Roles and Role Morality
Alan H. Goldman
Roles are positions in business or the professions to which different social functions attach; role morality is the assumption of different normative ethical systems for different roles. The central issue here is whether different social roles require distinct norms or moral frameworks to guide their behavior. For there to be truly dis tinct role moralities, it is not sufficient that those in different social roles or professions enter into unique relations with others. All social roles involve relations that uniquely define them to be the roles they are. Instead, moral considerations that arise elsewhere must be weighed differently, must be systematically augmented or diminished in their weight, against opposing considerations in proper moral deliberations in these social contexts. An occupant of the role (for example, a lawyer or business manager) must be called upon to ignore certain moral rights, or certain utilities ordisutilities, that would otherwise be morally decisive.
Often such special norms reflect some value central to the definition of the social role in question, and the norm gives that value extra weight for the occupant of the role. Lawyers are called upon to ignore the interests of third parties in zealously pursuing the legal objectives of their clients within the bounds of law. Journalists routinely ignore what others might properly perceive as rights to privacy in developing news stories for their reading publics. In business, the central values lie in efficient use of resources in providing desired goods to the consuming public and in providing stockholders a good return on their investments. Thus, some have argued (e.g., Friedman, 1979) that business managers ought not to forgo profit (which measures efficiency and provides returns) on perceived moral grounds.
From the point of view of moral theory, how ever, the basic question is how such special norms can be morally acceptable, how the concept of distinct role moralities is even coherent. From the point of view of a rights based or individualist moral theory, it seems that we can override moral rights only for the sake of protecting more central or important rights in the context in question. Otherwise, rights must be voluntarily waived or previously forfeited by wrongdoing in order to be safely ignored. This fundamental demand of the moral framework seems to hold in all social contexts. From the point of view of a utilitarian or collectivist moral theory, it seems that we can impose costs or forgo benefits only to prevent greater harm or realize greater collective good, and once more this constraint appears to govern all contexts to which the theory applies. Thus, if business man agers perceive that pursuit of maximal profit imposes serious harm on the public (say in decisions regarding product safety, waste disposal, or relocation), how can it be morally coherent to suggest that such pursuit is their proper role?
The answer is that such norms are at least possible, or coherent, given sufficient complexity in a moral framework. In a multi leveled framework there can be a distinction between an agent’s perception of a morally required course of action and her authority to act on that perception. This distinction exists in several moral theories, including Mill’s (1955), and it rests on the fact of fallibility in moral perception and moral reasoning. A major argument by de fenders of adversarial legal systems to the conclusion that lawyers ought not to restrain their clients on extra legal moral grounds is that their moral perceptions may be eccentric or incapable of objective justification. Similarly, if a business manager seeks to sacrifice style or raise prices in order to impose safer products on the public, despite market research that indicates contrary preferences, the result may be not what she predicts, but loss of market share to the competition.
In other cases the justification of special norms does not appeal to fallibility in gauging the consequences of actions considered one at a time, but instead to the results of every occupant of the social role reasoning directly from those consequences. Waste disposal provides a good example here. Each small business may reason correctly that the effect of its disposing of wastes in the cheapest way possible is negligible. But if all reason in the same way, the result can be disastrous to the health of the entire community. Here it seems that a special norm restricting the pursuit of maximum profit is in order. Norms governing other roles may be justified in the same way. A teacher should grade based only on quality of work submitted, even though the effect of taking other considerations into account in individual cases might be known to be utility maximizing. A journalist’s passing up a single story because of qualms about privacy might not harm the public, but the cumulative effect of all journalists forgoing stories because of such qualms might be significant deprivation of information to the public. Such norms result in a consistency or uniformity in the behavior of role occupants beyond that achievable without them.
It can be argued that norms of the type just considered are either not special or not necessary. A Kantian will hold that moral reasoners must always think of everyone’s acting in the way proposed (see kantian ethics). But this test is not always relevant. Telling a lie in order to avoid a greater evil can be justified, even though if everyone lied in similar circumstances, the strategy might be useless and hence unjustified. It is permissible not to vote in a local election even though the result of no one voting would be disastrous. The universalizing test is relevant only when many individuals would act in a cumulatively harmful way on the basis of (individually) correct consequentialist reasoning in the absence of special constraint. This criterion does apply to various social roles, as indicated above, generating special norms and hence role moralities.
It can be argued, as in the pollution example, that a business manager ought not to impose higher costs on his corporation unless these are required by law. The appeal here would be to a moral division of labor (between managers and legislators), and it would reinstate the profit principle as the sole fundamental norm for business. Those who defend special role moralities often make such appeals, but they must be closely scrutinized. Any justification of special role moralities, even if coherent, must be care fully criticized, given the sacrifice of normally important moral factors involved.
Bibliography
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