Abstract
Ethics will not become part of the management decision-making process until it ceases to be viewed as an ‘add-on’; first you decide, then you assess the decision ethically. This essay focuses on one ethical concept, the good or the valuable, and shows how to incorporate it in an ethically and economically effective decision process. We focus on this concept because it uncovers a key fault in strategic thinking and generates questions central to any complex decision.
The concept of the valuable is used to distinguish goals and purposes. A goal is a more or less specific target toward which one aims. A purpose is a way of being or functioning viewed as valuable in itself.
Purposes make values operational. We look at values through a set of questions derived from the concept of the valuable. One question probes the range of individuals relevant to a decision. Participatory and dialectical decision approaches are critiqued. A second question probes the standards of rationality implicit in management decisions.
We conclude by responding to two objections. The first is that justice in decision-making is insufficiently considered. The second is that there is little reason to think that the proposals made here would work if implemented.
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Mark Pastin is Director of the Center for Private and Public Sector Ethics and Professor of Philosophy, Business, and Public Affairs at Arizona State University. He was formerly Associate Professor of Philosophy, Indiana University, and had visiting appointments at Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland. He has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and Research Fellow of the Center for Metropolitan Research of John Hopkins University. His most important publications are: ‘Strategic Planning for Science’, The Research System in the 1980s, ed. by John Logsdon (Franklin Institute Press, 1982), ‘Ethics and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act’, Business Horizons (December 1980), ‘The Multi-Perspectival Theory of Knowlegde’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy: Volume V (University of Minnesota Press, 1980), and ‘Meaning and Perception’, Journal of Philosophy (October 1976).
This began as a joint project with H. J. Zoffer of the University of Pittsburgh. We both were promoting the idea of integrating ethics in management decision-making, but were embarrassed that we had little to say about how to proceed. So we picked the ethical concept of the good and set to work. This final product is my responsibility, but it certainly profited from Zoffer's efforts. This paper was presented at the 16th Conference on Value Inquiry, entitled: ‘Ethics and the Market Place: An Exercise in Bridge-Building or On the Slopes of the Interface’.
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Pastin, M. Ethics as an integrating force in management. J Bus Ethics 3, 293–304 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00381752
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00381752