There are several theories that study moral behavior, such as the descriptive approach, cultural relativism, utilitarian theories, Kant's respect-for-persons principle, common morality theories, and feminist theories, to name a few. I have to choose one moraL philosophy that is best suited for making business decisions and explain why. Can someone help me?
Dear Anonymous, I'm a little surprised if something like this is taught in high school. Your first sentence seems to describe an ad hoc mixture of sociology, ethics and feminist studies; this seems a little unusual to me (but that's just me.)
I'm also a little unsure what your seeking. Do you want some principle that describes how business is conducted? Or are you more interested in prescribing what the ideal model for business should be?
If you're interested in describing, then I seriously doubt any of the approaches you nmentioned will be completely satisfactory. I think Ayn Rand's Objectivism is probably the best descritive model I've seen. You can get an idea of her philosophy here:
Ayn Rand [Put a dot and a com after this]
Follow the objectivism link to get a short explanation of it.
(I should point out that some of accused her of making a "virtue of selfishness". However, my personal opinion is that this pretty much describes most of modern business, regardless of what economic system it claims to pracrice -but that's just me again.)
If you're interested in prescribing something, well...the sky's the limit on utopias. I suppose you could look at the Golden Rule of the Gospels (which is essentially what Kant's moral imperative summarizes to I think.) How practical any ideal system is for modern business is questionble though.
Perhaps I'm becoming cynical with age, but I'm becoming more of the opinion that many preach this win-win philosphy, but in actual practice it's strictly win-lose that rules the day. How exactly does the competition winning help any enterprise stay in business? I've never figured that one out.
Just my $.02 here.
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Note: I see Jishka does not allow posting of internet addresses. Hopefully I didn't violate this with the above. How are we supposed to refer to outside sources, or are we supposed to 'pretend' that the rest of the internet doesn't exist?
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