Type:
Solution Manual
Resource:
Business Ethics as Rational Choice
Edition:
1st Edition
Author(s):
John Hooker
Contents Part I – How to Use the Book The Book’s Approach Classroom Use Using the Expository Material Using the Exercises Using t he Case Studies A Note on Rational Choice Theory A Note on Moral Epistemology Part II – Exercise Solutions Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6
1 1 2 3 7 9 11 10 13 13 28 31 59 73
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Part I – How to Use the Book The Book’s Approach Business Ethics as Rational Choice is based on the premise that ethics can be learned in basically the same way as engineering or mathematics. It presents the theory and then asks students to work exercises until they learn how to apply it. Ethical decision making, like any skill, is developed through structured practice. The aim is to bridge the gap between theory and application. Approaching ethics from a purely philosophical perspective that presents Kant and Aristotle may fail to provide specific guidance in a messy real-world situation. Coming from a practical perspective that discusses real-life case studies may offer no principled method for analyzing them. The book attempts a rational reconstruction of normative ethics that is robust and precise enough to obtain results in real situations. The book’s central theme is that ethical behavior is rational behavior, in a sufficiently broad sense of rationality. The book resists the popular tendency to equate rational behavior with rational self-interest. It argues that failing to consider the interests of others is irrational, not because it may eventually hurt one’s own interests, but because it is inherently illogical and self-contradictory. This leads to specific conditions that a rational decision must meet. Students are asked to evaluate whether a given decision is ethical by subjecting it to these tests. No theory can be understood or appreciated until it is forced to deal with the subtleties and surprises of real-world application. Think about Maxwell’s equations in physics, or the conservation of energy principle. They are easily stated, but science and engineering students spend years grinding through countless exercises before they can apply them usefully and appreciate their power. The proposed book likewise takes students through exercises that show how to apply ethical theory and gradually reveal its full meaning and implications. Students are cautioned that analysis of this kind rarely yields a final or complete solution, but it can allow one to make some progress toward resolving an issue, rather than going around in circles, as so often happens in ethical disputes. The analyses in the book attempt to set an example of intellectual discipline. They avoid invoking arguments that may sound convincing but do not apply the conditions of rational choice. Students are asked to follow this example. They quickly learn that they cannot simply sit around and exchange views, as they might have expected to do in ethics class, but must defend their views with intellectual rigor. 1
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Students may not initially prefer this approach. It is nothing like the ethics course they imagined. In time, however, they may come to realize that these concepts fill a gap in their conceptual equipment and provide them a vocabulary for discussing ethics. They may begin to give the material the kind of respect they give chemistry or mathematics. They may enjoy the intellectual challenge of solving ethical puzzles. They may find it satisfying to be able to work through dilemmas and actually make some progress toward a defensible conclusion. To earn credibility, however, it is essential that the case studies and exercises be absolutely realistic. I pursued this goal throughout the book. The scenarios come from several sources, including my MBA students and executive education participants (I have a collection of some 200 dilemmas they submitted anonymously, although many of them are similar). I don’t clean up the scenarios to simplify the analysis or to make them more effective pedagogically. I take them as they come.
Classroom Use The book is not intended to be a comprehensive resource for business ethics instruction. It contains no full-length case studies and no sections dedicated to such specific problem areas as employee rights, sustainability, product safety, marketing ethics, accounting ethics, or whistle-blowing. It is focused on building skills that, in my view, are a prerequisite to everything else. Certainly ethics is much more than logic-chopping. It also rests on experience, judgment, and domain-specific knowledge, and case studies and problem-specific materials can play a role in developing these. Yet in ethics, as in finance or operations, judgment and experience are built on an analytic foundation. This text provides the materials for the foundation. I developed the materials over several years for the ethics program at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. They evolved from interaction with students at undergraduate, MBA, and executive levels. Based on this experience, I believe the book is suitable for the following classroom situations: (a) A short business ethics course or module that is dedicated to skill building rather than the case study method. I use the materials in required and elective ethics modules at the undergraduate and MBA levels. The modules have varied in length from three to seven 80-minute sessions. (b) A full course in business ethics that focuses, at least in part, on decisionmaking skills. The book can be supplemented by case studies or problemspecific articles of interest to the class, which can now be analyzed in a structured way based using the framework in the book. 2
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(c) An ethics-across-the-curriculum program, for which the book provides a common set of ethical concepts and a wide variety of examples. A primary stumbling block to programs of this kind is that most faculty members have little background in ethics. The book presents the basic ideas with rigor and succinctness that faculty appreciate. I maintain an internal website for faculty in which I post analyses of course materials that colleagues have sent me, some of which appear in Chapter 6. They use the analyses in various ways, or perhaps not at all. They sometimes invite me to make guest appearances in their courses to lead discussions, ranging from 10 minutes to an entire class period. (d) An ethics module for executive education. I have used this material in several 1.5-day sessions that are part of larger executive training programs. Executive workshops tend to deal with a specific industry. My approach is to present the basic ideas with a few generic examples, and to move quickly to examples from the industry of interest—a few from the book, but most supplied by the participants. (e) A business communications or writing course. Ethical analysis provides the perfect laboratory to develop communication skills. Putting together an ethical argument hones the skills necessary to organize one’s thoughts and express them clearly. It helps students to analyze unstructured situations for which the domain-specific tools of finance and marketing courses are inadequate.
Using the Expository Material All of the main ideas are contained in Chapters 1-3, a total of only 32 pages, including exercises. A certain amount of lecture time is necessary to present this material and provide a foundation for discussing case studies. However, it is best to minimize lecturing in an ethics course, not least because students may interpret it as “preaching.” I try to cover everything in two to three 80-minute classes, including discussion and an economics game (see below). I then re-teach the material in the context of case studies. The material is interleaved with a running example (Jennifer’s employment dilemmas) that is meaningful to students and can help sustain interest. There are several other examples as well. Chapter 1- Introduction Although the core material of the book begins with Chapter 2, I believe it is essential to dispel several misconceptions that block learning of ethics and frustrate its application. This is the mission of Chapter 1. It begins by attacking the common notion that law enforcement makes society function, while ethics is something extra. Students can be invited to participate in the thought experiments 3
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