What is Ethics?

The following example essay on “What is Ethics?” talk about the doctrine of morality, the system of rules that control and correct people’s behavior, the way to evaluate human actions, their approval or condemnation,
regulator of behavior and relationships between people.

Then, we decided to search for its objective definition in the internet. Ethics by definition is the set of Moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity (Ethics: Definition of Ethics by Lexico.

(n.d.). Retrieved from However, that is just one of hundreds of definitions this word has. We believe there is no such thing as an objective and rational answer to this question.

In our point of view, and without discrediting any other definition (because we really think there are plenty of them), Ethics is the guideline which helps us to behave on our society, depending on the culture where we live in. Ethics defines what is right or wrong and it is the answer to the question: What shall I do?.

That is why Ethics is so important to the Business field, as it is the main conducting mean for making decisions and supporting them with strong and rational arguments. Obviously, those decisions may not be the same as someone elses decision, but what is the point of saying that it is not correct, just because it is different from what we would do? Ethical theories helped us to solve that problem.

Ethical theories are the rules and principles that determine right and wrong for a given situation (Crane, A.

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, & Matten, D. (2010). Business ethics: managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.). There are two major kinds of ethical theories: firstly, those based on absolutism, which defend there are moral objective principles that stay valid no matter time or place and secondly, theories based on relativism, which claim that actions cannot be universally named right or wrong, because it depends on the cultural context.

Even though traditional western modernist ethical theories have always studied this subject from an absolutist point of view, recent and contemporary ethical theories tend to be relativistic (but not always). In addition, in order to support part of both theories and to make more effective decisions, there is pluralism, a “middle ground between absolutism and relativism (Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2010). Business ethics: managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.).

In our opinion, the most appropriate ideal is pluralism, since we think that there are actual principles that remain the same and are still applicable, no matter how many years go by. That is the case of the moral rule Do unto others as you have them do unto you, for example. In contrast, there are a lot of situations when we cant simply say that an action is wrong because of a certain rule. We agree that discussing other countries habits, traditions, religions, doesnt make sense, because it is not the environment that we are used to live in and, in our point of view, we are being ignorant if we think that our way of living is the only one which is correct.

As explained in the course book, Western modernist ethical theories can be divided in two. On the first hand, consequentialist theories consider that the ethical dimension of our decisions is based on the consequences. As an illustration, we have Utilitarianism, which has the greatest happiness principle and the utility based thinking as its main supports. These principles tell us that an action is morally correct if it causes the greatest welfare possible to a person or to an amount of people. To put it in another way, we are going to use a similar example to the one we discussed in the lecture (the trains case).

If there was a bank robbery with a hostage situation, it would be better if there were 10 hostages (first option) rather than 20 (second option), since we were maximizing the welfare to as many people as possible. However, if I knew that my brother was one of the hostages in the first option, I would probably prefer to put more people in danger and choose the second option, because that would protect my brother and make me happy. This is to say that utility is the ultimate goal in life: we were born with the natural will to maximize utility and that leads us to happiness.

On the other hand, we have non-consequentialist theories that are based on the motivation and the underlying principles used to make a decision. Deontology is one of them and it is known as rule based ethics due to the focus on an unconditional duty that embraces all human beings and that they take as objective and universal. For instance, we all know that killing is a wrong and an unethical action because we are taught since our childhood that You should not kill, which is a moral rule that everyone expects us to obey.

Over the years, new alternative theories unlike Western Modernist ideals have appeared, such as Virtue Ethics. This theory says that good actions come from good people (Crane, A., & Matten, D. (2010). Business ethics: managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.), so becoming a virtuous person is the key to make morally correct actions. Being a virtuous person includes not only intellectual virtues like wisdom, but also moral virtues such as loyalty and generosity. But where do we get those virtues? This theory states that we get them by living in a community and learning about our relationships (MacIntyre, 1984).

Being that social and interacting with others make us happy, and thats essential since happiness is one of the original proponents of Virtue Ethics (Aristotle). Following this theorys ideals, having a good life is not just about making money, but also the feelings, emotions and relations that make us achieve our goals and success. We can confirm that by looking to the business life, where being a profitable company is not enough, as the relations with co-workers and the work environment are also essential (J. Collier, 1995).

As we can see, this theory has a theological point of view, since it pays attention to the goals of life and how we reach them. To demonstrate this idea, we will use an example (Ethical Dilemma 3) given in the course book: A man works in a chocolate company and he is travelling to Thailand to get a better production deal. One day, as agreed, he is going to see the producers conditions and thats when he realizes that the plastic toys which are part of the final product, are produced by young children in their homes. Would we do something to change this? What would we do? After discussing this, we realized that our first desire would definitely be paying those children studies due to the fact that we believe education is one of the best things in life and that it is a worthy investment to make, which would probably make them happy.

At the same time, we came to the conclusion that maybe it wasnt the right decision to make, because we have to put ourselves in this children position: in their country, in their culture and in their tradition. Probably we would let them keep working with their family in their home, because maybe they were lucky and they were working in better conditions than many other children in Thailand. Maybe they were really happy. After all, being happy is the biggest goal we all can achieve in our lives, but it is important to notice that the concept of happiness varies depending on where we are- right or wrong is context-dependent: culture and tradition are the key.