In looking at the past fifty years in society, there seem to be two conflicting tendencies. Many people believe that society has become less moral, with people less inclined to behave in ethical ways. At the same time, there has been a much greater focus on ethical behavior in business, especially during the past two decades. Does this mean that ethics in business is a new concept?
Business ethics has simply changed over the past fifty years. There are a whole range of issues that have come under scrutiny, including whistle blowing, pollution, community responsibility, and sustainability. The approach to business decision-making has also sometimes changed. The intent in this analysis is to look at how business ethics has changed the concept of social responsibility in business during the past fifty years.
There are three basic approaches to ethical decision-making in moral philosophy. The first is utilitarianism, which is the approach which was probably the most common in business during the early part of the 20th century. Utilitarianism emerged from the thinking of Jeremy Bentham which emphasized that decisions should be made on the basis of the greatest good for the greatest number of people. He believed that individuals were primarily motivated by their desire to attain pleasure, while avoiding pain. As a consequence, he thought that any truly scientific approach to morality required looking at what people valued and what they did not value. This, he believed, was an ongoing process. Those things that people valued, which gave them pleasure, he equated with good. Those things that people disvalued, which gave them pain, he equated with evil. In making moral decisions, then, good was associated with decisions that gave the most people pleasure, with the recognition that that could change over time (Dyck, 1994).
In business, utilitarianism means that decision-makers look at the consequences of their actions to ...