Business Ethics Chapter 7 Question & Answer

Ethical reasoning based on virtue ethics must be careful to avoid cultural relativism, cultural conservatism, the maintenance of unhealthy community standards, paternalism, the suppression of autonomous thought, and too great a split between the demands of the multiple communities of which one person may be a member.

Because virtues are traits and dispositions to behaviour, and not mental states, we can meaningfully ascribe virtues and vices to business corporations and other organizations. Managers can implement good corporate character through how they govern and organize their organization.

As members of families and communities, virtuous people acquire obligations to specific others that are not voluntary in the way that contractual obligations are voluntary. These include obligations of loyalty and solidarity to other family and community members, and obligations to the community as a whole.

People learn and exercise virtue in communities. By providing the opportunity for their members to exercise virtue, communities enable people to flourish and lead good lives. At the same time, the exercise of various virtues by community members enables the social cooperation that sustains the community.

A virtuous community can avoid some transaction costs that arise in a society using only a network of contracts and property rights to organize itself. People with a sense of justice will be able to agree on the fair division of the gains from cooperation.

People with the virtues of moderation, honesty, fidelity, trustworthiness, and courage can finesse difficulties with cooperation such as those illustrated by the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Stag Hunt Game.

A flourishing human life requires both a good character (virtues) and good material circumstances. Good material circumstances are largely the product of cooperative rather than individual production, as in Adam Smith’s pin factory.

Virtues constitute, but do not cause, human flourishing. Flourishing individuals lead meaningful, well-lived lives that an objective observer would judge to be happy.

Virtues are moral excellences, which are skills and character traits that enable human beings and organizations to flourish in cooperation with others having similar traits. Our virtues are parts of our identity as individuals. Virtues are usually the mean between two vices.