Business Ethics
Lecture# 4
Handout
Moral Developments and Moral Reasoning
This section investigates how we examine our own moral standards and apply
them to concrete situations and issues. It first looks at the process of moral
development itself.
We sometimes assume that a person's values are formed during childhood and
do not change. In fact, a great deal of psychological research, as well as one's
own personal experience, demonstrates that as people mature, they change their
values in very deep and profound ways. Just as people's physical, emotional,
and cognitive abilities develop as they age, so also their ability to deal with moral
issues develops as they move through their lives.
Moral Reasoning & Kohlbergs’ Resaech
Lawrence Kohlberg identified six stages of moral development:
Level One: Pre-conventional Stages
1. Punishment and Obedience Orientation - At this stage, the physical
consequences of an act wholly determine the goodness or badness of that
act. The child's reasons for doing the right thing are to avoid punishment
or defer to the superior physical power of authorities. There is little
awareness that others have needs similar to one’s own.
2. Instrument and Relativity Orientation- At this stage, right actions become
those that can serve as instruments for satisfying the child’s own needs or
the needs of those for whom the child cares.
At these first two stages, the child is able to respond to rules and social
expectations and can apply the labels good, bad, right, and wrong. These rules,
however, are seen as something externally imposed on the self. Right and wrong
are interpreted in terms of the pleasant or painful consequences of actions or in
terms of the physical power of those who set the rules.
Level Two: Conventional Stages
Maintaining the expectations of one's own family, peer group, or nation is now
seen as valuable in its own right, regardless of the consequences.
1. Interpersonal Concordance Orientation - Good behavior at this early
conventional stage is living to the expectations of those for whom one
feels loyalty, affection, and trust, such as family and friends. Right action is
conformity to what is generally expected in one's role as a good son,
daughter, brother, friend, and so on.
2. Law and Order Orientation - Right and wrong at this more mature
conventional stage now come to be determined by loyalty to one's own
larger nation or surrounding society. Laws are to be upheld except where
they conflict with other fixed social duties.
Level Three: Post-conventional, Autonomous, or Principled Stages
1. Social Contract Orientation - At this first post-conventional stage, the
person becomes aware that people hold a variety of conflicting personal
views and opinions and emphasizes fair ways of reaching consensus by
agreement, contract, and due process.
2. Universal Ethical Principles Orientation - At this final stage, right action
comes to be defined in terms of moral principles chosen because of their
logical comprehensiveness, universality, and consistency.
At these stages, the person no longer simply accepts the values and norms of
the groups to which he or she belongs. Instead, the person now tries to see
situations from a point of view that impartially takes everyone's interests into
account. The person questions the laws and values that society has adopted and
redefines them in terms of self-chosen moral principles that can be justified in
rational terms.
Kohlberg's own research found that many people remain stuck at an early stage
of moral development. His structure implies that later stages are better than the
earlier ones. Kohlberg has been criticized for this implication, and for not offering
any argument to back it up.
Carol Gilligan, a feminist psychologist, has also criticized Kohlberg's theory on
the grounds that it describes male and not female patterns of moral development.
Gilligan claims that there is a "female" approach to moral issues that Kohlberg
ignores.
Both Gilligan and Kohlberg agree that there are stages of growth in moral
development, moving from a focus on the self through conventional stages and
onto a mature stage where we critically and reflectively examine the adequacy of
our moral standards. Therefore, one of the central aims of ethics is the
stimulation of this moral development by discussing, analyzing, and criticizing the
moral reasoning that we and others do, finding one set of principles "better" when
it has been examined and found to have better and stronger reasons supporting
it.
