As far as I know, this might be the first textbook on business ethics ever published in Romania. In any case, it is one of the first attempts to introduce our public to a relatively new field of research, concerned with the moral issues of business activities. The reader must expect to find in the next chapters nothing more than said in the title of the book. This is neither a treatise, trying to analyze all of the main issues in business ethics, from a unified standpoint, neither a monograph on a specific topic. It is only an introduction to business ethics. A short one for reasons that will be presented below.
This book has several limitations. It is fair to begin 525v2113f with my
own weak points. In the first place, I had to write this Introduction in
English - a foreign language very dear to me but which I do not speak as well
as I would like to and I should - because it is dedicated to my students from
SELS: Economic Studies in Foreign Languages,
English section. Secondly, as most of the writers in the field of business
ethics - academics with little direct knowledge
of real business activities -
I am, too, not very familiar with the theory and practice of economics. I began
to study the moral philosophy since I was a student and I have received my PhD
in Ethics about fifteen years ago, at the University of Bucharest. I only
recently became interested in business ethics. More precisely, in the autumn of 2001 I have been offered the privilege
of a research scholarship at Newnham College, Cambridge, UK, where I had the
chance to meet dr. Onora O'Neill - a noted
interpreter of Kantian moral philosophy and a distinguished authority
in British ethics. She made me take notice of the real boom of applied ethics
in the Anglo-American academic life, less concerned in the last decades with
abstract general ethical theories, and constantly more dedicated to specific
moral issues, raised in medicine, biology, law or business. My first trip to
England happened to be coincident with my assignment at the Academy of Economic
Studies in Bucharest, where my first job is to teach business ethics.
Consequently, I began to study with increasing interest the specialized
literature in the field. One year later, in
March - April 2002, I was offered a new research scholarship at New
College, Oxford, where I have taken full advantage of the exceptional oxonian
libraries. There I had the chance to meet Roger Crisp, fellow of St. Anne's
College, a wonderful person and a distinguished ethicist, lately specialized in
business ethics. Our discussions helped me to realize the potential of this new
field of investigation, its traps and difficulties, as well as the differences
of approach between the American and West European schools of business ethics.
When I began to work on this book, my intention was to divide its contents into three parts: The first, entitled 'Morality and business', covers the first four chapters in the actual version. Adopting a distinction made by Tom Sorell and John Hendry, I was planning to add two more parts: 'Narrow business ethics' - concerned with the close range relationships of a business with its customers, employees, shareholders and other associated businesses, such as suppliers or creditors - followed by a final part, 'Broad business ethics', concerned with the relationships of a business with the state, society or environment, and international business ethics. If I could achieve this plan, this book would still have been an 'Introduction', but not a short one. Unfortunately, I have met an unsuperable obstacle: the total lack of valuable information about the moral dilemmas of the Romanian managers and their ways to cope with them. The Anglo-American books on business ethics are full of case studies, selected, obviously, from the economic life in the Western countries. World-wide known business media, such as BusinessWeek, Fortune, Wall Street Journal or Financial Times - especially after the Enron scandal - publish regularly the opinions of expert comentators or representative CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) of big national or multinational companies on various business ethics issues. Most of these opinions are relevant only because they are expressed by notorious and respected business leaders in the West but in themselves are rhetorical and not very significant. Anyway, I think it is better for my students to read these articles by themselves, in their original version.
We should be much more interested in the ethical problems which confront Romanian business leaders and their ways to solve them. But where could one look for the ethical decisions taken by our CEOs? Our business reviews and newspapers, such as Capital, Biz or Ziarul financiar never deals with business ethics issues. As for our news media, television and daily journals, they are full of scandals. As I shall argue in this book, scandals are not a good starting point in business ethics, primarily because they present cases which are morally uncontroversial. There is nothing to be discussed from an ethical point of view when we are dealing with thieves and crooks; bribery, corruption, tax fraud and so on are illegal behaviours, that cannot be morally justified. Ethics begins with the decision to keep the law and continues with the analysis and evaluation of those practical decisions that can be made within the limits of the law. Because of this lack of information, I had to postpone the drafting of the third part, for a second edition of this book, that had to be published as soon as possible.
I am a supporter of a Kantian perspective on ethics, for several reasons. One of them is the fact that, like Immanuel Kant, I have been interested in logic, which I had taught for many years and which I continue to teach. I strongly believe that ethics cannot be constructed inductively, starting from the observation of the specific behaviours of different people in particular circumstances, in order to obtain empirical generalizations. That is why I deny the possibility of a general ethical theory extracted from applied ethics; in other words, I simply cannot conceive of stating universal moral principles starting from the conclusions reached by medical ethics, bioethics, legal ethics or business ethics. On the contrary, these specific ethical theories imply the existence of a general ethical theory, that can be constructed only deductively. As an applied ethics, business ethics must start with a conceptual framework, used as a paradigm for the analysis and interpretation of particular cases collected from the business activities. I do not underestimate the significance and importance of case studies in business ethics, but I am convinced that they are useless or misleading in the absence of a conceptual framework that is needed for their understanding. There is much to be discussed from an ethical point of view when dealing with 'narrow business ethics' topics: customers, employees, shareholders or other associated businesses. But when it comes to 'broad business ethics' issues - state, society, environment or international business - the emphasis falls on case studies. At the general principles level, it is undisputable that a business must discharge its duties to the state; that a business must not harm the society; that it must not destroy the environment or that the exploitation of weak countries by the strong ones is morally wrong. There is nothing to be theoretically argued about here. The interesting part is how a certain business tried and succeeded or failed to put its activities in accordance with those generally accepted moral, as well as legal, rules. Consequently, in these matters the absence of valuable information about the Romanian companies might be a serious obstacle, as long as the experience of the big Western corporations is not yet relevant for our still developing capitalist economy.
These premises have driven me to the conclusion that, for the time being, the most important task of teaching business ethics to our students in economics is to make as clear as possible the fundamental principles of general ethical theories, and to analyse their applications in the most visible and controversial segments in our present economic life. I gave up the idea of dividing this book in parts, and I have decided to deal with only seven topics.
The first chapter, 'What for business ethics?', is intended to argue the necessity of this kind of approach, as a genuine useful instrument for decision taking in real business. Primarily I am concerned with making a clear distinction between law and morality; I also try to reject several challenges to business ethics, made by positivistic oriented views, by news and entertainment media - almost exclusively focused on scandals - or by ideological perspectives.
Chapter 2, 'Competition and cooperation', aims at pushing back the common-sense opinion that, in a free market economy, business activities are exclusively competitive. The target of my counterarguments is what I call 'narrow-minded egoism' - the view according to which business is a war, always won by those ones who act pitilessly, caring only of their own selfish interests. The philosophical ideas of Hobbes, as well as the points made by Game Theory support the so-called 'enlightened self-interest' - the view currently held by most business leaders and ethicists, who advocate the idea that 'good ethics is good business'.
Chapter 3, 'Moral norms and values', is the most theoretical. I try to explain the specificity of moral norms, that very often common sense confounds with other kinds of norms, such as legal regulations, religious commandments, traditional customs or technical instructions. My point is that moral conscience has several levels of development and, at its highest level - the only one to be properly called ethical - it works as an autonomous normative instance or as a universal self-legislator. The possibility of moral conscience as the source of such a universal self-legislation cannot be explained in any other way than analysing the ontological status of moral values.
Chapter 4, 'Morality and self-interest' is an attempt to move over the enlightened egoism as a ground of behaving morally in business activities. This chapter presents the main three lines of thought in contemporary ethics: virtue theory or neo-aristotelianism, utilitarianism, and duty theory or kantian deontological ethics. Each one of these ethical theories supports with specific arguments the responsibilities of business people towards themselves, as well as towards different kinds of 'stakeholders', involved in their activities.
Chapter 5, 'Business and customers', is the first attempt to apply the general concepts defined in the previous chapters on a specific topic, namely the responsibilities of businesses towards their clients. The chapter begins with the analysis of the current issues and controversies in the developed countries and finishes with a discussion of the present situation in our country. The main issues discussed in this chapter are connected with advertising, consumer safety and product liability.
Chapter 6, 'Business and employees', tackles a sensitive problem in this particular stage of our transition to free market economy: the moral responsibilities of employers (state or private owners) towards the employees, as well as the obligations of employees towards their employers. Our present situation is so different in comparison with the developed countries, that I have reversed the angle in this chapter: it begins with the analysis of the dramatic difficulties in the Romanian economy and finishes with an outlook on the rights and responsibilities of employers and employees in the Western capitalism.
Chapter 7, 'Business and shareholders' is a rather prospective inquiry, inspired by facts common in the developed countries, but only incipient in Romania, where shareholding and financial investment in the stock exchange are still esoteric activities, in which only a very small number of individuals or institutions are involved. We have, however, a lot of reasons to expect a quick spread of shareholding in the near future.
I am perfectly aware of the shortcomings of this first attempt to introduce business ethics in our curriculum for students in economics, but I thought that an incomplete and imperfect short introduction - the best I could do in a very short while - is better than a promise of a solid textbook that would have to wait a few years until being fully kept. These shortcomings would have been more serious without the efficient and generous help of dr. Onora O'Neill and Roger Crisp, already mentioned. I also must express my gratitude to Miss Freya Johnston, fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, who has been an exceptionally warm friend while my staying in Cambridge and who kept intact her friendship until now, sending me a lot of photocopied books and articles on moral philosophy and business ethics. This book would still have been a slowly moving project without the encouragement and moral support of my dear friend and Chief of Department, prof. univ. dr. Vasile Macoviciuc. Last but not least, I am pleased to express my love and gratitude for my family - Ileana, Irina and Yuky - who had the courage, kindness and patience that helped me to get over those hateful moments when I was about to give up.
Oxford - Bucharest Dan Craciun
February 11, 2003
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