simply be following laws or anything else one has to do anyway.
It might well be that some people might see Business Ethics in precisely this way, as a study of what one is forced to do, and what can get away with - an admission that governments exist, are more powerful than businesses, and work by different rules. But if that is what "Business Ethics" means then it is just a silly term for the study of Politics, and its history, philosophy, legal theory and so on, whenever business people, or the people who publish books or give courses to them, engage with this subject. But surely "Business Ethics" does not mean "Political Science (or Ethics, for example) for business people".
People have to mean more than the study of legal requirements when they say "Business Ethics", if the term is to mean anything worthwhile.
Ethics and Political Science were the first two "practical" disciplines of classical science and philosophy, and the idea of having a practical, useful, science was problematic. Aristotle coined the terminology of the two disciplines, Ethics and Politics, which look at what makes life good or bad, from the perspective of an individual or a community. He also carefully explained that such discussion could work if there is enough agreement between people about what makes a good or bad life. Finding such agreements has to be a starting point, he argued. And although metaphysics and other controversial assumptions have often worked their way into the study of Ethics, as they also did in Physics, David Hume could happily say centuries later that when it comes to human nature, the modern approach does not require throwing out the ancient Greeks.
...But this needs further investigation...
Economics, originally Political economics, is another Greek word, which developed from a part of Political science. The idea was that one part of good politics is the equivalent of good household management, which is what Economics originally meant.
For many thoughtful people, economics has replaced Ethics and Politics, and they find it frustrating when debate about options in politics or business are not simply about what works with regards to solving the problems of material scarcity. So above, when I mentioned several ways in which modern business satisfies an instinctive need for competition between people and groups, some thoughtful readers may object that businesses (like governments) exist to solve the economic problem, "scarcity". This is indeed what one can find in economic theory, and indeed in liberal magazines such as the Economist. From this perspective, people work in companies, or form companies, or employ others in their companies, because they personally want resources. Furthermore, scarcity, economic failure, is a major cause of all violence. If violence is decreasing then surely this is largely because scarcity is now less, and most people can get what they need without fighting others too hard. What we need from governments and businesses, the argument goes, is "law and order", or one might say "fair play" - a commitment to interact with others according to predictable rules that benefit everyone who commits to them.
As was recognized long before modern economics existed however, much of the world's violence, and indeed much scarcity, is a result of the most dangerous type of people who exist naturally in every human culture: ambitious people who want relatively more than others, no matter how much that means, people who want control over others if they can get it. This very basic natural desire for relative perceived status is something that can be seen in chimpanzees. But as Machiavelli showed those willing to understand, the dangerous people are creative and energetic and achieve great things which simple dry economics never seems to achieve.
Ethics does consider status, and lets us go beyond economics, which of course we can not ignore. As mentioned above Ethics is possible if people generally understand things in a similar way. Based on this approach, Aristotle and his friends could argue that some types of status seeking are less harmful to society than others: Knowledge, Good judgement, and even things like physical fitness, are all "virtues" that are widely respected and very satisfying to cultivate and achieve. Aristotle went further and categorized various types of character traits which, when well balanced, made both individuals and the people around them more likely to be happy.
But it has to be admitted that Aristotle and his friends were also teleologists, the intellectual forefathers of not only modern scientists, but also modern theologists. Like evolution deniers today, if much more sophisticated, they insisted that Nature, including Humanity, shows evidence of "Intelligent Design". Therefore they assumed that Ethics and Politics had to come to the same answers: what is best for individuals and communities must be, at least in a complex and dynamic way, the same. They did not naively leave this assumption entirely unquestioned, because they could see that the puzzle was not simple, but they assumed this was basically correct, and this assumption led away from some questions.
Machiavelli quite famously pointed to one of the results: thinking about politics in terms of "castles in the air", utopias, speculations about how things could best be. By doing this, he said, thoughtful people end-up letting bad things happen. It is not just a complex theoretical question of conflict between what is best for individuals and communities.
By my understanding Machiavelli is also pointing to a problem of understanding politics as a dynamic system, which can at best be brought into a complex dynamic equilibrium. It is not like shooting at a simple static target. Short-term social and individual happiness might lead to long-term unhappiness, if the changes coming in the long term are not kept in mind. Also as we look around the communities which interact, local happiness in one person or community can automatically cause unhappiness in others, even unintentionally.
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