Answer 2 questions on Business Ethics utilizing each of the three ethical framew

Answer 2 questions on Business Ethics utilizing each of the three ethical frameworks presented in the course material. USE THE ATTACHMENT PROVIDED TO ANSWER QUESITIONS Generalizability Test (or Kant’s Universalizability) Kant Headshot portraitIf you deem an action to be moral for yourself, it must also be deemed to be moral for everyone else without that in turn causing a logical fallacy. For example, your employer mistakenly pays you significantly more for a pay period than was appropriate. Is it acceptable for you to keep the money since you consider yourself underpaid anyway? Even setting aside the reputation effect should they later discover the error and realize you didn’t disclose it, there is an inherent flaw in this logic. If it’s moral for you to keep the money, then it’s moral for everyone else to do the same. The moral is moral. But if everyone behaves like this, then employers will have to expend otherwise unnecessary resources to avoid making such errors or risk going out of business. And so, your decision can’t be generalized to everyone else. This erroneous logic is often used by those who commit fraud – particularly insurance fraud. But it doesn’t stand up to the Generalizability Test. For more information on KantLinks to an external site. and his concept of UniversalizabilityLinks to an external site., go to these sites. Now consider that when you reach out to your employer to make her aware of the error, she informs you that it wasn’t in error. She had been particularly pleased with the work you’d been doing and wanted to communicate that to you in a tangible way. She does however ask that you not mention it to your coworkers as they had not also received the bonus. Is it moral for you to keep this to yourself? Again, apply the Generalizability Principle. What if all your coworkers had also received a bonus and were keeping it to themselves? Would this create an unsustainable fallacy? No. Everyone would be happy with the situation, including your employer. And so, this passes the Generalizability Test. Utility Test (Utilitarian Ethics) The best action to take is the one that maximizes social utility. “Utility” is an abstract construct that represents happiness or satisfaction. Maximizing social utility, therefore, implies that the action should produce the greatest possible good for the greatest number of persons. All are very abstract, so let’s consider an example. Bernie Madoff famously swindled hundreds of investors out of over $17 Billion. For many of them, this was their life savings. Certainly, this money allowed Madoff to live a luxurious lifestyle thus increasing his utility. But his gain was dwarfed by the loss of utility to those who had erroneously trusted Madoff. Not swindling his clients would therefore have resulted in a much higher level of social utility and so would have been the more moral action. Sometimes the Utility Test can be less easily applied. Fast and Fresh is a hypothetical grocery chain in a large metropolitan area. Analysis of store sales has identified a handful of stores that significantly underperform. Fast and Fresh has determined that closing these stores will increase profitability. However, doing so will leave some of the affected areas without access to a full-line grocery creating a “food desert”. Difficult. Closing unprofitable stores do pass the Generalizability test, but it may struggle to pass the Utility test. Now consider the decision by Patagonia in 2011 to run an ad in the New York Times 2011 NYT Patagonia ad that has an image of a jacket & the words Don’t buy this jacket. on Black Friday telling consumers NOT to buy their jackets. The ad went on to describe the environmental impact of producing the jacket and encouraging consumers to “make do”. What alternative action might Patagonia have taken that would have resulted in greater social utility that Friday? Probably none. It made consumers more aware of the harmful impact of consumerism on the business shopping day of the year. And it resonated well with Patagonia’s target market potentially increasing profitability in the long run. Virtue Test (Teleological Ethics) The ancient Greeks asserted that every object has an essential nature and purpose. This included humans. Because of our unique ability to reason, humans are by nature moral beings. Virtue is living a life in alignment with our moral nature. For more information on Potter Steward go to this siteLinks to an external site.. To understand this, allow me to put forward one of my own concerns with Kantian and Utilitarian ethics by use of example. The inhabitants of a very primitive island believe that the volcano on the island is a sentient god. And they believe that this god is appeased when regularly offered a young child as a sacrifice. Is it ethical for the inhabitants of that island to then choose and sacrifice the child? First, this would meet the Generalizability test. All the inhabitants, save one, are engaged in this behavior. And even if the inhabitants of every primitive island with a demanding volcano god did this, there would be no fallacy. Second, it meets the Utility test. Remember, the inhabitants believe that NOT sacrificing the child will anger the god and many will die instead of just one. And so, this does maximize social utility. But there is still something about it that bothers me. It feels wrong to single one person out, particularly involuntarily, to sacrifice themself for everyone else. It seems rational but feels wrong. Human beings are capable of and therefore obliged to behave with virtue. We should abstain from deceit, treat others with respect, and care for the disadvantaged. These are virtues, as are bravery, self-sacrifice, and others. Setting aside the Generalizability test and the Utilitarian test, would it be right to keep the money your employer mistakenly paid you? Of course not. Would it be right to swindle others out of their life savings? Of course not. But even Virtue Ethics isn’t a magic bullet. Is it virtuous to create a food desert? No. But then neither is it virtuous to waste investor money without their consent. Even three rules may not be enough to settle every question.