Ethical Theories In Human Rights Philosophy Essay

Ethical Theories In Human Rights Philosophy Essay key the currently influential profession and management theories. Ethics may be viewed as the study of human conduct with an emphasis on warnmination of full and wrong (Fraedrich and Ferrell, 1992). Together with this, it is the assumption that management moldiness(prenominal) adhere to a narrow version of positivism that excludes any reference to intention (Ghoshal, 2005). According to (M aloneor et al., 2010), for centuries, religious and secular scholars keep explored the meaning of human existence and attempted to define a good life. Ethical theories and principles atomic number 18 the foundations of honest analysis because they ar the viewpoints from which counseling can be obtained along the pathway to a decisiveness. The four honorable theories according to the text are rights theory, judge theory, utilitarianism, and profit dictumization.The rights theory covers a tend of ethical philosophies that holds that cert ain human rights are primary(prenominal) and must be respected by other society and her rights. Rights are too considered to be ethically correct and legitimate given that a large or ruling population endorses them. Few rights theorists are stringent deontologists, and one of the few is the 18th carbon philosopher by name Immanuel Kant and his theory is exhaust intercoursen as the Kantianism. Kant viewed humans as moral actors that are free to make choices and he also believed that humans are able to judge the morality of any action by applying his famous categorical imperative. One of his formulations of the categorical imperative is Act only on that maxim whereby at the same time you can leave that it shall become a universal law. The meaning of it is that we judge an action by applying it universally. The most important power of rights theory is that it protects fundamental rights, unless some greater right passs precedence. A major criticism of the rights theory deal wi th the near absolute yet relative pry of the rights protected, making it difficult to articulate and administer a comprehensive rights theory.The Justice theory which came into limelight by John Rawls in 1971 when he published his defend entitled A theory of Justice, the philosophical underpinning for the bureaucratic wel remotee state. He reasoned that it was right for governments to redistribute wealth in order to assist the short and the destitute. Further more(prenominal), Rawls expressed this philosophy in his Greatest Equal Liberty Principle individually person has an equal right to basic rights and liberties. He further express the principle with the Difference Principle fond inequalities are acceptable only if they cannot be eliminated without making the worst-off class even worse off. Rawlss justice theory has applications programme in the business context which requires determination makers to be guided by fairness and impartiality. The effectivity of Rawlss justic e theory lies in its basic premise, the protection of those who are least advantaged in society. The ethical dilemma for managers is to determine the fair rules and procedures for distributing outcomes to stakeholders. Managers must not give people they like bigger raises than they give to people they do not like, for example, or bend the rules to help their favorites. On the other hand, if employees want managers to act fairly toward them, then employees need to act fairly toward their companies and work thorny and be loyal. Similarly, customers need to act fairly toward a company if they expect it to be fair to them-something people who illegally copy digital media should consider. The criticism that justice theory with the rights theory is that it treats equality as an absolute, without examining the costs of producing equality, including reduced incentives for innovation, entrepreneurship and production.Utilitarianism entails a decision maker to maximize utility for society as a whole. maximise utility office achieving the highest level of satis factions over dissatisfactions which means that a person must consider the benefits and costs of her actions to everyone in society. A utilitarian will take action only if the benefits of the action to society outweigh the societal costs of the action. There are two types of utilitarianism, act utilitarianism and rule utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism judges each act separately, assessing a single acts benefit and its cost to societys members. Rule utilitarianism judges actions by a rule that over the long run maximizes benefits over cost. The strength of utilitarianism as a guide for ethical conduct is that it is easy to articulate the standard of conduct which coincides with cling tos of most modern countries like the USA who is capitalistic in temperament by focusing on total social satisfactions, benefits, wealth and welfare. In general under capitalism, the interests of shareholders are put above those of employees, so production will move abroad. This is generally regarded as being an ethical choice because in the long run, the alternative, domestic production might cause the business to collapse and go bankrupt. If this happens, all of the companys stakeholders will suffer-not just its employees. According to the utilitarian view, the decision that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people is best. In this case, that means outsourcing the jobs. The criticism of utilitarianism is that it is difficult to measure ones own pleasures, pains, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, let alone those of all of societys members.Profit maximization as an ethical theory requires a decision maker to maximize a businesss long-run profits within the limits of the law. This has been based on the laissez faire theory of capitalism first expressed by Adam metalworker in the 18th century and more recently promoted by economists such as Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell. Profit maximiz ation is closely related to utilitarianism, but it varies basically in how ethical decisions are made. Profit maximization optimizes total social utility by narrowing the actors focus, requiring the decision maker to make a decision that merely maximizes profits for himself or his organization. The strengths of profit maximization results in ethical conduct because it requires societys members to act within the constraints of the law and a profit maximizer, therefore, acts ethically by complying with societys mores as expressed in its laws. The criticism of profit maximizer is that if profit maximization results in an efficient allocation of societys resources and maximization of total social welfare, it does not equal itself with how wealth is allocated within Society.An ethical theory that was not found in the text is that of rationalism, which this ethical theory focuses mainly on norms. The moral rationalism is that in which the decisive factor of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive, and it has its major proponent in Emmanuel Kant (Llano, 2002). Mr. Kant attempted to change our everyday, clear, rational knowledge of morality into philosophical knowledge. He went after a technique of using practical reason to reach conclusions which are able to be useful to the public of experience. Kant is also known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation which he called the Categorical Imperative, and derived from the perception of duty. He further stated that these moral norms must be obeyed in all situations and circumstances if our fashion is to observe the moral law.In a way to improve corporate governance and corporate social responsibilities, according to Mallor et al., 2010, one can modify the corporate governance model to educate, motivate, and supervise executives and thereby improve corporate social responsibility. Corporate governance is the structure used to direct and manage business and affairs of the company towards enhancing prosperity and corporate accountability. Corporate critics however did propose a wide rang of cures, all of which sustain been implemented to some degree and with varying degrees of success.Ethical codes Ethic codes in a way have been adopted by many large societys and some(prenominal) industries to guide executives and other employees. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act required that a humankind company discloses whether it has adopted a code of ethics for senior financial officers, and to disclose any changes in the code or waiver of the codes application. The codes can be viewed in two ways one sees the codes as genuine efforts to foster ethical behavior within a firm or an industry while others view regards them as thinly disguised attempts to make the firm function better, to mislead the public into believing the firm behaves ethically, to prevent the passage of legislation that would impose stricter constraints on business, or to limit competition under the veil of ethical s tandards. Better ethical codes make clear that the corporation expects employees not to violate the law in a mistaken belief that loyalty to the corporation requires it. These kinds of codes work best, however, when a corporation also gives its employees an outlet for dealing with a superiors request to do an unethical act.Ethical instruction Some corporate organizations require their employees to enroll in classes that school ethical decision-making. The idea is that a manager trained in ethical conduct will recognize unethical actions before they are taken and deter herself and the corporation from the unethical acts. Majority of corporations in this present day express their dedication to ethical decision-making by an ethics officer who is not only creditworthy for ethical instruction, but also in charge of ethical supervision. The ethics officer tends to be a mentor or sounding board for all employees who face ethical issues.Greater Shareholder Role in Corporations As sharehold ers are the vital stakeholders in a corporation in a capitalist economy, several corporate critics argue that businesses should be more attuned to shareholders ethical values and that shareholder control of the board of directors and executives should be increased.Evidence suggests that sources of ethical dilemmas will track to increase. To understand this assessment, it will be useful to look at four categories of conditions influencing ethical behavior global, social, organizational and individual.Global A variety of global conditions impact our lives and our society many are well-known to all of us. They include the increasing influence of cultural values substantially different from those of our Anglo-Saxon heritage impacts of a complex global economy on local economic structures and our rapidly increasing technological capacity to communicate and interact with the global community. Within the historical few years we have watched the beginning of the development of a new worl d order that will be substantially different from our sense of world order developed over the last half century. Among the implications resulting from this picture, two are especially important (1) we as a people no longer have a secure sense of our role in the world or our control over it and (2) it has become increasingly acceptable, and even logical, to admit that we simply dont know what the appropriate response is. This era of rapid change has an indirect but important influence on our sense of ethical appropriateness.Social A more direct source of ethical conflicts is social change. Change has been so rapid that some have argued that we have lost our sense of values or that we must assay better mechanisms to resolve value conflicts. This line of reasoning is incorrect for several reasons. First, value conflicts (and, therefore, ethical dilemmas) reflect our social and cultural fabric. Second, stakeholders have a relatively easy time gaining access to our policy making system therefore, value conflicts are very visible and, frequently, cause our problem-solving exploit to forge slow, aching compromises. These processes continue to represent one of the great comparative advantages of our society and should not be changed without sober reflection.Organizational Thirdly, we are witnessing rapid change in the nature and role of the public organization and concepts about administrative behavior. Organizational values are vital influence on the majority of us thus far our organizational lives are becoming increasingly participatory, open, communicative and interactive. While I believe that the decline of organization hierarchy is among the more positive aspects of our society, it also signals a decline in another source of behavioral guidelines. Individual judgment, group dynamics and social interactions are replacing traditional rules of behavior dictated by the organization. We are also facing increasing conflicts between the bureaucratic ethos and the dem ocratic ethos (Hejka-Ekins, 1998). The bureaucratic ethos includes such traditional organizational standards as efficiency, competence, loyalty and accountability.Individual lastly, ethical anxieties are caused by changes at the individual level. In particular, individualism and materialism are at the present celebrated within major social institutions and have become a dominate ethos of the baby bust generation. Self-indulgence, greed, self-interest, and privatism are accepted components of the ethos of this generation (Frederickson, 1982).In order to improve the ethical climate of an organization, management must effectively communicate proper ethical behavior throughout the organization. Wimbush and Shephard (1984 637-647) reported that businesses annually spend an estimated $40 billion on the ethical behavior problems. Thus, pointing to the fact that ethical dimension of employees behavior has a clear impact on the profitability of the company. It is generally accepted that cust omer satisfaction is one of the most important factors in successful business strategy. Although a company must continue to develop, alter and adapt products to keep pace with customers changing desires and preferences. It must also seek to develop long-term relationships with customers and its stakeholders. By focusing on customer satisfaction, a company continually deepens the customers dependence on the company, and as the customers confidence grows, the firm gains a better understanding of how to serve the customer so the relationship may endure. Successful businesses provide an opportunity for customer feedback, which can engage the customer in a cooperative problem solving. As is often pointed out, a happy customer will come back, but a disgruntled customer will tell others about his or her dissatisfaction with a company and discourage friends from dealing with it. When an organization has a strong ethical environment, it usually focuses on the core value of placing customers interest first. An ethical culture that focuses on customers incorporates the interests of all employees, suppliers, and other interested parties in decisions and actions. Employees working in an ethical environment support and contribute to the process of understanding customers demands and concerns. Ethical conduct towards customers builds a strong competitive position that has been shown to affect business performance and product innovation positively.