Normative Ethical Theories

NORMATIVE ETHICAL THEORIES Objective †¢ Discuss the normative ethical theories L2: Normative Ethical Theories Beliefs about how people should behave can be classified into at least 2 major categories: Teleological theories (Consequentialism) Right actions are those that produce the most or optimize the consequences of one’s choices. Behaviour is ‘ethical’ if it results in desirable behaviour 1. 2. 3. 4. Ethical egoism Ethical elitism Ethical parochialism Ethical universalism Deontological theories (Duty and Rights) Duties are set down as rules which must be followed. Rights are behaviours that a person expects of others.Actions are intrinsically right or wrong regardless of the consequences which they produce. 1. Theological ethics 2. Rationalism 3. Social contract theory Ethical Egoism †¢ Based on the belief that people should act in a way that maximises the ‘good’ of the person making the decision. – For e. g. ethical egoists would not stop to help the victim of a road accident if that would make them late for a dinner reservation. They are not concerned with rules or accepted behaviour but behave in a way which is in their own interest. †¢ Hedonism: Ethical behaviour for hedonist would be that which gratifies a desire for pleasure and minimises pain.Ethical Egoism †¢ Adam Smith: – Advocated the pursuit of maximum self-interest. – Believed that such a policy pursued by individuals would lead to the maximisation of society’s interest. – An invisible hand restrained the individual from behaviour that would damage the interests of society. †¢ Milton’s Friedman’s Restricted Egoism: – â€Å"There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open nd free competition without decept ion or fraud†. – Suggests that the behaviour of individuals seeking to maximise their selfinterest should be constrained by the law and the conventions of competition and fair play. – Would not allow breaking the law or the violation of accepted codes of behaviour in pursuing self-interest. Ethical elitism †¢ Suggests that society is stratified and that ethical behaviour should maximise the interests of only the top stratum or the elite. Examples: – (a) Sending thousands of soldiers to their deaths in a battle would be ethical behaviour if it improved the general’s reputation, – (b) The dismissal of a ‘mere’ accounts clerk to protect the reputation of the accountant would be regarded as ethical behaviour by a society that subscribed ethical elitism. Ethical parochialism †¢ Assumes that ethical behaviour should protect the interest of the individual’s ‘in-group’. – The ‘in-group’ c ould be the individual’s family, friends, professional associates, religion, gender, etc. Ethical parochialism would regard lying to protect a family member as ethical behaviour. Similarly preferring as employees former students from the employer’s old school. Ethical universalism (John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism) †¢ Suggests that ethical behaviour should be concerned with the good of all people and that individuals are all of equal value. †¢ Any behaviour which pursues the interests of an individual at the expense of others would be unethical. †¢ Mill modified Bentham’s theory. Bentham argued that when individuals seek to maximise their utility, the community’s utility is also maximised.Mill’s greatest happiness principle meant that an individual should not act to maximise personal utility but the utility of the community as a whole. Ethical universalism (John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism) †¢ Moral principle of utilitarianism: Persons ought to act in a way that promotes the maximum net expectable utility, that is, the greatest net benefits or the lowest net costs, for the broadest community affection by their actions. †¢ An extreme example: This theory would accept an individual being killed to save the lives of many others.Although the individual who was killed suffered a considerable loss of utility, the increase in the utility of those who survived more than compensated for that loss. †¢ Mill’s utilitarianism is regarded as the most acceptable of the teleological theories – replaces blatant self-interest. Theological ethics †¢ Relies on religion, where rules must be followed as set down, as established by God. – It is God’s command that we should behave in certain ways. Conforming to God’s rules is ethical. – It provides a powerful set of duties for people. Strictest interpretation: requires compliance with God’s rules rega rdless of the circumstances or consequences. – However, faith or beliefs are not universal, with many different religions and varying degrees of faith with each religion and interpretation. Rationalism Immanuel Kant †¢ Sought a simple maxim based on a reason or rationality that would provide a rule for a general duty which would override all others. He suggested the categorical imperative as a universally valid ethical law, i. e. †¢ Act as if the principle from which you act were to become through your will a universal law of natureImmanuel Kant †¢ First Maxim Note: Categorical imperative – it is absolute and does not allow for any exceptions Maxim – is an implied general principle underlying a particular action. †¢ The categorical imperative is a philosophical formulation of the Christian Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. ’ Thus to decide whether a contemplated action is ethical, the categorical im perative must be applied to that action. For e. g. a person who is about to break a promise must ask, ‘Would I desire a law which says that everybody may break promises if they so choose? If the answer is ‘No’, then the proposed action is unethical. †¢ Act so that you treat humanity whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only Immanuel Kant Second Maxim †¢ People should not be ‘used’ to achieve an end no matter how worthy that end may appear to be. The end does not justify the means. †¢ Kant proposed that applying these maxims to every proposed behaviour would lead to ethical behaviour. †¢ Kant strongly implies that perfect duties are always obliged to be followed such as telling the truth or keeping a promise,William Ross’ Prima Facie Obligation †¢ Ross, in contrast to Kant, refused to accept these duties as absolute or prevailing without exception. †¢ Argues that th ey are prima facie duties which means that they are moral imperatives that should apply most of the time under normal circumstances. †¢ A prima facie obligation is a conditional one that can be superceded by a more important, higher obligation, usually under very exceptional circumstances. William Ross’ Prima Facie Obligation Ross’ Seven Basic Moral Duties on Moral Agents †¢ One ought to keep promises and tell the truth (fidelity). One ought to right the wrongs that one has inflicted on others (reparation). †¢ One ought to distribute goods justly (justice). †¢ One ought to improve the lot of others with respect to virtue, intelligence, and happiness (beneficence). †¢ One ought to improve the lot of others with respect to virtue and intelligence (self-improvement). †¢ One ought to exhibit gratitude when appropriate (gratitude). †¢ One ought to avoid injury to others (non-injury). Social contract theory †¢ Assumes that there is a s ocial contract between the individual and the state which requires both to perform certain duties and gives to both certain rights. A ‘social’ contract is an unwritten agreement based on custom and accepted without dissent. †¢ A failure to perform the duties implied by the social contract would be unethical behaviour. It suggests fairness and equality, and relies on cooperation. – For e. g. by observing the road rules, one surrenders certain personal liberties in the hope of receiving safe road-driving conditions in return. – Another e. g. : If society wishes to receive well organised and skilful professional services, it must be prepared to relinquish a certain degree of autonomy and grant professionals special privileges of autonomy and power in return.

Amusing Ourselves to Death Summary

Amusing Ourselves to Death Summary Neil Postman in his speech called â€Å"Amusing Ourselves to Death,† which he gave in the year of 1984, takes a point of view which explains how the American society is slowly trying to have entertainment over-take every aspect of their lives. He explains how America is losing its desire to read or explore education and informative literary sources. He says in his speech, â€Å"America is engaged in the world’s most ambitious experiment to accommodate itself to the technological distractions made possible by the electric plug. He states statistics that ninety-eight percent of all American homes have a television set and fifty-one percent have two or more television sets in 1984. He’s main point is that Americans use the television to provide entertainment to all aspects of their world. This includes the news, educational programs, and even religion. He says that, â€Å"television is transforming all serious public business int o junk. America is now forced with creating programs that will catch the attention of an audience that is used to having entertaining aspects in all forms of their life. In order to give a point of view or some other important information, television needs to present it in a way to keep the viewer interested. Neil Postman is afraid that America is starting to lose the ability to engage in discussions and lectures without an entertaining aspect in it. He says, â€Å"America is the world’s first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death. †

Bus 475 Week 3 Learning Team: Functional Area Interrelationships

Functional Area Interrelationships October 29, 2012 BUS/475 University of Phoenix Abstract Huffman Trucking is a trucking company that was established in 1936. Throughout this paper, we will discuss the company’s mission and vision statement. It will also identify the type of organizational structure and how each of those roles supports the company’s goals. The collaboration process among the functional areas must also be established to support the goals.Finally, the stakeholders will be reviewed and how the company plans to protect them and how their communication is vital to the success of Huffman Trucking. â€Å"Huffman Trucking started in 1936 in Cleveland, OH. By 1945, the company had increased in size to 16 tractors and 36 trailers. † (Virtual Organization) Today Huffman trucking is one of the largest trucking companies in the United States. The company has four locations across the U. S. ; Cleveland, OH, Los Angeles, CA, St. Louis, MO, and Bayonne, NJ.The company has created a core foundation to continue to grow the company and sustain financial stability. Since the inception of the organization in 1936, Huffman trucking has grown their fleet of tractor-trailers from one to over 800 tractors, 2,100 45 foot trailers, and 260 roll on/ roll off units. Huffman trucking also employees 925 drivers and 425 technical support staff members, which is based from the increase in business that they have seen over the years from their acquisitions of five other freight companies.The mission of Huffman trucking is â€Å"to be a profitable, growing, adaptive company in an intensively competitive logistical services business environment†. Huffman Trucking according to the mission statement wants to be a competitive company within the logistics industry, and they also want to maintain the growth and profitability that they have experienced over the years. The vision statement of Huffman Trucking is â€Å"to be a model company to our stockholde rs, employees, customers, and all stakeholders†.Through the vision statement that Huffman Trucking has put into place at their organization they want to be a company that does right by all the people that are investors in the company, as well as, the employees and customers that are also valued by the organization. In analyzing the mission and vision statements of the company, Huffman Trucking existence is to maintain their market share in the logistics industry by treating the customer, employees, stock, and stakeholders with the upmost respect and consideration.The reason that Huffman Trucking uses the business structure that they have is to maintain the solid structure of the employment, and maintain the growth of the business in the industry of logistics. Huffman Trucking is a company that prides themselves on the idea that taking care of the employees will help the employees will take care of the customers, and the revenues from the customers will help the business and th e stock and stakeholders maintain their edge. Huffman Trucking is a leader in the industry of logistics, and is one of the larger corporations that are in operation.The contracts that Huffman Trucking has are strong stable contracts that will help the vision and mission of the company to be successful in the completion and achievement of the goals that they set for the organization. Huffman Trucking has a strong foundation and the future of the organization is solid with the contracts that are in place from years to come. The services that Huffman Trucking offers to its customers are services that can help the growth of the business, and to maintain the competitive edge that Huffman Trucking has over its competition.Huffman Trucking is a privately held United States based company. Huffman Trucking’s Mission Statement is â€Å"to be a profitable, growing, adaptive company in an intensively competitive logistical services business environment†(Huffman Trucking, 2012). Hu ffman’s Trucking Vision Statement is â€Å"to be a model company to our stockholders, employees, customers and all stakeholders† (Huffman Trucking, 2012). Huffman trucking has implemented the following steps of the collaboration process that must be employed to achieve organizational goals.The action plan to implement the collaboration process is to create an important objective, build, sustain, or enhance a core competence or competitive advantage, important new market opportunities as well as mitigate significant risk to the trucking business. Facilitating the close cross-company by merger and acquisition strategies play a part in Huffman trucking. Expanding the company’s geographic coverage and independently developing whatever resources and know-how were needed to be successful was imperative. Huffman Trucking has facilities in four major cities in the United States, Cleveland, OH, Los Angeles, CA, St.Louis, MO, and Bayonne, NJ. In order for Huffman Trucking to be a successful business there had to be several things put into place. The mission of the company is to be a profitable, growing, adaptive company in an intensively competitive logistical services business environment. The vision of Huffman Trucking is to be a model company to our stockholders, employees, customers and all stakeholders. In order for Huffman Trucking to be able to achieve the mission and reach the vision for the company there had to be the use of collaborations within. Such collaborations would include lateral and vertical collaborations.Lateral collaboration is where a group of people with the same ranking work together to accomplish a task. An example of lateral collaboration would be if two or more of the floor employees work together to try and come up with a way to increase production. A vertical collaboration would occur when a person of higher rank works with a person of lower rank to accomplish a goal. The CEO of the company working with a floor shift ma nager to try to increase production would be an example of vertical collaboration. Looking on the service request page, there has been many requests for service made by different people.One request that was made was made by the CIO for a Windows server upgrade for all the network locations. The expected goal of this server upgrade is to provide a migration path from the current network to one running Windows Server 2008. An action plan will be put together in order to accomplish this goal. Vertical collaboration will be used as the CIO works together with the IT department in order to accomplish the task of upgrading the server. They will work together to make sure that the server upgrade allows Huffman Trucking to do everything that it needs to be successful such as the right domain model and network dministration for all sites. An action plan will then be put into effect for lateral collaboration. This will allow the front line staff to develop ways that the upgraded server can he lp them. Examples of that would be that Administrative control of domain controllers can be decentralized if needed and allows the drivers to have access to at least one computer at each site. Huffman Trucking takes great pride in their company not only for their employees and customers but also for their stakeholders.They have developed a mission statement for their stakeholders; â€Å"We will maintain continuous awareness of our stakeholders and apply the test of reasonableness to assure our business practices are commensurate with stakeholder expectations. † (Virtual Organization) By identify awareness to the stakeholders, they will want to continue to invest in Huffman Trucking. Some of the stakeholders include; President/CEO, VP of Transportation, VP of Equipment, VP of Real Estate, VP of Terminal Operations, VP of Sales, Shareholders and all employees.The collaborative interaction between the Huffman Trucking Executive Management is critical to the success of the busine ss. They are the making the deciding factors for each category that they are over. At the end of the day, each VP relies on another VP in order to proceed with their decisions. The management team must work together in order to ensure that Huffman Trucking and the Stakeholders are happy and successful. At the end of the day, if the stakeholders do no collaborate together all of them will lose out. Huffman Trucking has created a company that continues to grow and build upon their success year after year.By staying true to their mission and vision statement the company will be able to open up more locations in the United States. Huffman trucking has a clear strategic plan that allows them to have a strong internal and vertical collaboration. By keeping their focus and foundation alive to their shareholders, stakeholders, employees, and customers Huffman Trucking will continue to be a leading trucking company. References Virtual Organization Portal. (2012) Huffman Trucking. Retrieved o n October 29, 2012 from http://ecampus. phoenix. edu

Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 15

Art - Essay Example The roofs of churches were vaulted and supported by thick stone walls, rounded arches and massive pillars. The creation of large churches during the Romanesque period was propagated by the strong devotion to Christianity and the church. There was a common belief among the Christians that the world was going to end a thousand years after Christ’s birth. This made people to have more commitment and devotion to church and so the churches had to be increased in size so that they could accommodate the large masses. The increase in size was also caused by political and cultural reasons. Flying buttresses is a masonry structure which typically consists of an inclined bar on an arch that extends from the top part of the wall to the pier which is some distance from the wall. Its main function is to carry the thrust of the vault. The pier is often crowned by a pinnacle which adds weight and enhances stability. The buttresses evolved during the gothic era as they allowed the building of high ceilinged churches (Kleiner 267). This changed the Notre-dame in Paris church architecture in general; it made the churches to have high vaults as they were strongly supported by the buttresses and pinnacles. They made churches to be bigger with high

How changes in purchasing of video games influenced on UK students Coursework

How changes in purchasing of video games influenced on UK students - Coursework Example Piracy affects most media related industries but the computer game industry is seemingly more affected prompting an evaluation of measures employed by game makers to prevent piracy. A research survey conducted by Internet’s Advertising Bureau (IAB) revealed that almost half of UK, population play video games on an IP connected device (Davies, 2011). This implies that there are high numbers of people participating in video games hence increasing the market potential. However, despite this increased demand, profit margins in the computer games industry are relatively low. The research by Davies reveals that there is little advertising on video games by the producers. Effective advertising makes sense of the set price of a product thereby prompting people to buy without paying much consideration to the price. According to Park and Lee, gamers are bound to purchase items they find to be valuable (2011). This implies that creation of value through advertising may increase chances of purchasing video games rather than depending on free downloads. Additionally, game publishers and developers are seemingly adamant to pursue legal frameworks to curb piracy. This is in comparison to other media related industries such as recording and movie industries (Holm). This reduced indulgence in legal frameworks may contribute to increased engagement in piracy activities. According to Liang and Phau, moral judgment and self-efficacy have little impact on engagement in piracy activities. Furthermore, Liang and Phau argue that campaigns creating awareness of the implications of piracy may reduce piracy rates (2012). However, it is also important to pay attention to the set prices for video games to reduce free download preference. According to Cox, this may be done by targeting the purchasing power parity to ensure that the price range is balanced across the globe

Hazardous Waste and International Environmental Policy Essay

Hazardous Waste and International Environmental Policy - Essay Example Large amounts of the world’s harmful wastes generated by the world’s industrialized market economies are exported to less developed countries in Asia and Africa. The big question here is; how can domestic policy address the issue of e-waste? Are there ratifications put in place to stop this menace? This paper focuses on the possibility of the enacted legislations to stop hazardous waste disposals in developing countries. As a matter of fact, the non developed countries remain vulnerable to disposal of the hazardous e-waste since they lack a ratified policy to stop dumping of wastes in their land. As this disposal continues human health is at a great risk of it being compromised. The issue of health has raised attention compelling developing states to enact laws and regulations governing e-waste disposal. This is a positive trend that puts into check waste disposal. It is however worth noting that the regulations formulated only apply to the states in question and does n ot touch on the exporting countries where the waste originates from in fact some key producers of e-waste are reluctant to ratification plans designed to reduce these wastes. The result of lack of law enforcement on e-waste in poor and developing countries pose a major danger to human health and its environment. Poor countries need to come up with domestic policies that does not only govern internal waste disposal but also imported e-waste. In addition, poor countries need to unite and formulate an international policy that will govern importation of e-waste from developed countries. At individual level, people should learn basic concepts of recycling as this will reduce intoxication of lands and its resources. However, this may not completely stop e-waste disposal. It is further complicated because of the large volumes of wastes produced caused by the ever changing

Evolution of the problem Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Evolution of the problem - Case Study Example This attitude towards life and its happenings makes these people believe in the power of fate and in the notion that whatever has to happen will happen and every person is entitled to get a share of what is destined for him. As it is, people of LDCs are comparatively less advanced and aware of the recent developments in the field of disaster management. Therefore, many times human intelligence has been successful in developing a way of minimizing the outcomes of what the LDCs feel are products of fate (Hoffmann, 2005). Negligence: Sometimes the issue of Disaster Management is conveniently neglected, due to the perceived importance of the issue as compared to some pressing concerns such as poverty and education. This negligence is reflected in the lack of political will to support the inclusion of disaster management in the government’s policies (Hoffmann, 2005). Sometimes the government officials realize the need for proper disaster management policies, as was the case in Zimb abwe. However, by the time the policies come down to the implementation phase which the relevant sector ministries and local administrations are responsible for, all the vigor of the policy formation phase dies down (Marjanovic, 2003).