96 E.M. Hartman studies of the impact of corporate culture, Chen et al. (1997) reach the important conclusion that ethical behavior depends on the employee’s ability to recognize eth- ical issues – to frame certain situations correctly from an ethical point of view – and that this ability appears to be a function of corporate culture more than of individual employees’ attributes.
How, then, does a person of good character make a decision in a complex situ- ation? It will not suffice to tell yourself to be brave or honest or just, but it is true that the kind of person you are will have as much to do with the decision as will your reasoning about it. Dialectic has a role here, but it is not primarily to facilitate specific decisions. It is to give you somewhat sharper, though still not perfectly sharp, principles and intuitions. Under the influence of dialectic your reasoning about specific issues will be better, because you are better at noticing and evaluating aspects of the situation that people of less character do not handle so well. You will justify your decisions by appeal to whether their consequences are favorable, whether the decision process is fair, and whether anyone’s rights are being violated.
Almost anyone can do that, but with dialectic you will do it better because you will be better at identifying the aspects of the situation that are most important.
One might object that being good at dialectic will not protect people from bad cultures or keep them from rationalizing. But Haidt’s (2001, pp. 819, 829, 834) argument, noted earlier, suggests otherwise. No doubt dialectic is best done before the crisis arises, if possible, but it appears that what one decides in a cool moment will influence what one does when the moment is warmer.
In part because one cannot accurately calculate with all the variables in mind, in part to avoid rationalization, a person of good character will often satisfice by sticking with certain nearly unexceptionable rules, such as, “We don’t lie to our employees. Period.” In some cases the decision will have to be an intuitive one.
You may say, “We’re just not that kind of company,” or “That’s something I’m just not prepared to do.” Whether anyone finds that sort of account (or non-account) convincing will depend in part on your credibility. We believe the Jim Burkes of the world when they say that they are doing something because they care about the welfare of their customers. We do not believe the Ken Lays.
Socratic Questions and Aristotelian Answers 97 (Strategic Business Units) can together achieve economies of scale or use slack resources. There the experienced and wise manager must make a largely intuitive decision – that is, must satisfice. Some managers are consistently better than others at framing these situations appropriately. So, for example, one might see a business as low-profit or high-cash flow; and the strategic situation may determine which description is salient. Successful strategists often cannot say in any detail how they favor one frame over another. Their track record is evidence of their ability to frame situations correctly.
Using case studies in ethics gives students experience that supports the develop- ment of their moral imagination. Complex case studies exercise their moral judg- ment about particulars, as when justice and economic efficiency conflict. In looking at a case and considering the many ways in which one can frame a situation and which ways of framing capture its salient features, students are developing moral imagination and thus practical wisdom and thus good character.
Can students also gain in critical understanding of their actual and possible val- ues? At the very least they can reflect on what is most important to them and how to protect it. Reading fiction is a way to do this; in fact, Rorty (2006 and elsewhere) argues that literature is better for this purpose than is philosophy. Sometimes non- fiction will do equally well. Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker (1989), for example, can help students to reflect on their values. Does Dash Riprock lead a good life? Would you like to be addicted to dealing? Is the Human Piranha’s approval a good thing?
Why? Is selling equities in Dallas inappropriate for anyone with any self-respect?
Is there any reason to be contemptuous of people who actually enjoy that kind of life? Does Salomon Brothers of that era resemble the Milgram experiment? Know- ing about Salomon or Milgram may enable one later to stop and reflect, and to undertake moral reasoning rather than rationalization. There is some encouraging evidence about the possibility of doing that (see Beaman et al., 1978).
If students learn from reading Liar’s Poker, or by some other means, how a strong organizational culture can affect one’s character, then they will know that the choice of an employer is a most important one. Having been in a certain organization for a while, I may like being the sort of person who enjoys acting ruthlessly, or perhaps the sort of person who takes satisfaction in maintaining a professional attitude. If Aristotle is right, by acting ruthlessly or professionally I can become a ruthless person or a real pro. For some of our students, choosing an employer will in effect be choosing which desires to cultivate, hence to some degree choosing a character. A measure of self-knowledge, a component of good character, will lead you to protect your values by choosing congenial environments, including careers and workplaces, because character is vulnerable, as Milgram and others have shown. This requires some careful and acute thought. You must be able to assess a corporate culture, to foresee the consequences of a risk gone bad, to understand the opportunities for chicanery that some professional relationships will present, and to be prepared to avoid if possible and resist if necessary the pressures to do the wrong thing.
To teach students this lesson is to help them understand the importance of making an employment choice thoughtfully. Perhaps it is also possible to inoculate them
98 E.M. Hartman against unconsciously taking on the values of just any corporate culture. At best they might consider the advantages of the values associated with good character.
Conclusion
Those who teach business ethics can avoid undermining students’ good values and leaving cynicism or relativism in their place. The correct lesson is that becoming ethical is not a matter of discovering arcane principles that ground our decisions in certainly, for ethics is neither arcane nor certain. Being ethical is primarily a matter of being a person of good character, with virtues, emotions, values, and practical intelligence to match. The ethical values that experience teaches us are at least the beginning of wisdom about ethics. Ethical progress is a matter of refining and adjust- ing these values, learning to bring them to bear in making decisions, and protecting them from hostile environments.
Notes
1. A previous version of this chapter was presented at the 14th International Symposium on Ethics, Business and Society: “Towards a Comprehensive Integration of Ethics Into Management: Problems and Prospects” held by the IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain, May 18–19, 2006 and subsequently published in the Journal of Business Ethics (2008) 78: 313–328; used with per- mission. This chapter includes some material from Hartman (2006). Thanks for useful suggestions to Professor Dom`enec Mel´e and two anonymous reviewers. This work was supported in part by the Prudential Business Ethics Center at Rutgers.
2. Throughout his Physics and Metaphysics Aristotle speaks of substances, including human beings as having form and matter. The central argument of De Anima, Aristotle’s great work on psychology, is that the soul is an instance of form, the body an instance of matter. His science is teleological: he holds that substances move naturally towards their end, a state that is in some way good for them.
That end-state for a human being, the best state, essentially involves rationality, of which humans alone are capable. Throughout the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle calls the end-state eudaimonia, which is usually translated “happiness” or, more accurately, “flourishing.” It is a state of good character. As Aristotle considers this state definitive of human beings, he does not want to claim that it is beyond the reach of mere mortals.
3. In my experience and that of college administrators with whom I have discussed these issues over many years, this problem is especially common among students who attend state universities and whose parents are not college graduates.
4. Not only agency theory but most of social contract theory, collective action theory, most versions of the stakeholder approach, and all talk of business and government as devices for achieving mutual advantage seem to presuppose that people are motivated by self-interest of a narrow and simple kind. If this is true, then business ethics is best promoted through incentives designed to ensure compliance. I do not believe that it is true. (My thanks here to Christopher Michaelson, whose work in progress on this issue I have found most helpful.)
5. Some philosophers sympathetic to business (for example, Velasquez, 2002) claim that ethics is about utility, justice, and rights and then go on to argue that free markets are ethical. They pro- vide utility – a lot of it, since they are optimally productive. They provide justice in the sense that one reaps as one sows. They protect rights in the sense that one’s transactions are limited only by one’s resources. But clearly these claims presuppose certain views – typically capitalist views, in
Socratic Questions and Aristotelian Answers 99 fact – of the nature of utility, justice, and rights. What, a socialist might ask, is the basis for those views?
6. The testimony of Aristotle in his Metaphysics I (1924) and certain linguistic features of the texts permit us to identify some dialogues as representing Socrates’ views rather than those of Plato.
These include Euthyphro, Lysis, Protagoras, and several others. (See Plato, 1903.)
7. Wittgenstein (1953, 31f.). For a discussion of Aristotle’s views on this subject, see Owen (1967).
8. Some instructors begin by teaching their students several ethical theories and then ask them, on exams or in class, questions like this: In this situation, what would you do if you were a utilitarian?
A justice theorist? A rights theorist? That really is a disaster. (See Derry and Green, 1989.) 9. Wittgenstein (1953, pp. 67–77).
10. So Winter (1971) argued persuasively, using an infinite regress argument.
11. Aristotle argues that one’s character is formed by one’s community but that one is nonetheless responsible for one’s character. Though Aristotle is not a strict causal determinist in the modern sense, it is clear that he would not accept that determinism lets the agent off the ethical hook, as Donaldson (2007) seems to think it does. A determinist can hope that a good course in ethics will be one of the causal factors affecting an agent’s behavior.
12. As Alzola (2007) and others have noted, organization theorists sometimes construe mental states or events as dispositions. For a number of reasons that we cannot explore here, that is not a good idea. In any case, it does not make individual statements about mental states and events verifiable or falsifiable; nothing can do that, and it need not be done. To try to operationalize or to give a dispositional analysis of any state or event that characteristically involves rationality is an especially bad idea.
13. See, for example, his discussion of weakness of the will in Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII.
14. One might respond to criticisms of philosophers (Donaldson, 2007) by asking, ironically, who should address questions of right or wrong if not philosophers. Organization theorists, perhaps?
To which Rorty (2006) would reply, yes, and psychologists and literary critics and many others. It is an interdisciplinary task.
15. Aristotle today would no doubt extend the point to organizations. What counts as a virtuous em- ployee is determined in part by the requirements of the organization, if it is a good organization. If so, then business ethicists ought to be aware of what organization theorists say about the structural and other characteristics of good organizations.
16. For a more detailed account of what follows see Hartman (2006).
17. To understate, the nature of rationality is a matter of controversy. Rationality has a normative aspect, and differences in definition reflect different views of how we should think.
18. These words, from the beginning of the Shorter Westminster Catechism, are consistent with the unfortunate view of Aristotle, though perhaps not of Socrates, that women are morally inferior to men.
19. It is not absurd, however, to allow that two people of good character might sometimes make different decisions because they have slightly different values. You might believe that justice requires blowing the whistle in a certain case, while I believe that loyalty requires finding some other way to deal with the problem. It may be a matter of what you can live with and I cannot. The difference does not imply that one of us is wrong. But blowing the whistle out of sheer vindictiveness and not blowing the whistle out of sheer cowardice are both wrong.
20. The same is true in epistemology; most philosophers would now say, but they would not infer that skepticism is the right position.
21. See M. Calkins (unpublished) for an application to wide equilibrium to virtue ethics.
22. But remember that geometric accuracy is not possible in ethics.
23. N. Gold (unpublished) includes an acute discussion of this point, and of framing in general.
24. One could write a further chapter and much more on the subject of how language frames the world.
In writing such an chapter, one would probably discuss the way in which even the simplest reports of our experience are “theory-laden.”
25. Darley (1996) provides evidence that people in a corporate setting may undertake an activity – a cover-up, for example – that will eventually unravel and leave the situation worse than it would have been.
100 E.M. Hartman 26. Harman (2003) and Doris (2002) argue that most people are so vulnerable that there is no point in taking character seriously. For an opposing view, see Alzola (2007). The question whether factors internal or external to the agent are the real determinants of behavior is an old one. Posed that way, it invites oversimplification. The controversy is a version of the argument about free will vs.
determinism. The best answer is this: it depends on the agent. Some people are better at rational self- management than others, and in that sense (the only sense worth worrying about, pace Donaldson, 2007) they have more free will. One person rescues the child from the pit bull; another does not, and afterwards wishes that he had. Courage and its lack explain these actions, and it is the courageous person who acts more autonomously.
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