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Ethical Approaches Critique Paper

Decent Essays

Critical Paper:
Ethical Approaches
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XXXUniversity

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Date: XXX

This paper summarizes each of ethical approaches, especially the Grand Principles, Nash’s Covenantal Business Ethic, Damon’s Four Dimensions of Business Morality, and Hill’s (2008) Christian Ethic for Business. Also, this paper critiques each of them through analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of approaches. Finally, the most favor approach is provided at the end. The Grand Principles which are called the prescriptive approach are provided by some philosophers such as Kant and Aristotle. The Grand Principles include Consequentialist Theories, Deontological Theories, and Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics. Firstly, …show more content…

In addition, from a law perspective, the Grand Principles are not strict. Thus, it is not practical if people don’t understand the real meaning. For example, according to this sentence,“Love your neighbor as yourself”, if a neighbor broke someone’s house, could this person call polices to catch the chief? Nash’s covenantal business ethic is to emphasize that cooperation between people bases on the profit motive and other-oriented values. It has three essential aspects: “First, it sees value-creation in its many forms as the primary objective. Secondly, it sees profit and other social returns as a result of other goals rather than the overriding objective. Thirdly, it approaches business problems more in terms of relationships than tangible products” (p. 20). There are two strengths of Nash’s covenantal business. One is that this theory increases the cooperation between people. The other one is that this theory can increase a manager’s sense of self-worth. The weakness is that the profits probably have negative effects on businesses. More specifically, managers probably struggle to make right decisions because there is a conflict between profits and ethics. I believe that Nash’s covenantal business is common nowadays. Although a covenantal ethic can stimulate the business to succeed through creating values, a manager is hard to keep morality under competitive environment.

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