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Hosmer and the “Why Be Moral?” Question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Bill Shaw  and
John Corvino
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Abstract

In his “Why be Moral? A Different Rationale for Managers,” (Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 4, April, 1994), La Rue Tone Hosmer argues that managers should be moral because “acting in ways that can be considered to be ‘right’ and ‘just’ and ‘fair’ is absolutely essential to the long-term competitive success of the firm.” According to Hosmer, moral behavior generates trust among stakeholders, which leads to stakeholder commitment, which leads to increased stakeholder effort, which ultimately leads to corporate success. Though we agree with Hosmer's causal reasoning, we are concerned about an ancient loophole, namely, cases where the mere appearance of morality will generate the same trust, and commitment, and so on, and will thus enable managers to reap the material benefits of morality while nevertheless engaging in immoral practices. We conclude that a virtue ethics perspective will strengthen Hosmer's model so as to cover such cases.

Type
Response Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , July 1996 , pp. 373 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1996

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References

Notes

1 Business Ethics Quarterly, Volume 4, (April 1994), pp. 191-204.

2 Republic, Book II.

3 John, Hospers, Human Conduct: Problems of Ethics (2nd. ed. 1982), p. 29.Google Scholar

4 Kai, Nielsen, “Why Should I be Moral?” Methodos, 275‐306Google Scholar (1963), reprinted in Wilfrid, Sellars and John, Hospers, Readings in Ethical Theory, p. 758.Google Scholar

5 Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, p. 640.

6 Id. at 757-758.

7 Kant himself might not have accepted our solution here. But since we are not interested in defending a Kantian approach to ethics in the paper, we will leave that matter for the Kantians to debate.

8 One way to characterize, and to magnify, the differences between modernist and classical philosophers is as follows: philosophers of the modernist, neo-Kantian tradition tend to emphasize “doing,” as in “What action ought I to do when confronted with a moral dilemma?”, whereas those of the Aristotelian tradition of virtue ethics tend to focus on “being,” as in “What kind of person should I be to fare well and prosper.” The doing/being dichotomy can be taken too far, so we note it only to make the following observation. Modernists such as Kant and Prichard give a special account of moral decision-making. “Doing one's duty,” in their view, requires no justification. Indeed, any attempt to justify doing what one morally ought to do can have no other effect than to sully or to undermine the goodness and the purity of one's motives. In the classical tradition, however, human conduct (hence motive and intent) was best understood in terms of role fulfillment which, in turn, required internal (moral) and external (material) resources. In such a context there could be no disparagement of a person's wanting or desiring to be a good seamstress, chef, or sea captain and at the same time wanting or desiring all the fulfillment, honors, and material goods that marked one out as being successful in these roles. This distinction is particularly important to our project, and to Hosmer's, because it allows us to attribute moral worth to conduct (including profit making conduct) that can scarcely be described as being undertaken solely for the sake of duty.

9 In a source unexplored by Professor Hosmer, Robert Frank's thought-provoking work, Passions Within Reason, Frank advances powerful reasons for the view that “genuine altruism,” a quality which we will take to be of the same fabric as Hosmer's notion of trust, is a substantial factor in generating success in the business world. This line of research opens interesting possibilities for the validation of Professor Hosmer's model.

10 Edmund, Pincoffs, “Quandary Ethics,” Mind 552‐71Google Scholar (1971). This is not an argument that a virtue ethics regime operates in such a way as to forclose every incident of inappropriate behavior. However, a virtuous person with a prizeworthy character would not even be tempted to engage in behavior that was tainted with greed or any other vice. Bumyeat, M.F., “Aristotle on Learning to be Good,” in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (A.O. Rorty, ed. 1980).Google Scholar

11 The “warm glow” effect permits the extension of one's “utility function,” and allows economists to explain the conduct of preference maximizing philanthropists on the basis of public acclaim, and, without missing a beat, to explain the conduct of anonymous philanthropists on the basis of a “warm glow.” Armed with a warm glow factor, economists (and philosophers) of the value-neutral preference maximization school are equipped to dismiss all evidence of moral character and conduct as a mere preference for a warm glow.

12 “Corporate Roles, Personal Virtues” Business Ethics Quarterly 1993, p. 330

13 Ibid, 329-30.

14 We are indebted to Professor Tim Fort on this point.

15 We will not take this occasion to elaborate on the view that corporate profit is much too narrow a measure of success to stand alone, but that view, which has been espoused many times by others, is indeed our view. We suspect that Hosmer would not seriously contest this wider concept of corporate success, but, for the sake of the model, he has allowed profit to stand proxy for economic and other aspects of a socially productive firm.