Business Ethics and SENIOR

HIGH
Social Responsibility SCHOOL

Module
Philosophies Reflected into
Business Practices 12
Quarter 3

Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Business Ethics and Social Responsibility- Grade 12
Quarter 3 – Module 12:Philosophies Reflected into Business Practices
First Edition, 2020

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Business Ethics
and Social SENIOR
HIGH
Responsibility SCHOOL

Module

12
Quarter 3

Philosophies Reflected
into Business Practices
Introductory Message

For the Facilitator:

Welcome to the Senior High School – on Philosophies Reflected into Business

Practices!

This Self-Learning Module was collaboratively designed, developed and

reviewed by educators from the Schools Division Office of Pasig City headed by its
Officer-in-Charge Schools Division Superintendent, Ma. Evalou Concepcion A.
Agustin, in partnership with the City Government of Pasig through its mayor,
Honorable Victor Ma. Regis N. Sotto.The writers utilized the standards set by the K
to 12 Curriculum using the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELC)in
developing this instructional resource.

This learning material hopes to engage the learners in guided and

independent learning activities at their own pace and time. Further, this also aims
to help learners acquire the needed 21st-century skills especially the 5 Cs, namely:
Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Character while
taking into consideration their needs and circumstances.

In addition to the material in the main text, you will also see this box in the
body of the module:

Notes to the Teacher

This contains helpful tips or strategies
that will help you in guiding the learners.

As a facilitator, you are expected to orient the learners on how to use this
module. You also need to keep track of the learners' progress while allowing them
to manage their own learning. Moreover, you are expected to encourage and assist
the learners as they do the tasks included in the module.
 For the Learner:

Welcome to the Business Ethics and Social ResponsibilitySelf-Learning

Module on Philosophies Reflected into Business Practices!

This module was designed to provide you with fun and meaningful
opportunities for guided and independent learning at your own pace and time. You
will be enabled to process the contents of the learning material while being an
active learner.

This module has the following parts and corresponding icons:

Expectations – This points to the set of knowledge and skills

that you will learn after completing the module.

Pretest - This measures your prior knowledge about the lesson

at hand.

Recap - This part of the module provides a review of concepts

and skills that you already know about a previous lesson.

Lesson- This section discusses the topic in the module.

Activities - This is a set of activities that you need to perform.

Wrap-Up- This section summarizes the concepts and

application of the lesson.

Valuing- This part integrates a desirable moral value in the

lesson.

Posttest - This measures how much you have learned from the
entire module.
 EXPECTATIONS

After going through this module, you are expected to:

1. explain the implications of specific Greek philosophies for

business;
2. explain the importance of virtue ethics for business and;
3. describe why virtues matter in management and finance.

PRETEST

Directions: Choose the letter of the best answer. Write the answer on your
answer sheet.

1. How did Aristotle think virtue could be acquired?

A. it is horn
B. one must have a conversion experience in which one experiences
the good directly
C. virtue is acquired through education and training
D. it is impossible to become virtuous

2. How do virtuous people differ from vicious people?

A. in their behavior
B. in their thoughts
C. in their perception
D. all of the above

3. What do people seek above all else, according to Aristotle?

A. eudaimonia
B. ataraxia
C. pleasure
D. power

4. What is a tragic dilemma?

A. a situation in which one has two options, only one of which will
have a good outcome
B. a situation in which a good person's life will be ruined no matter
what she does
 C. a situation in which one must choose between self-interest and
morality
D. a situation in which it is impossible to behave morally

5. Which of the following is a statement of the priority problem?

A. virtue ethics wrongly defines duty in terms of virtue instead of vice
versa
B. a person can be virtuous without having all her priorities straight
C. the consequence of action sometimes have priority over one's
intentions
D. virtue ethics lacks a way of ranking the moral principle in terms of
importance

RECAP

Directions: Write the letter corresponding to the correct matched

description or definition of each item. Write the answer on your answer
sheet.

1. Eudaemonistic A. End
2. St. Thomas Aquinas B. Single principle of duty
3. Ethos C. End for human conduct
4. Kantian Ethics D. Character
5. Telos E. Prince of Scholastics

LESSON

What can business leaders learn from ancient Greek

philosophers?
Source: Aristotle teaching a young Alexander the Great. Photograph: Unknown/ Bettmann/CORBIS

Socrates: Dare to disagree

Socrates, one of the first philosophers, insisted on our right to think for
ourselves. Too often, he warned humans to sleepwalk through life simply
going along with the crowd. This is dangerous in questions of morality, and
particularly in corporate governance. When corruption is uncovered, too
often people say "everyone else was doing it". But our characters are our
responsibility. Socrates was prepared to die rather than go against his
conscience. Does your organization encourage independent thinkers and
people who follow their conscience? Does it allow people to give critical
feedback to managers? Does it create opportunities for good people to blow
the whistle on bad behavior?

Aristotle: Let people seek fullfilment

Aristotle was a great biologist as well as a great philosopher. He based his

ethics on a psychological theory of human nature, insisting that we are
naturally virtuous, rational, social, and happiness-seeking. Governments
and organizations need to build the best systems to let humans fulfill their
natural drives. His philosophy was an influence on Edward Deci and
Richard Ryan's Self-Determination Theory, which suggests that employees
will work harder for you, and perform better if you give them tasks they find
meaningful and morally worthwhile.

Humans want to believe in something and to serve it. Appeal to your

employees' best nature and they will answer that call. They will be more
motivated if you allow them the opportunity to feed their natural curiosity
through learning opportunities such as vocational training and learning
about the world, ideas, culture. Does your company have an evening or
lunch-time lecture series, such as Google Talks? Could it give credits for
evening adult learning classes, as companies such as Cadbury and Ford
once did?
Plutarch: Be a good role model

Plutarch, the ancient Greek historian, and educator, understood that

humans are incredibly social creatures, who constantly observe the people
around them and imitate them.

Unfortunately, people often grow up surrounded by bad role models.

However, we can steer people by providing them with better patterns to
imitate. That's what Plutarch tried to do with his famous work, Parallel
Lives, which offered biographical sketches of some of the great Greek and
Roman heroes – Cicero, Caesar, Alexander the Great, Pericles – to give
young people something to emulate.

In organizational terms, that means what you say to your employees

is less important than what you do. Instead, they will watch how you
behave, treat others, how you cope with pressure, whether you follow
through on your promises, and imitate you.

Set a good example and they will follow it. He would also warn that
your best young employees will use you as a bar to aim for and exceed.
That's natural. Let them compete with you and encourage them to go
further.

Epictetus: Build a resilient mind-set

Epictetus grew up a slave in Rome and then became a Stoic

philosopher. Both of these positions were incredibly precarious – slaves
could be abused or killed by their owners, while Stoic philosophers were
constantly falling foul of the imperial authorities (Epictetus himself was
eventually exiled). Epictetus coped with this insecurity by constantly
reminding himself what he could control and what he couldn't. We can
control our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes, but everything else is to some
extent out of our control – other people's perceptions and behavior, the
economy, the weather, the future, and the past. If you focus on what is
beyond your control and obsess over it, you will end up feeling helpless.

Focus on what you can control, and you will feel a measure of
autonomy even in chaotic situations. This insight is now part of the US
Army's $125m resilience training course which teaches soldiers the Stoic
lesson that even in adverse situations, they always have a choice on how do
react. Through resilient thinking, an organization and employees will be
more capable of reacting to crises even the environment is worsening or the
economy is double-dipping. Do what you can and on the practical steps to
improve the situation.

Rufus: Keep track of your ethical progress

Musonius Rufus is the Socrates of Rome, a Stoic who taught that

philosophy cannot just be theoretical. To be an ethical individual or an
ethical company, one must study ethics, practice it, daily to get into good
habits. The ancient Greek word for ethics is also a word for habit.
Keep track of your progress, to see how you're doing. To see if they are
improving, the ancient Greeks learned to keep accounts of themselves. They
track their daily behavior in journals, keeping account of how many times
they lost their temper, or got too drunk.

In an organization, keeping track of oneself means trying to take an

evidence-based assessment performance. You can’t say you’re a green
company without knowing your progress. We might say we're a eudaimonic
organization, but how do we know? It is by asking the employees how
worthwhile they feel about their job. Then see if, in a year, we have managed
to enhance their sense of purpose.

Epicurus: The art of happiness

Epicurus was a 4th-century Greek philosopher who taught that the

aim of life was simply to be as happy as possible on Earth before we dissolve
back into the atomic universe. He warned that humans are very bad at
being happy, and very good at inventing reasons to be miserable. Philosophy
should teach us how to be happy. It could teach us how to bring our
attention to the present moment, to savor it, and teach us to limit our
desires to what is easy to get, not inflating our needs with endless artificially
stimulated desires.

Today, some companies are embracing Epicurus' philosophy and

trying to teach their employees the art of happiness. Tony Hsieh, the CEO of
American shoe company Zappos, is so committed to the company's courses
in happiness that he sold the company to Amazon on the agreement it
would be able to continue with its unique happy culture.

Importance of Virtue Ethics for Business

The virtue approach to ethics emphasizes people’s character: an ethic

of virtues (and vices) focuses on the process of personal moral character
development. It stresses how the good habits or virtues inherent in a
person’s character give them the propensity to act in ways that promote the
human race to flourish. Thus, it has been proposed that managers consider
the virtues and vices of human character to analyze ethical behavior in their
organizations (Dawson & Bartholomew, 2003; Whetstone, 2001).

Virtue ethics—which takes the concept of character to be central to

the idea of being a good person in business—keep at bay the threat of
situational (external) determinism: it fills the void between institutional
behaviorism and an overblown emphasis on free will and personal
autonomy. While this proposition does not dispense with the reality that
persons do sometimes act “out of character” on the basis, perhaps, of
external environmental pressures, this position simultaneously calls for
sound ethical policies and rigorous ethical enforcement in corporations and
the business community. In other words, virtues are real because they
figure in causal explanations of behavior. For instance, seeing employees do
inclined to be responsible individuals. Furthermore, virtues, like other moral
states or properties, typically play a causal role in creating human well-
being, and not only that of the virtuous one (Solomon, 2003;
Hartman,1998).

Aristotle’s determines the investigation of purpose or end. Since the

purpose is the one guiding ideal upon which all intent, action, and outcomes
are seen to be evaluated and implemented, then we can proceed to inspect
those qualities that advance the purpose and specific practice of a given
institution. These are the virtues which underpin the pursuit of excellence
in the practices which persons partake, and these specific qualities result in
the simultaneous flourishing of individuals and
organization.(MacIntyre,1984;Crockett,2005).

Virtue ethics overcomes “moral schizophrenia” or the need to step out of

one’s role and wear say the Kantian hat if the agent prefers to solve the
moral dilemma from the deontological perspective, or the utilitarian hat if he
desires to take the teleological approach as it avoids focusing on rules
governing action and rather concerns the fundamental character and
motivations of an individual agent. In essence, since virtue ethics involves
the individual pursuing moral excellence as a goal in and of itself, ethics
becomes an objective rather than a constraint.

Having said this, one can enumerate the virtues of virtue ethics as follows
(Dobson, 1997; Whetstone, 2001; Koehn, 1995):
1. It is personal.
2. It focuses on the motivations of the actor and the sources of action,
bringing a dynamic to ethical understanding.
3. It is contextual, highlighting the importance of understanding the
environment as it affects both actor and his or her acts.
4. It complements other disciplines addressing human behavior
5. It focuses on the conformity between right thinking and desire.
6. It treats virtue as a manifest, perceptible feature of action.
7. It conceives of human activity as continuous.
8. It stresses the importance of individuals being able to make contributions
of value to society or communal enterprise.
9. It preserves a role for excellence and helps counter the leveling tendency
of deontological ethics.
10. It stresses that people become what they are within a community.

Why should Virtues Matter in Management and Finance

Managing ethical ways is not merely about avoiding bad outcomes.

There are many arguments for bringing ethics to bear on business decision-
making especially on the virtues and the qualities of the practitioner. The
attention to consequences or duty is focused on compliance. Rather, one
should consider whether an action is consistent with being a virtuous
person. This view argues that personal happiness flowed from being
virtuous and not merely from the comfort (utility) or observance (duty). It
acknowledges that vices are corrupting, whereas virtue leads to eudaimonia
or human flourishing (Bruner, Eades, and Schill, 2009)

Ethics literature has come to propose virtue theory which unites the
descriptive and the normative, yet insists upon doing so in the pursuit of a
purpose unlike that proposed by the other theoretical systems. It addresses
the question “What is the purpose of the business?” It provides a recipe by
which any organization can define its own purposeful.

The “virtue” in virtue ethics is defined as some desirable character

trait, such as courage, which lies between two extremes, such as in the case
of rashness and cowardice. Thus, the “virtuous agent” is involved in a
continual quest to find balance in decision-making. Such an agent does not
apply any specific rules in making decisions but rather attempts to make
decisions that are consistent with the pursuit of a particular kind of
excellence that, in turn, entails exercising sound moral judgment guided by
such virtues as courage, wisdom, temperance, fairness, integrity, and
consistency (Dobson, 1997)
 Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics categorizes virtues according to the
part of the human soul in which they inhere. He distinguishes between the
thinking-related or “intellectual” virtues and the character-related virtues.
about the latter, he discusses at length the following virtues, among others:
courage, moderation, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, amiability,
truthfulness, and justice (Pakaluk, 2005).

The virtue approach to ethics emphasizes people’s character: an ethic

of virtues (and vices) focuses on the process of personal moral character
development. It stresses how virtues inherent in a person’s character give
them the propensity to act in ways that promote the human race to flourish.
Thus, it has been proposed that managers add attention to virtues and vices
of human character as a full complement to moral reasoning according to a
deontological focus on obligations to act and a teleological focus on
consequences (Dawson and Bartholomew, 2003; Whetstone, 2001).

ACTIVITIES

Directions: Answer the following questions. Express your thoughts on this

matter in your answer sheet.

Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People asserts

that the individual value system rises out of ‘inside – out approach. Inside –
out means to start with self even more fundamentally to start with the most
inside part of self – with one’s paradigms one’s character and one’s motives.
For example, if one wants to be trusted by others then he has to be first
trustworthy. There is no other technique, fact, or strategy to get others to
trust you if you are not trustworthy. Covey says in his ‘inside – out’
approach that ‘private victories precede public victories – that keeping and
making promises to ourselves precede keeping promises to others.”

1. Do you agree with the statements of Stephen Covey?

2. Which virtues make up the solid character of a good businessman?
 WRAP-UP

- Would you defend virtue theory as a better framework for judging the
ethics of business? Why or Why not?

VALUING

- What relevance does virtual ethics have to business?

POSTTEST

Directions: Choose the letter of the best answer. Write the answer on your
answer sheet.

1. What notion should be at the heart of the ethical theory, according to

virtue ethics?
A. duty
B. intrinsic value
C. moral character
D. pleasure

2. What is the relationship between duty and virtue, according to virtue

ethics?
A. duty is defined as what a virtuous person would do
B. virtue is defined as a character trait that leads to doing our duty
C. the two concepts are independent of one another
D. if one does one's duty, virtue is unnecessary

3. What is a moral exemplar?

A. a nonabsolute moral rule
B. a person who serves as a role moral
C. a situation that illustrates are consequences of a moral principle
D. a person to whom the moral rules do not apply

4. Which of the following does virtue ethics have a time explaining

A. moral complexity
 B. moral education
C. the role of emotions in morality
D. how we can know who our role models should be

5. What does moral understanding require according to virtue ethics?

A. the application of absolute to particular cases
B. calculation about the effects of one’s actions
C. an exceptional amount of intelligence
D. emotional maturity
 KEY TO CORRECTION

References
Racelis, Aliza. Business Ethics and Social Responsibility. Manila: Rex Book
Store, 2017.

“What Can Business Leaders Learn from Ancient Philosophers?” The

Guardian. Guardian News and Media, May 4, 2012.
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/business-learn-
from-ancient-philosophers.