BUS 303 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Alasdair Macintyre, Deontological Ethics

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Business Administration
• Course: BUS 303
• Professor: Kathleen Burke

Document Summary

Grand principles too general & tend to float above problems. Biggest problem of corporate credos: too vague. Most credos & mission statements are short yet must cover multitude of situations. Cannot provide much guidance for countless varied, complex situations. Vague b/c try to simplify what is inescapably complex. Mostly only help w/ right vs. wrong situations, not so much right vs. right. Basic legal duties for businesses = increase its profits. Maximizing profits for shareholders does little justice to other stakeholders. Philosophers tried to find universal, objective principle to solve ethics problems, create morality machine to feed all our problems into. Project actually created several diff theories of ethics, each claiming to be objective. Cannot just forget about grand principles: clarify fundamental issues at stake in a practical problem, essential for understanding diff b/t right & wrong, good & evil. Serve as an electrified fence that separates sphere of right actions from surrounding territory of wrong ones.