Moral Philosophies and Business Ethics
The exam treats moral philosophy as a working toolkit rather than a history lesson: you get a business decision and must say which normative theory supports it, what each theory demands, and where it breaks down. Expect definitional items on the major schools plus applied scenarios that reward following a theory through to a conclusion instead of reciting it.
Consequentialist theories
- Ethical egoism holds that an act is right when it best serves the agent's own long-term self-interest. It is a normative claim, not the descriptive claim that people happen to be selfish.
- Utilitarianism (Bentham, Mill) judges acts by total welfare: the greatest good for the greatest number. Act utilitarians evaluate each act separately; rule utilitarians ask which general rule produces the best consequences. Corporate cost-benefit analysis is a rough managerial analogue.
- Standard criticisms: consequences are hard to measure and to compare across persons; the theory can license sacrificing a minority; it discounts rights, intentions, and how benefits are distributed.
Non-consequentialist theories
- Kantian deontology: act only on maxims you could will as universal law, and never treat a person merely as a means. Motive and duty matter, not results.
- Rights theories (Locke and later human-rights frameworks) begin with entitlements others must respect.
- Justice theories: Rawls's veil of ignorance yields equal basic liberties plus the difference principle - inequalities are justified only if they benefit the least advantaged.
- Virtue ethics (Aristotle) asks what a person of practical wisdom and good character would do, emphasizing traits such as honesty, courage, and the golden mean between extremes.
- Ethics of care (Gilligan, Noddings) foregrounds relationships and responsiveness to vulnerability.
Relativism and moral development
Cultural relativism describes how norms vary; as a normative doctrine it says whatever a culture approves is right, which makes cross-cultural criticism impossible and is a standard exam trap. Kohlberg's stages run pre-conventional (punishment, self-interest), conventional (laws, social approval), and post-conventional (social contract, universal principles); Gilligan argued the sequence undervalues an ethic of care.
Worked example
A drug maker can ship a lifesaving medicine that will cause a rare fatal reaction in roughly 2 of 10,000 patients; full disclosure would delay approval and cost lives. A utilitarian weighs total benefits and harms - if net welfare is positive, release is right, though a rule utilitarian may prefer a disclosure rule because secret risks erode trust in medicine generally. A Kantian asks whether withholding information patients would need to consent treats them merely as means; it does, so disclosure is required regardless of the net figure. A virtue theorist asks what an honest, prudent executive would do. Saying "utilitarian" without naming which version, or "Kantian" without naming the formula, earns little credit.
Traps that cost marks
Equating egoism with cartoon selfishness; assuming Kant cares about outcomes; treating cultural relativism as equivalent to tolerance; mixing up act and rule utilitarianism; and reciting a theory's slogan without applying it to the facts given.