Glossary 2
Stakeholder analysis
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Business Ethics - The study of proper business policies and practices
regarding potentially controversial issues, such as corporate governance,
insider trading, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility, and
fiduciary responsibilities.
Code of Ethics - The mission and values of the business or organization,
how professionals are supposed to approach problems, the ethical
principles based on the organization's core values, and the standards to
which the professional is held.
Consequentialism - The class of normative ethical theories holding that the
consequences of one's conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment
about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.
Corporate Citizenship - A recognition that a business, corporation or
business-like organization, has social, cultural, and environmental
responsibilities to the community in which it seeks a license to operate, as
well as economic and financial ones to its shareholders or immediate
stakeholders.
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Corporate Responsibility - Corporations have responsibilities to those
groups and individuals that they can affect, i.e., its stakeholders and to
society at large. Stakeholders are usually defined as customers, suppliers,
employees, communities and shareholders, or other financiers.
Cultural relativism -The principle of regarding the beliefs, values, and
practices of a culture from the viewpoint of that culture itself.
Corporate Social Responsibility - A management concept whereby
companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business
operations and interactions with their stakeholders.
Decision framework - A framework to make ethical decisions utilizing the
following steps: recognize an ethical issue, get the facts, evaluate alternative
actions, analyze what values or principles are at stake, make a decision and
test it, and finally act and reflect on the outcome.
Deontology - An ethical theory that the morality of an action should be
based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules
that could apply to everyone, rather than based on the consequences of the
action.
Desert - A principle of distributive justice in which benefits are given to
those who have earned or deserved it. For example, the best employee or
manager, the Olympic award in sports, the bravest military person, a political
exemplar.
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Distributive Justice - The nature of a socially just allocation of goods in a
society. A society in which incidental inequalities in outcome do not arise
would be considered a society guided by the principles of distributive
justice.
“Do the right thing” - To do what is ethical or just according to some
principle, rather than whether or not the action will produce positive
consequences.
Egalitarian - A principle of distribution justice in which certain things should
be distributed equally, such as voting, health care access, or environmental
protections.
Equal Opportunity - A principle of distributive justice in which everyone is
given opportunities without discrimination where positions are open to all.
Ethical decision making - Ethical decision-making refers to the process of
evaluating and choosing among alternatives in a manner consistent with
ethical principles. In making ethical decisions, it is necessary to perceive and
eliminate unethical options and select the best ethical alternative.
Ethical dilemmas - Situations in which there is a choice to be made between
two options, neither of which resolves the situation in an ethically
acceptable fashion.
Ethical issues in business - The study of proper business policies and
practices regarding potentially controversial issues, such as corporate
governance, employment, shareholder rights, insider trading, consumer
rights, transparency, bribery, discrimination, corporate social responsibility,
and fiduciary responsibilities.
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Ethical relativism - The philosophical position that there are no moral
absolutes, no moral right or wrong.
Ethics - The basic concepts and fundamental principles of decent human
conduct. It includes the study of universal values such as the essential
equality of all men and women, human or natural rights, obedience to the
law of land, concern for health and safety, increasingly, also for the natural
environment.
Fairness or justice - An approach to ethics in which we treat all human
beings equally, or if unequally, then fairly based on some standard that is
defensible.
Hypernorms - Principles so fundamental that, by definition, they serve to
evaluate lower-order norms, reaching to the root of what is ethical for
humanity.
Justice - The legal or philosophical theory by which fairness is administered.
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Libertarian principle - A principle of procedural justice in which no form of
distribution is fair to everyone; all should be abandoned.
Loss aversion - In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to
people's tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains,
it's better to not lose $5 than to find $5. Some studies have suggested that
losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.
Lottery, luck, or chance - A principle of distributive justice whose success or
outcome is governed by chance.
Micro contracts - Contextual contracts within each community or industry
that are social group contracts, or culturally relative, and can change.
Milgram experiments - A series of social psychology experiments
conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.
Moral absolutism - The ethical belief that there are absolute standards
against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are
right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act.
Moral free spaces - The area bounded by hypernorms in which communities
develop ethical norms representing a collective viewpoint concerning right
behavior.
Moral imagination - Our ability to think outside the box and envision ways to
be both ethical and successful.
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Moral courage - The courage to take action for moral reasons despite the
risk of adverse consequences.
Moral judgment - The process by which one defines what is wrong, good,
bad, zany, absolutely bizarre, surreal, quasi-reasoned, ethical vs. unethical
vs. neutral, or adjoining deviations to the previous as stated that warrant
categorizations of their own accord depending on the nature of the object or
entity to be judged (as one's reasoning has to be aligned for justice).
Fundamentally, in sentient human perspective, against some standard of
'good' as established by rational consensus formed from an established
ideal by whose commune the incumbent exhibiting or contradicting moral
judgment is affiliated with for purposes of actualization of the question as
dictated above.
Moral minimum - A standard or principle upheld as indispensable for moral
conduct, whether within a particular context or in general.
Moral Reasoning - Applies critical analysis to specific events to determine
what is right or wrong, and what people ought to do in a particular situation.
Both philosophers and psychologists study moral reasoning.
Naïve Relativism - Based on the belief that all moral decisions are deeply
personal and that individual has the right to run their own lives. Each person
should be allowed to interpret situations and act on his/her own moral
values.
Need - A principle of distributive justice based upon bringing the worst off
up to a level with the rest—the basis for a welfare system.
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Obedience to authority - Compliance with commands given by an authority
figure. In the 1960s, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram performed a
famous research study called the obedience study. It showed that people
have a strong tendency to comply with authority figures.
Positive obligations - The obligation to engage in an activity to secure the
effective enjoyment of a fundamental right, as opposed to the classical
negative obligation to merely abstain from human rights violations.
Potentiality - A principle of distributive justice based upon what is “most
likely to succeed.”
Power relationships - Generally perceived as either having power over
something (dominant or sovereign power), or having the power to do
something (productive power).
Principle-based approach - An approach to ethics that focuses on theories
of the importance of general principles, such as respect for autonomy,
beneficence/ non-maleficence, and justice.
Relativism - A perspective that universal truths or moral values do not exist,
but instead they vary from culture to culture, or situation to situation. The
implication of relativism is that there are no ultimate “right” or “wrong”
answers or behaviors.
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Rights-based approach - A conceptual framework for the process of human
development that is normatively based on international human rights
standards and operationally directed to promoting and protecting human
rights.
Role Relativism - Based on the belief that social roles carry with them
certain obligations to that role. A manager in charge of a work unit must put
aside his/her personal beliefs and do instead what the role requires, that is,
act in the best interest of the unit.
Social Contracts - Implicit or explicit arrangements between businesses and
particular communities where they operate.
Stakeholders - A person, group, or organization that has interest or concern
in an organization.
Stakeholder theory - The stakeholder theory is a theory of organizational
management and business ethics that addresses morals and values in
managing an organization.
UN Global Compact Guiding Questions - A principle-based framework for
businesses, stating ten principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the
environment, and anti-corruption.
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Universalism - A concept in which the ethical implications of an action apply
universally to anyone, regardless of circumstance. Examples of
pseudo-universally wrong actions: murder, rape, torture.
Universal principles - A set of principles which apply to all humans, whether
secular or religious, independent from any particular faith.
Utilitarianism - A system of ethics according to which the rightness or
wrongness of an action should be judged by its consequences. The goal of
utilitarian ethics is to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest
number.
Utility - A principle of distributive justice given to the person or organization
who is best at producing positive benefits, for example, the most promising
researcher, the finest soccer player.
Virtue Ethics - An approach to ethics that emphasizes an individual's
character or organizational character as the key element of ethical thinking,
rather than rules about the acts themselves (Deontology) or their
consequences (Consequentialism).
Virtue or character - An approach to ethics that emphasizes an individual's
character as the key element of ethical thinking, rather than rules about the
acts themselves (Deontology) or their consequences (Consequentialism).
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