AUSTRALIAN GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
Business Ethics
The Basics of Ethics
The classic phrase used to sum up
deontology is “respect for persons”; another is
“the ends don’t justify the means”. The
worth of persons is infinite and cannot be traded off for
other benefits eg. evicting a minority group from, say, a
mining site because the majority will gain. The classic
phrase still widely used to sum up utilitarianism is
“the greatest happiness for the greatest
number”. Unfortunately, this phrase would seem to
leave individual and group rights at the mercy of the
majority. For example, economic policy might dictate that
mining in a certain area would be beneficial to most people,
but a small Aboriginal group might lose a sacred site. Is
this justifiable? |
that apply to all professions):
HTML-IMAGEcenter; rl. beneficence doing good non-maleficence
not doing harm confidentiality respecting the privacy of
clients conflict of interest keeping private interests
separate from those of clients respectability behaving in
ways that do not bring the profession into public disrepute
public duty advising policy makers or the public in areas
where one has special responsibility or expertise competence
keeping up with the latest developments in one’s
profession HTML-IMAGE-END.LI Note that we have moved from
theories to principles in section 5. Too
frequently text books do not mark this transition from
theories to principles. A theory is a general account of
morality. Principles comprise a theory, but might be shared
by more than one theory. More importantly, they occupy
different roles: theories are accounts of morality;
principles are the stuff that is used in moral reasoning;
but neither will do the job of moral reasoning for you.
Damian Grace 1999