Pragmatism and Business Ethics
Sandra B. Rosenthal
The application of ethics to the business context often takes one of two approaches, one emphasizing the study of cases without any extensive theoretical background, the other emphasizing the application of abstract ethical theories embodying universal principles to specific cases. The former tends toward a ‘‘my opinion versus your opinion’’ analysis without a conceptual backdrop for sound reasons, while the latter is frequently a very sterile and abstract approach to ethics that does not connect with the dynamics and problems of the business world.
Moreover, the litany of conflicting theories and principles gives rise to a kind of ethical smorgasbord with no guidelines for choice among varying theories, some of which may give conflicting signals concerning the right decision and result in totally different courses of action. The basis for choice, which now becomes the heart of moral reasoning and the very foundation for moral decision making, remains mysterious, outside the realm of theoretical illumination, and ultimately ignored. Adding to the problem, the application of a moral rule to a specific case can be used by ill intentioned individuals to justify all kinds of behavior which common sense judges to be immoral. Moreover, actions done with the best of intentions by virtuous people may nonetheless be misguided and can only be so judged by something other than intentions. Rules seem to judge intentions, yet bad intentions can misuse rules. Part of the problem of making ethical decision making relevant for the business community may be an implicit, unexpressed, but nonetheless pervasive and ‘‘commonsense’’ perception by practitioners that the above problems are in fact the case.
Classical American pragmatism offers a unique philosophical framework that provides a unifying ground for how and why we evaluate rules and traditions and choose among various principles in an ongoing process of dealing with change and novelty. At the same time, this pragmatic theory cannot be set over against the case approach to business ethics, for it is a theory that demands the return to situations in their concrete fullness and richness as the very foundation for the development of moral decision making as inherently contextual and situational, and for the emergence of moral ‘‘rules’’ as tentative working hypotheses abstracted from the fullness of concrete decision making. In so doing pragmatism focuses on a relational understanding of humans, communities, and corporations alike, thereby moving beyond the long tradition of atomic individualism which ultimately places the individual and the group in an irreconcilable conflict, with all the moral pitfalls this involves. Rather, there is an ongoing process of adjustment between the unique creativity of the individual entity of whatever sort, and the conforming dimension of the ‘‘common other’’ within which it is embedded and with which it is inextricably intertwined as an organic whole. Value emerges within these relational contexts, and the adjustment between the two dimensions of the shared and the unique gives rise to the novel and creative dimensions of moral decision making.
Value situations, like all situations as under stood within the pragmatic context, are open to inquiry and require the general method of experimentalism by which a progressive movement from a problematic situation to a meaningfully resolved or secure situation takes place. This method involves creatively organizing experience, directing one’s activity in light of that creative organization, and testing for truth in terms of consequences: does the organization work in bringing about the intended result? In the case of value inquiry as the embodiment of experimental method, this involves moving from a situation filled with problematic or conflicting valuings to a resolved or meaningfully organized experience of the valuable through an expansive reconstruction or reintegration of the situation.
Morality is to be discovered in concrete human experience where conflicting interests and desires need to be adjudicated, rather than in conflicting moral principles or rights that are debated in the abstract. Our concrete decision making is influenced by all sorts of conflicting guidelines, and such decision making cannot be simplified to accord with any single one of them. Added together, traditional theories are contradictory because they are each attempting to substitute for a concrete, rich moral sense operative in decision making some one consideration which is found operating there in various degrees at various times and in various situations, turning it into a moral absolute to deter mine what is the moral course to follow at all times and in all situations. Any rule, any principle, any scheme, is an attempt to make precise and abstract some consideration which seems to be operative in concrete moral experience, but this experience is ultimately too rich and creative to be adequately captured in that manner.
Traditional moral theories can be useful in shedding light on moral situations and providing additional guidelines for evaluating the moral aspects of different courses of action. It is not that traditional moral theories do not get hold of something operative in our concrete moral decisions, but that in lifting out one aspect, they ignore others, reducing moral action to some fixed scheme. Utilitarian theories, deontological theories, virtue theories, individualisms, and communitarianisms all get at something import ant, but they each leave out the important considerations highlighted by the other theories. And the relative weight given to any of these, as well as to a host of other considerations in coming to a decision as to what ought to be done, will depend on the novel and complexly rich features of the situation in which the need for the decision arises. In this process, we are often reconstructing moral rules. Principles are not directives to action, but are suggestive of actions. Just as hypotheses in the technical experimental sciences are modified through ongoing testing, moral principles are hypotheses which require ongoing testing and allow for qualification and reconstruction. The most important habits we can develop are habits of intelligence and sensitivity, for neither following rules nor meaning well can suffice. But bringing about good consequences in the contextual richness of different situations through moral decision making helps develop, as byproducts, both good character traits as habits of acting and good rules as working hypotheses needing ongoing testing and revision.
Moral reasoning as concrete, then, is not working downward from rules to their application, but working upward from the full richness of moral experience and decision making toward guiding moral hypotheses. The resolution of conflicting moral perceptions, which provide the context for new ideals, cannot be resolved by a turn to abstractions, but through a deepening sensitivity to the demands of human valuings in their commonness and diversity. Such a deepening does not negate the use of intelligent inquiry, but rather opens it up, freeing it from the products of its past in terms of rigidities and abstractions. In the area of ethics, this deepening focuses intelligent inquiry on the experience of value as it emerges within human existence, allowing us to grasp different con texts, to take the perspective of ‘‘the other,’’ to participate in dialogue with ‘‘the other’’ to determine what is valuable.
Moral reasoning as concrete rather than abstract and discursive incorporates in its very dynamics moral sensitivity and moral imagination. The operation of reason cannot be isolated from the human being in its entirety. Moral reasoning involves sensitivity to the rich, com plex value ladenness of a situation and to its interwoven and conflicting dimensions, the ability to utilize creative intelligence or moral imagination geared to the concrete situation, and an ongoing evaluation of the resolution. The goal is not to make the most unequivocal decision, but to provide the richest existence for those in volved. This requires an enrichment of the capacity to perceive the complex moral aspects of situations rather than a way of simplifying how to deal with what one does perceive. Moral maturity in fact thus increases rather than decreases moral problems to be mediated, for it brings to awareness the pervasiveness of the moral dimension involved in concrete decision making. When we slide over the complexities of a problem, we can easily be convinced that absolute moral principles are at stake. And the complexities of a problem are always context dependent and must be dealt with in the context of a concrete situation.
This position, of course, rules out absolutism in ethics, but it equally rules out subjectivism and relativism, for it is rooted in the conditions and demands of human living and the desire for meaningful, enriching lives. We create and utilize norms or ideals in the moral situation, but which ones work is dependent upon their ability to integrate, harmonize, and expand the real relational value laden contexts within which humans are embedded. While the experience of value arises from specific, situational contexts shaped by a particular tradition, this is not mere inculcation, for the deepening process in getting beneath rules or principles offers the openness for breaking through inculcated tradition and evaluating one’s own stance. In this way we are operating not in closed perspectives, but rather in perspectives that open onto broad human community.
The pragmatic view attempts to combine the commonness of humans qua human with the uniqueness of each human qua human in a way which allows for a value situation of intelligently grounded diversity accompanied by an ongoing process of evaluation and continual testing, thereby avoiding both dogmatic imposition or irresponsible tolerence. Though moral diversity, just as diversity in general, can flourish within a community, when such diversity becomes irreconcilable conflict, intelligence must offer growing, reconstructed contexts which can provide a workable solution. These ingredients of concrete moral decision making discussed above have implications for understanding the pragmatic concepts of both workability and growth.
Workability cannot be taken in the sense of workable for oneself only, for individuals are inextricably tied to the community of which they are a part. Nor can workability be taken in terms of the short range expedient, for actions and their consequences extend into a indefinite future and determine the possibilities available in that future. Finally, workability in the moral situation cannot be taken in terms of some abstract aspect of life such as economic workability, etc., for moral situations are concrete, and workability in the moral situation must concern the ongoing development of the concrete rich ness of human experience in its entirety. Work ability and growth go hand in hand. Workability involves resolution of conflict through recon structed expanded contexts, and the expanding understanding of varied and diverse interests through a widening of perspective is precisely concrete growth. Workability and growth, properly understood, are inherently moral, and the ethical dimension of business decisions involves consideration of both in their concrete fullness. In this way, pragmatism can hold that the ultimate goal in the nurturing of moral maturity is the development of the ability for ongoing self directed growth.
What particular skills, then, must be cultivated if ethics is to thrive in the business context? What is needed is the development of the re organizing and ordering capabilities of creative intelligence, the imaginative grasp of authentic possibilities, the vitality of motivation, and a deepened sensitivity to the sense of concrete human existence in its richness, diversity, and complexity. The importance of this latter cannot be over stressed. It is this deepened, ‘‘felt’’ dimension that regulates the way one selects, weighs, and conceptually orders what one observes. The vital, growing sense of moral right ness comes not from the indoctrination of abstract principles but from attunement to the way in which moral beliefs and practices must be rooted naturally in the very conditions of human existence. It is this attunement which gives vitality to diverse and changing principles as working hypotheses embodied in concrete moral activity. And it provides the ongoing direction for well intentioned individuals to continually evaluate and at times reconstruct ingrained habits and traditions. Humans cannot assign priority to any one basic value, nor can their values be arranged in any rigid hierarchy, but they must live with the consequences of their actions within concrete situations in a process of change.
The cultivation of the ethical skills high lighted by the pragmatic position will allow those engaged in business activity to utilize on going change in the concrete contexts of corporate life, with the increasing complexity, pluralism, and diversity these contexts manifest, to bring about ongoing enriching growth of the firm in its multiple relations. In this process, theory is not sacrificed for practice but, rather, theory embodies practice. The balancing of and choice among moral rules as working hypotheses and their ongoing reconstruction when needed lends itself to, indeed demands, the use of cases in all their situational richness and the bottom up approach to moral decision making which this incorporates.
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