Ethics & Sustainability

• Ethics = doing the good and the right things with the good and right reasons
• Major ethical theories: virtue ethics, deontological ethics, and consequential ethics
• Consequential ethics: the effect of the behavior determines the ethicality, the action is oral if the positive consequences outweigh the negative consequences
• Advantages consequential ethics

  • Fits with reasoning in market
  • Application in political context
  • Application in science
  • Application in personal life
• Disadvantage consequential ethics

  • Practical: the problem of measurement
  • Practical: the problem of comparison
  • Fundamental: the problem of justicec
  • Fundamental: the problem of rights
• Deontological ethics: the morality of an act is determined by the nature of the act; the obligation to behave in accordance with certain principles, duties, and rights
• Advantages deontological ethics: clarity and consistency
• Problems deontological ethics:

  • Black and white
  • What about conflicting rights or principles?
  • Effects are not taken into account
• Virtue ethics judges decisions as right that are taken based on a virtuous mindset and congruent with a good virtuous life
• Advantages virtue ethics

  • Flexibility
  • Inspiring
• Problems Virtue ethics

  • Difficult to operationalize
  • Vulnerable to relativism
• A business code is a distinct and formal document containing a set of prescriptions, developed by and for a company to guide present and future behavior on multiple issues of its managers and employees toward one another, the company, external stakeholders, and/or society in general
• An ethics program is the formal organizational control system that is designed to impede unethical behavior and promote ethical behavior.
• The ethical culture of an organization is the informal organizational control system designed to impede unethical behavior and promote ethical behavior
• Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
• Externalities arise whenever the actions of one economic agent directly affect another agent outside the market mechanism
• Remedies for negative externalities:

  • Private-sector solutions: well-defined property rights
  • Public-sector solutions: price regulation and quantity regulation