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© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
1
CHAPTER ONE
Ethics and Business
Overview
Introduction
This chapter presents an introduction to the basic principles of ethics in general and shows
how these principles are relevant to businesses. It begins with a case study of Merck and
Company, discussing how they dealt with the problem of developing a drug that was
potentially life-saving but which presented them with little, if any, chance of earning a
return on their investment.
The drug was Ivermectin, one of their best-selling animal drugs. The potential market for
the drug was those suffering from river blindness an agonizing disease afflicting about 18
million impoverished individuals in Africa and Latin America. The disease is particularly
horrendous: worms as long as two feet curl up in nodules under an infected person's skin,
slowly sending out offspring that cause intense itching, lesions, blindness, and ultimately
death (though many sufferers actually commit suicide before the final stage of the disease).
The need for the drug was clear. However, the victims of river blindness are almost
exclusively poor. It seemed unlikely that Merck would ever recoup the estimated $100
million it would cost to develop the human version (named Mectizan) of the drug. Moreover,
if there proved to be adverse human side effects, this might affect sales of the very
profitable animal version that were $300 million of Merck’s $2 billion annual sales. Finally,
Congress was getting ready to pass the Drug Regulation Act, which would intensify
competition in the drug industry by allowing competitors to more quickly copy and market
drugs originally developed by other companies.
Question: Was Merck morally obligated to develop this drug?
Their managers felt, ultimately, that they were. They even went so far as to give the drug
away for free. This story seems to run counter to the assumption that, given the choice
between profits and ethics, companies will always choose the former. The choice, however,
may not be as clear-cut as this dichotomy suggests. Some have suggested that, in the long
run, Merck will benefit from this act of kindness just as they are currently benefiting from a
similar situation in Japan.
Even so, most companies would probably not invest in an R & D project that promises no
profit. And some companies often engage in outright unethical behavior. Still, habitually
engaging in such behavior is not a good long-term business strategy, and it is the view of
this book that, though unethical behavior sometimes pays off, ethical behavior is better in
the long run.
A more basic problem is the fact that the ethical choice is not always clear. Merck, as a for-
profit corporation, has responsibilities to its shareholders to make a profit. Companies that
spend all their funds on unprofitable ventures will find themselves out of business.
This book takes the view that ethical behavior is the best long-term business strategy for a
company—a view that has become increasingly accepted during the last few years. This
does not mean that occasions never arise when doing what is ethical will prove costly to a
company, such as Merck with its VIOXX experience. Such occasions are common in the life
of a company, and we will see many examples in this book. Nor does it mean that ethical
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2
behavior is always rewarded or that unethical behavior is always punished. On the contrary,
unethical behavior sometimes pays off, and the good guy sometimes loses. To say that
ethical behavior is the best long-range business strategy means merely that, over the long
run and for the most part, ethical behavior can give a company significant competitive
advantages over companies that are not ethical. The example of Merck and Company
suggests this view, and a bit of reflection over how we, as consumers and employees,
respond to companies that behave unethically supports it. Later we see what more can be
said for or against the view that ethical behavior is the best long-term business strategy for
a company.
This text aims to clarify the ethical issues that managers of modern business organizations
must face. This does not mean that it is designed to give moral advice to people in business
nor that it is aimed at persuading people to act in certain moral ways. The main purpose of
the text is to provide a deeper knowledge of the nature of ethical principles and concepts
and an understanding of how these apply to the ethical problems encountered in business.
This type of knowledge and understanding should help managers more clearly see their way
through the ethical uncertainties that confront them in their business lives—uncertainties
such as those faced by the managers of Merck.
1.1 The Nature of Business Ethics
According to the dictionary, the term ethics has a variety of different meanings. One of its
meanings is: "the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group”. We sometimes
use the term personal ethics, for example, when referring to the rules by which an
individual lives his or her personal life. We use the term accounting ethics when referring to
the code that guides the professional conduct of accountants.
A second—and more important—meaning of ethics, according to the dictionary, is: Ethics is
"the study of morality." Ethicists use the term ethics to refer primarily to the study of
morality, just as chemists use the term chemistry to refer to a study of the properties of
chemical substances. Although ethics deals with morality, it is not quite the same as
morality. Ethics is a kind of investigation—and includes both the activity of investigating as
well as the results of that investigation—whereas morality is the subject matter that ethics
investigates.
This chapter discusses the case of B.F. Goodrich to clarify these definitions. Kermit Vandivier
was presented with a moral quandary: he knew that Goodrich was producing brakes for the
U.S. government that were likely to fail, but was required by his superiors to report that the
brake passed the necessary tests. His choice was to write the false report and go against his
ethical principles, or be fired and suffer the economic consequences.
He chose the former, even though his moral standards were in conflict with his actions.
Such standards include the norms we have about the kinds of actions we believe are right
and wrong, such as "always tell the truth." As Vandivier shows, we do not always live up to
our standards. Moral standards include norms we have about the actions we believe are
morally right and wrong, as well as the values we place on what we believe is morally good
or morally bad.
There are other types of standards as well, such as standards of etiquette, law, and
language. Moral standards can be distinguished from non-moral standards using five
characteristics:
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
3
1. Moral standards deal with matters that can seriously injure or benefit humans. For
example, most people in American society hold moral standards against theft, rape,
enslavement, murder, child abuse, assault, slander, fraud, lawbreaking, and so on.
2. Moral standards, we feel, should be preferred to other values, including self-interest.
This does not mean, of course, that it is always wrong to act on self-interest; it only
means that it is wrong to choose self-interest over morality.
3. Moral standards are not established or changed by authoritative bodies. The validity
of moral standards rests on the adequacy of the reasons that are taken to support
and justify them; so long as these reasons are adequate, the standards remain valid.
4. Moral standards are felt to be universal. People must abide by these standard rules
whether they want to or not.
5. Moral standards are based on impartial considerations. The fact that you will benefit
from a lie and that I will be harmed is irrelevant to whether lying is morally wrong.
6. Moral standards are associated with special emotions and a special vocabulary (guilt,
shame, remorse, etc.). The fact that you will benefit from a lie and that I will be
harmed is irrelevant to whether lying is morally wrong.
Ethics is the discipline that examines one's moral standards or the moral standards of a
society. It asks how these standards apply to our lives and whether these standards are
reasonable or unreasonable—that is, whether they are supported by good reasons or poor
ones. Therefore, a person starts to do ethics when he or she takes the moral standards
absorbed from family, church, and friends and asks: What do these standards imply for the
situations in which I find myself? Do these standards really make sense? What are the
reasons for or against these standards? Why should I continue to believe in them? What can
be said in their favor and what can be said against them? Are they really reasonable for me
to hold? Are their implications in this or that particular situation reasonable?
Taking Vandivier as an example, we might ask if writing the false report was really wrong
given his responsibilities to support his family. Moreover, the company, not Vandivier,
would be held responsible for any faulty brakes. Finally, as in 5. above, even if he did not
cooperate and was consequently fired, the brakes would still be manufactured and installed.
The consequences of writing the report or not would be the same, except that if he chose
not to participate he would be fired. It is in considering such points that we begin to do
ethics.
Ethics is the study of moral standards—the process of examining the moral standards of a
person or society to determine whether these standards are reasonable or unreasonable in
order to apply them to concrete situations and issues. The ultimate aim of ethics is to
develop a body of moral standards that we feel are reasonable to hold—standards that we
have thought about carefully and have decided are justified standards for us to accept and
apply to the choices that fill our lives.
Ethics is not the only way to study morality. The social sciences—such as anthropology,
sociology, and psychology—also study morality, but do so in a way that is quite different
from the approach to morality that is characteristic of ethics. Although ethics is a normative
study of ethics, the social sciences engage in a descriptive study of ethics.
Other fields, such as the social sciences, also study ethics; but they do so descriptively, not
normatively. That is, they explain the world but without reaching conclusions about whether
it ought to be the way it is. Ethics itself, on the other hand, being normative, attempts to
determine whether or not standards are correct.
A normative study is an investigation that attempts to reach normative conclusions—that
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
4
is, conclusions about what things are good or bad or about what actions are right or wrong.
In short, a normative study aims to discover what ought to be.
A descriptive study is one that does not try to reach any conclusions about what things
are truly good or bad or right or wrong. Instead, a descriptive study attempts to describe or
explain the world without reaching any conclusions about whether the world is as it ought to
be.
Business ethics is a specialized study of right and wrong applied to business policies,
institutions, and behaviors. This is an important study since businesses are some of the
most influential institutions within modern society. Business organizations are the primary
economic institutions through which people in modern societies carry on the tasks of
producing and distributing goods and services. They provide the fundamental structures
within which the members of society combine their scarce resources—land, labor, capital,
and technology—into usable goods, and they provide the channels through which these
goods are distributed in the form of consumer products, employee salaries, investors'
return, and government taxes. Today large corporate organizations dominate our
economies.
Though business ethics cover a variety of topics, there are three basic types of issues:
1. Systemic issues ─ questions raised about the economic, political, legal, or other
social systems within which businesses operate. These include questions about the
morality of capitalism or of the laws, regulations, industrial structures, and social
practices within which American businesses operate.
2. Corporate issues ─ questions raised about a particular company. These include
questions about the morality of the activities, policies, practices, or organizational
structure of an individual company taken as a whole.
3. Individual issues ─ questions about a particular individual within an organization and
their behaviors and decisions. These include questions about the morality of the
decisions, actions, or character of an individual.
Some theorists maintain that moral notions apply only to individuals, not to corporations
themselves. They say that it makes no sense to hold businesses "responsible" since
businesses are more like machines than people. Others counter that corporations do act like
individuals, having objectives and actions, which can be moral or immoral just as an
individual's action might be.
In 2002, for example, the Justice Department charged the accounting firm of Arthur
Andersen for obstruction of justice. Arthur Andersen was caught shredding documents
showing how they helped Enron hide its debt through the use of several accounting tricks.
Critics afterward claimed that the Justice Department should have charged the individual
employees of Arthur Andersen, not the company, because "Companies don't commit crimes,
people do."
Perhaps neither extreme view is correct. Corporate actions do depend on human individuals
who should be held accountable for their actions. However, they also have policies and
culture that direct individuals, and should therefore be held accountable for the effects of
these corporate artifacts.
Nonetheless, it makes perfectly good sense to say that a corporate organization has moral
duties and that it is morally responsible for its acts. Corporate policies, corporate culture,
and corporate norms all have an enormous influence on the behavior of corporate
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
5
employees. This is not to say that those human beings who make up a corporation are not
influenced by each other and by the corporate environment.
However, organizations have moral duties and are morally responsible in a secondary
sense; a corporation has a moral duty to do something only if some of its members have a
moral duty to make sure it is done, and a corporation is morally responsible for something
only if some of its members are morally responsible for what happened.
There are those that object to the application of ethics in business based on three
arguments, which are shown here in italics with a criticism of each argument.
1. In a free market, the pursuit of profit will ensure maximum social benefit.
a. First, most markets are not perfectly competitive markets
b. Second, the argument assumes that any steps taken to increase profits will
necessarily be socially beneficial. Companies pursuing profit and using
unethical practices can hardly be called competitive. For example, polluting
our environment at the same time can hardly be called ethical. The same
goes for price fixing, tax evasion, deceptive advertising, fraud, bribery and
concealing product hazards. When these practices are in play, the market is
not freely competitive.
2. A manager’s most important obligation as an agent is loyalty to the company
regardless of any ethical issue.
a. The loyal agent’s argument assumes that there are no limits to the manager’s
duties to serve the employer when, in fact, there are, i.e., the law of agency
states “…, in no event would it be implied that an agent has a duty to perform
acts which are illegal or unethical.”
b. Agreements do not change the moral character of wrongful acts nor does the
argument “I was following orders” justify them.
3. So, as long as the companies obey the law, they will have done all that ethics
requires.
a. Our pre-civil war slavery laws were contrary to any form of moral mandate.
b. The laws of Nazi Germany required anti-Semitic behavior.
c. Goldman Sachs helped Greece hide loans larger than European Union rules
allowed by disguising them as currency exchanges that did not have to be
disclosed. The Goldman Sachs managers were in effect saying if it was
legal, it was ethical.
There are arguments that support ethics in business. They include:
1. Ethics applies to all human activities.
2. Business cannot survive without ethics.
3. Ethics is consistent with profit seeking.
4. Customer, employees, and people in general care about ethical behavior.
5. Studies suggest that ethics does not detract from profits and seems to contribute to
it.
Ethics is sometimes confused with corporate social responsibility (CSR). Corporate
social responsibility refers to a corporation’s responsibilities or obligations toward society.
There are disagreements in business as well as in the academic world about what those
obligations include. The conflict is between the two sides that ask: do companies have a
responsibility to donate to charities or to give their employees higher wages and customers’
safer products? Or is the company obligated to maximize profits for their shareholders? At
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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the heart of this is the question: What is the purpose of business?
The late Milton Friedman argued that in a “free enterprise private property system” the
corporate executives work for the owners (shareholders) and must run the company in
accordance with their desires, which is usually to ethically and legally make as much money
as possible. He went on to say that businesses are obligated only to the stockholders and
that owners have the right to say how the corporation should be run because they own the
corporation so managers are obligated to do what the stockholders want. Further, a
manager has no right to give company money to social causes when doing so will reduce
shareholder’s profits. Managers can pay higher wages to employees or provide better
products for customers, or give money to local community groups or other causes, if in
doing so will make profits for the shareholders.
Friedman has many critics. They claim that the manager is an employee of the corporation,
not the shareholders. So, the executive is bound to serve the interests of his true
employer, not the shareholders. Secondly, the shareholders have limited rights such as the
right to elect the board of directors, the right to vote on major company decisions and right
to whatever remains after the corporation goes bankrupt and pays off its creditors. Third,
the executive’s responsibility, as Friedman claims, is to run the corporations as the
stockholders want the company to be run. In reality the executive probably has no idea
how stockholders want the company to be run. He/she really is required to run the
company in ways that serve many other interests (including employee and consumer
interests) besides those of the shareholders. Lastly, Friedman’s claim that when companies
maximize shareholders’ returns, society will best be served is not always socially beneficial.
Sometimes competitive forces steer companies in a socially harmful way.
A very different view is that of a “stakeholder’s theory”. Two scholars, Edward Freeman and
David Reed, pioneered this view. Any identifiable group or individual who can affect the
achievement of an organization’s objectives or who is affected by the achievement of an
organization’s objectives is a stakeholder. In other words, a stakeholder has a stake in
the company. A company should be run for the benefit of all stakeholders. This is based on
two supporting arguments, instrumental and normative arguments. Instrumentally, if a
company takes all stakeholders’ interests into account, they will be disposed to do their part
to support the company and its interests. From a normative viewpoint, and out of fairness,
the company is ethically obligated to be responsive to all stakeholders. All of these
concepts – rights, obligations, and fairness are ethical concepts so ethics is not only part of
a company’s responsibilities. Ethics also provides the basic normative reasons for corporate
social responsibility.
Which approach is correct, shareholder or stakeholder? Many businesses accept the
stakeholder theory, and most of the fifty U.S. States have passed laws that recognize
business’ obligations to its many stakeholders, even at the expense of stockholder interests.
1.2 Ethical Issues in Business
Technology consists of all those methods, processes, and tools that humans invent to
manipulate and control their environment. This has challenged contemporary business and
societies are transformed by the rapid evolution of new technologies. This presents new
ethical issues for business.
Throughout history, there have been technological changes from the agricultural revolution
at the beginning of mankind, to the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, to new
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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technologies presenting themselves at the end of the 20th century. The more recent
technologies included: information, nano and genetic technologies transforming society
and business and creating the potential for new ethical problems. They bring with them
questions of risks, which may be unpredictable and/or irreversible. Who should decide
whether the benefits of a particular technology are worth the risks? How will victims of bad
technology be compensated for their loss? How will risk be distributed? How will privacy be
maintained? How will property rights be protected?
And what about the question of property rights as related to information technologies.
What kind of rights does the original creator of the information have and how does it differ
from the property rights of someone who buys a copy? Is it wrong for me to use my
company’s computer system for personal business or to log onto websites that have nothing
to do with my work?
Virtually all of the 500 largest U.S. industrial corporations today are multinationals.
Operating in more than one country at once produces a new set of ethical dilemmas. For
example, multinationals can escape environmental regulations and labor laws by shifting to
another country. They can shift raw materials, goods, and capital so that they escape taxes.
In addition, because they have new technologies and products that less developed countries
have, multinationals must decide when a particular country is ready to assimilate these new
things. They are also faced with the different moral codes and laws of different countries.
Even if a particular norm is not unethical, they must still decide between competing
standards in their many operations.
Many issues that arise in business are related to the phenomenon of globalization. This
refers to the way nations are becoming connected so that goods, services, capital
knowledge, and cultural artifacts move across national borders at an increasing rate. The
volume and rate of transfer across borders has transformed the face of our world.
Multinational Corporations are at the heart of this process. Multinational corporations
are companies that have manufacturing, marketing, service, and administrative operations
in many different nations. They market their products in whatever nations offer
manufacturing advantages and attractive markets. They draw capital, raw materials, and
human labor from wherever in the world they are cheap and available. All of the 500
largest U.S. industrial corporations are multinationals.
Globalization has brought the world many benefits as the recognized name brands like Nike,
Motorola, General Electric and Ford build factories and establish assembly operations in
countries with low labor costs. They bring jobs, skills, income, and technology to regions of
the world that were formerly underdeveloped, raising the standards of living for these
countries and providing low priced goods.
But globalization has been blamed for inflicting significant harms on the world as well.
Critics claim it has benefited developed nations but have left behind many poorer nations
that only have cheap agricultural products to trade. Additionally, multinationals have
brought Western culture everywhere through movies, books, songs, games, toys, television
show, electronic gadgets, dances, fast foods, brands, art, magazines and clothes, driving
out distinctive local cultures and traditions that are in danger of diminishing or disappearing
altogether.
Critics have also said that multinationals can now pull their operations out of one country
and insert them into another that offers cheaper labor, less stringent laws and lower taxes.
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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They play one nation against another that has created a “race to the bottom.”
In addition, globalization has caused serious dilemmas for multinational managers. Forcing
the managers to deal with host countries whose laws, government practices, levels of
development and cultural understanding are sometimes much different than those from
which the multinational’s managers are familiar. Laws being different in foreign countries,
the multinational manager is faced with customs that may force the manager into making
the decision on which standards to adhere to, his home country’s or the host country’s. But
having a blanket rule to go along with local practices as well as one that always tries to
adhere to the higher standards of developed nations are both inadequate. Instead,
managers who want to operate ethically in foreign countries must judge each case as it
comes along. In some cases the choice may be to choose between staying in a country and
going along with a local practice that is clearly and seriously evil, or doing what is right and
leaving the country.
Ethical relativism is the theory that, because different societies have different ethical beliefs,
there is no rational way of determining whether an action is morally right or wrong other than
by asking whether the people of this or that society believe it to be right or wrong by asking
whether people of a particular society believe that it is. In fact, the multiplicity of moral codes
demonstrates that there is no one "right" answer to ethical questions. The best a company can
do is follow the old adage, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." In other words, there are no
absolute moral standards.
Critics of ethical relativism point out that it is illogical to assume that because there is more
than one answer to an ethical question that both answers are equally correct or even that
either answer is correct. They also maintain that there are more similarities than differences
even among what seem to be very divergent societies.
The late Philosopher James Rachels put the matter quite succinctly:
The fact that different societies have different moral codes proves nothing. There is also
disagreement from society to society about scientific matters: in some cultures it is
believed that the earth is flat, and evil spirits cause disease. We do not on that account
conclude that there is no truth in geography or in medicine. Instead, we conclude that in
some cultures people are better informed than in others. Similarly, disagreement in
ethics might signal nothing more than that some people are less enlightened than
others. At the very least, the fact of disagreement does not, by itself, entail that truth
does not exist.
Why should we assume that, if ethical truth exists, everyone must know it?'
However, the most telling criticisms of the theory point out that it has incoherent
consequences. For example, it becomes impossible to criticize a practice of another society
as long as members of that society conform to their own standards. How could we maintain
that Nazi Germany or pre-Civil War Virginia were wrong if we were consistent relativists?
There must be criteria other than the society's own moral standards by which we can judge
actions in any particular society. Though we should not dismiss the moral beliefs of other
cultures, we likewise should not conclude that all systems of morality are equally
acceptable.
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
9
This leads to a discussion of a framework called”Integrative Social Contracts Theory”
(ISCT). According to this way of looking at moral standards in different societies, there are
two kinds of moral standards (1) Hypernorms which consist of moral standards that should
be applied to people in all societies, and (2) Microsocial norms which are those norms that
differ from one community to another and that should be applied to people only if their
community accepts those particular norms. Microsocial norms can be thought of as part of
a social contract that the members of a society has accepted. Examples are:
1. Hypernorms – might be human rights principles and principles of justice that apply
to all people in all communities.
2. Microsocial - one example is the norm when traveling a married woman must be
accompanied by her husband or a male relative, a norm that is practiced in Saudi
Arabia and several other Arab countries but not in the United States nor in Europe.
ISCT claims that hypernorms take priority over microsocial norms.
Moreover, according to ISCT, when a manager is operating in a foreign community, the
manager should follow the microsocial norms of that community, so long as they do not
violate any hypernorms. If the microsocial norms of a community violate a hypernorm, then
the manager should not follow that microsocial norm.
1.3 Moral Reasoning
This section investigates how we examine our own moral standards and apply them to
concrete situations and issues. It first looks at the process of moral development itself.
We sometimes assume that a person's values are formed during childhood and do not
change. In fact, a great deal of psychological research, as well as one's own personal
experience, demonstrates that as people mature, they change their values in very deep and
profound ways. Just as people's physical, emotional, and cognitive abilities develop as they
age, so also their ability to deal with moral issues develops as they move through their
lives.
Lawrence Kohlberg identified six stages of moral development: Moral rights
Level One: Pre-conventional Stages
1. Punishment and Obedience Orientation - At this stage, the physical consequences of
an act wholly determine the goodness or badness of that act. The child's reasons for
doing the right thing are to avoid punishment or defer to the superior physical power
of authorities. There is little awareness that others have needs similar to one’s own.
2. Instrument and Relativity Orientation- At this stage, right actions become those that
can serve as instruments for satisfying the child’s own needs or the needs of those
for whom the child cares.
At these first two stages, the child is able to respond to rules and social expectations and
can apply the labels good, bad, right, and wrong. These rules, however, are seen as
something externally imposed on the self. Right and wrong are interpreted in terms of the
pleasant or painful consequences of actions or in terms of the physical power of those who
set the rules.
Level Two: Conventional Stages
Maintaining the expectations of one's own family, peer group, or nation is now seen as
© 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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valuable in its own right, regardless of the consequences.
1. Interpersonal Concordance Orientation - Good behavior at this early conventional
stage is living to the expectations of those for whom one feels loyalty, affection, and
trust, such as family and friends. Right action is conformity to what is generally
expected in one's role as a good son, daughter, brother, friend, and so on.
2. Law and Order Orientation - Right and wrong at this more mature conventional stage
now come to be determined by loyalty to one's own larger nation or surrounding
society. Laws are to be upheld except where they conflict with other fixed social
duties.
Level Three: Post-conventional, Autonomous, or Principled Stages
1. Social Contract Orientation - At this first post-conventional stage, the person
becomes aware that people hold a variety of conflicting personal views and opinions
and emphasizes fair ways of reaching consensus by agreement, contract, and due
process.
2. Universal Ethical Principles Orientation - At this final stage, right action comes to be
defined in terms of moral principles chosen because of their logical
comprehensiveness, universality, and consistency.
At these stages, the person no longer simply accepts the values and norms of the groups to
which he or she belongs. Instead, the person now tries to see situations from a point of
view that impartially takes everyone's interests into account. The person questions the laws
and values that society has adopted and redefines them in terms of self-chosen moral
principles that can be justified in rational terms.
Kohlberg's own research found that many people remain stuck at an early stage of moral
development. His structure implies that later stages are better than the earlier ones.
Kohlberg has been criticized for this implication, and for not offering any argument to back
it up.
Carol Gilligan, a feminist psychologist, has also criticized Kohlberg's theory on the grounds
that it describes male and not female patterns of moral development. Gilligan claims that
there is a "female" approach to moral issues that Kohlberg ignores.
Both Gilligan and Kohlberg agree that there are stages of growth in moral development,
moving from a focus on the self through conventional stages and onto a mature stage
where we critically and reflectively examine the adequacy of our moral standards.
Therefore, one of the central aims of ethics is the stimulation of this moral development by
discussing, analyzing, and criticizing the moral reasoning that we and others do, finding one
set of principles "better" when it has been examined and found to have better and stronger
reasons supporting it.
Moral reasoning itself has two essential components: an understanding of what reasonable
moral standards require, and evidence or information concerning whether a particular
policy, person, institution, or behavior has the features of these moral standards. People
often fail to make their moral standards explicit when they make a moral judgment, mainly
because they assume them to be obvious. This assumption is not always true, however;
often we must retrace a person's moral reasoning to deduce what their moral standards are.
Of course, it is not always easy to separate factual information from moral standards.
