How does virtue ethics apply to ethical issues raised by globalisation?
"Business ethics suggests there are a number of moral problems specific to business as well as general ethical considerations about the place of honesty and generosity in business relations. These specific issues arise partly because of globalisation: markets exist as global entities, and are no longer limited by territorial boundaries (nor is knowledge, information, or money limited in its flow).
The first problem created by globalisation is lack of regulation. Because multinational companies operate in many countries, no one country can pass laws to control their behaviour. So a company may locate in the least regulated, or most corrupt country. As we found in the banking crisis, it may also be difficult to understand what Goldman Sachs or RBS is actually doing with their complicated financial derivatives. Goldman Sachs has been criticised recently for designing risky debt packages which were then sold on to other banks (like RBS) while at the same time betting on the collapse of the very property market that created that debt.
The second problem is exploitation. In May 2010 Apple was accused of using a Chinese company, Foxconn, to manufacture it's new ipad, which ignored Apple's own rules set down for suppliers. For example, maximum hours are fixed at 60 per week (which itself seems rather high to me at 10 hours a day for a six day week), and safety standards should be applied. At Foxconn eleven suicide attempts in five months resulted from excessive hours worked at a subsistence wage of 30p a day. "They don't treat us as humans" commented one worker. There is a trade-off here between the lower price demanded by consumers and the costliness to Apple of fair wages and good safety standards.
A third problem is externalities. Companies produce external costs and benefits (paid or enjoyed by someone else). Negative externalities include pollution, noise and congestion. The fishermen of Louisiana are paying the price of BP's failure to ensure adequate risk management of the huge oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The total environmental cost is uncertain, and may only be fully known some years hence.
Can virtue ethics help? In at least three ways. First, by the aspiration to build a flourishing common life, both local and international. Virtue ethics ask the question: what habits of character need to be embodied for a good society to result? The good society needs to create wealth, but not at any price, and not at the cost of destroying the future stability of the planet's biosphere. So the great moderating principle of virtue ethics as advocated by Aristotle, is phronesis or practical wisdom (see the link to Barry Swartz's brilliant lecture on practical wisdom in the introduction to virtue ethics on the site), which needs to be applied to wealth creation, and limited by virtues such as conservation, sustainability and generosity to others. If stewardship is a virtue we can agree on (meaning we see nature and each other as a gift, not as a means to an end), then the vice of deficiency is neglect, and the vice of excess a kind of Amish view of progress which sees the natural as anything not involving complex machine and technology. So stewardship so defined can achieve Aristotle's golden mean or wise, balanced judgement.
Secondly, virtue ethics is about heroism. Our politicians and our managers should be our moral heroes, not, as at present, our villains. Virtue ethics asks us to apply our reason to work out the idea of heroism. Sadly, the expenses scandal involving a third of MPs causes many to say "they're all at it" in the vice of dishonesty, and the banking crisis, the oil pollution of the Gulf of Mexico and the accusations against Apple's suppliers in China lead us also to say "all business is interested in is profit."
Finally we need both the Aristotelean types of virtue, the intellectual and the moral, to build the flourishing world order. The intellectual virtues attached to the scientific method and the development of technology is urgently needed to stop the oil gushing into the sea, to come up with solutions to CO2 emissions, or even, using the virtues of economics, to create an ordered banking system. Remember virtue means excellence or skill, and we need excellent, skilful leaders in this era of uncertainty.
But we also need moral heroes: managers who want to serve communities rather than take huge bonuses, politicians who eschew the privilege of free perks to live a simpler life, and citizens who strive for good and against evil, like Erin Brokovitch , a true life heroine who took on Pacific Gas and Electricity and won.
In short, we need characters committed to build our common life and so achieve the goal of eudaimonia, the flourishing society."
Virtue ethics
Character-based ethics
- A right act is the action a virtuous person would do in the same circumstances.
"Virtue ethics is person rather than action based: it looks at the virtue or moral character of the person carrying out an action, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of particular actions.
Virtue ethics not only deals with the rightness or wrongness of individual actions, it provides guidance as to the sort of characteristics and behaviours a good person will seek to achieve.
In that way, virtue ethics is concerned with the whole of a person's life, rather than particular episodes or actions."
So, is globalisation morally sound, or morally corrupt? Would a company's global expansion through entirely ethical means be more or less successful than a company using more unethical methods to get ahead? Is the only way to successful globalisation through exploitation and not-so-virtuous intentions?
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