David Lemuel E. Garcia                                                                                           1/29/08

10564721      BS-IM

BUSINESS ETHICS 2^nd Edition

William H. Shaw

Chapter 1: The Nature of Morality

                        “…we act morally out of habit or simply because that is the kind of person we are.”

            - Others usually say that we act because of religion and because we are scared to go to hell and we desire to go to heaven, but then, that’s not the point. A lot of people act morally depending on a certain situation and environment. It doesn’t generally say that we act like that because of what we desire to achieve in the very end of our life. Every person can choose either to do stuff morally or not, the way you execute your actions can tell other people if you’re a moral person or not.

Summary of the Chapter:

            - As the title says, it pin points to the nature of morality, it showed the Business and Organizational ethics, the personal ethics, the moral and nonmoral standards, morality in comparison to etiquette, morality and law, religion and its relation to the morality of the person, Ethical relativism in relation to business, Conscience and its limits, individuals responsibility and integrity.

             - One of the things being pin pointed to is that, accepting moral principle involves a motivation to conform to one’s conduct to that principle. Violating the principle will bother one’s conscience. But as the book say’s, conscience is not a perfectly reliable guide to right and wrong in our life’s decision.

Chapter 2: Normative Theories of Ethics

                        “…some actions are wrong even if they produce good results…. “

            - Having a grade of 4.0 is good but if you obtained it by paying the professor to give you that grade or if you obtained that my cheating, that isn’t a good action to start with. Same with that quote, there are certain things that you shouldn’t do even if it’ll give out good results because there might be something that can be trampled on your way while in the process.

Summary of the Chapter:

            - The theories given in this chapter are the following, Consequentialist moral theory which focuses on the moral rightness or wrongness of an action, Egoism, Utilitarianism. Kant’s theory is also on the picture, this approach is non-consequentialist. Prima Facie is the one that argues both Kant and Consequential theories, which means that any one of them can be outweighed in some circumstances with the other. Those nonsequentialists emphasize more on the moral rights.

Chapter 3: Justice and Economic Distribution

                        “…an economic system is not only an institutional device for satisfying existing wants and desires but a way of fashioning wants and desires in the future.”

            - The wants and needs of the people depend always on the demand, but then how does demand get formed? Where do the people get the idea that they need such things? The economic system creates images of things that tempt people to think that they need those things or that they want it. Having that in-store in the minds of the people around, the economic system molds and changes the way people think and justify things out depending on how they perceive things because of the system the economy has.

Summary of the Chapter:

            - Justice is one aspect of morality. Economic system and distribution are mostly based on the equality, need, effort, social contribution or merits. Each of these situations can pull us from different directions that can lead us somewhere. Utilitarianism is also tackled in this chapter and libertarian which talks about the identification of justice with liberty, which means living to our choices in life. Rawls’s writings are also emphasized on this chapter with regards to the social-contract tradition, the maximum rule for making decisions, and his rejections on the utilitarianism because he says that it might permit an unfair distribution of the peoples burdens and benefits.