CHAPTER 1:

ETHICS AND
BUSINESS(Continuation)
JOMARY S. MANGUIAT, LPT
 OBJECTIVES

4 Distinguish ethical norms and values from

other business-related norms

5 responsibilities
Distinguish legal responsibilities from ethical

6 legal compliance
Explain why ethical responsibilities go beyond

7 practical reasoning.
Describe ethical decision making as a form of
4 Distinguish ethical norms and
values from other business-
related norms
NORM – a principle of right action binding upon the
members of group and serving to guide, control, or
regulate proper and acceptable behavior (Merriam-
Webster
VALUESDictionary)
– a person’s principles or standards of
behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life
(Google). It is also the underlying beliefs that cause
us to act or to decide one way rather than another.
4 Distinguish ethical norms and
values from other business-
related norms
• You make
decision to
spend your
money on
groceries rather
than on a
vacation because
you value food
4 Distinguish ethical norms and
values from other business-
related norms
• Many different types of values can be recognized:
financial, religious, legal, historical,
nutritional, political, scientific, and
aesthetic.
• Talk of a corporation’s “culture” is a way of saying
that a corporation has a set of identifiable values
that establish the expectations for what is
“normal” within that firm.
• However, individual’s or a corporation’s set of
 4 Distinguish ethical norms and
values from other business-
related norms
• Different types of values are distinguished by the
various ends served by acts and choices.

“ How are ethical values to be distinguished from these

types of values?”
“What ends do ethics serve?”
4 Distinguish ethical norms and
values from other business-
related norms
Elements of Ethical Values
1.Ethical values serve the ends of
human well-being. Acts and decisions
that seek to promote human welfare
are acts and decisions based on
ethical values.
4 Distinguish ethical norms and
values from other business-
related norms
2. The well-being promoted by ethical values is
not a personal and selfish well being. From the
perspective of ethics, no one person’s welfare
is more worthy than any other’s.
Ethical vales are those beliefs and
principles that impartially promote
human well being.
5 Distinguish legal responsibilities
from ethical responsibilities
• Legal norms and ethical norms are not identical,
nor do they always agree.
• Some ethical requirements, such as treating one’s
employees with respect, are not legally required,
though may be ethically warranted.
• Conversely, some actions that may be legally
permitted such as firing an employee for no
reason, would fail many ethical standards.
5 Distinguish legal responsibilities
from ethical responsibilities
• Individual businesses may decide to go beyond the
legal minimum, such as when a business supports
the local arts, but these choices are voluntary.
• Ethics requires obedience to the law; anything
beyond that is a matter of corporate philanthropy
and charity, something praiseworthy and allowed,
but not required.
5 Distinguish legal responsibilities
from ethical responsibilities
• Many corporations have established ethics
programs and hired ethics officers.
• Ethics officers do a great deal of good and
effective work; but it is fair to say that much of
their work focuses on compliance issues.
• The Sarbanes-Oxley Act created a dramatic and
vast new layer of legal compliance issues.
5 Distinguish legal responsibilities
from ethical responsibilities

“ Is compliance with the law

all that is required to behave
ethically?”
“”No.”
 5 Distinguish legal responsibilities from ethical
responsibilities
REASONS WHY LEGAL COMPLIANCE IS
INSUFFICIENT TO ETHICS
1. Holding that obedience to the law is sufficient to fulfill one’s ethical
duties begs the question of whether the law, itself, is ethical.
2. Societies that value individual freedom will be reluctant to legally
require more than just an ethical minimum.
3. Telling business that its ethical responsibilities end with obedience to
the law is just inviting more legal regulation.
4. The law cannot possible anticipate every new dilemma that businesses
might face; so, often, there may not be a regulation for the particular
dilemma that confronts a business leader.
5. The perspective that compliance is enough relies on a misleading
understanding of law.
6 Explain why ethical
responsibilities go beyond legal
• Americans with Disabilities compliance
Act (ADA) – a law that requires employers to
make reasonable accommodations for employees with disabilities.

“What counts as a disability and what would be

considered a reasonable accommodation?”
Over the years, claims have been made that relevant
disabilities include obesity, depression, dyslexia,
arthritis, hearing loss, high blood pressure, facial scars,
and the fear of heights.
6 Explain why ethical
responsibilities go beyond legal
compliance
• Imagine that you are a corporate human resource
manager and an employee asks you to reasonably
accommodate his allergy. How would decide
whether allergies constitute a disability under the
ADA?
• The legal answer remains ambiguous. There will
always be some differences among cases.
6 Explain why ethical
responsibilities go beyond legal
compliance
• In civil law there is a real sense that one has not
done anything illegal unless and until a court
decides that one has violated a law.
• Even those business people who are committed to
strictly obeying the law will be confronted on a
regular basis by the fundamental ethical
questions: What should I do? How should I live?
7 Describe ethical decision
making as a form of practical
reasoning.
• Ethics is a vital element of practical
reasoning – reasoning about what we
should do – and is distinguished from
theoretical reasoning, which is reasoning
about what we should believe.
7 Describe ethical decision
making as a form of practical
reasoning.
• Theoretical reason is the pursuit of truth, which
is the highest standard for what we should
believe. According to this tradition, science is the
great arbiter of truth.
• Thus, scientific method can be thought of as the
answer to the fundamental questions of
theoretical reason: What should we believe?
7 Describe ethical decision
making as a form of practical
reasoning.
“Is there a comparable methodology or
procedure for deciding what we should do
and how we should act?”
There is no single methodology that can in
every situation provide one clear and
unequivocal answer. to this question.
“If moral behavior were simply
following rules, we could
program a computer to be
moral.”
Samuel P. Ginder