Rashness and cowardice; 3) inirascibility and irascibility; 4) insensibility and self-indulgence. Highlight it with the help of the episodes and situations based on your personal experience.

c) Refer back to the text and prove that:

1) The admirable character traits are called virtues.

2) There is difference between vice: deficiency and vice: excess.

 

d) Discuss with your partner what you would add to or change in the information given in the text.

XI. a) Read the text and find the following information in the text:

1) Why is it important to teach and to know ethical business culture?

2) What does it mean to act ethically in everyday business life?

 

Text 2. Vice and Virtue in Everyday Business Life

 

We all (hopefully) mastered some “essential skills” at the beginning of our education. They include:

- Don’t take things that aren’t yours

- Play fair

- Don’t hit people

- Clean up your own mess

- Put things back where you found them

- Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody

- Take a nap every afternoon

- Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you

- Flush

Treating other people decently on a daily basis may not guarantee making the right decision when the heat is on, but at least a habit of caring about one’s acquaintances would be well-established. Such a habit would pre-install a panoply of developed cognitive skills and emotional sensitivities to assist moral decision-making when facing the tough cases.

There are some kinds of actions and attitudes to which we should attend in everyday business life.

One way of thinking about being a professional is to set out goals or standards of excellence related to (1) the quality of one’s work, (2) self-discipline, and (3) the treatment of others. Two of these goals are illustrated by forms of action which help to meet them and by activities which detract from them.

Self-control and respect for oneself

Self-controlled individuals know themselves, know their limits, and seek help when things get out of control in their lives. They work to establish a pattern of self-discipline which allows for productivity and satisfaction through regulating and addressing self-destructive and obsessive tendencies. By maintaining a kind of balance in their lives, they are happier and, in general, easier to work with.

Acting ethically:

     *maintaining a set of personal standards of excellence

     *keeping cool, but focused

     *knowing yourself and your limits

     *delegating when necessary or helpful

     *keeping a schedule others can rely upon

     *taking a day off when needed

     *resisting compulsive or obsessive fascinations

     *blending flexibility with reliable structure

     *getting help when things are getting out of control

To be avoided

 *”getting off” on others (even when they seem to deserve it

*sexual harassment (inflicting your sexual desires on others who aren’t interested)

*relying upon intimidation to make up for a sense of powerlessness

*spending the workday cruising the porno, sports, or gambling web-sites

*being a workaholic (and expecting others to do likewise)

*working at a speed you know is too fast

*looking good by making others look bad

*being a sleaze, a whiner, a slacker, a missing person

*inflicting your dissatisfaction with your present job upon everyone else.

Respecting others

Professionals treat other people as if they really mattered, rather than as tools, or mere opportunities for profit, labor, or resume-building. Imaginatively placing themselves on the receiving end of their actions, they create a climate of respect and dignity which allows everyone a meaningful measure of satisfaction and success. Professionals cleverly devise a strategy for consistently meeting their goals which allows others to do so also, with a minimum of bloodletting.

Acting ethically:

*keeping appointments and being punctual

*maintaining good records for those who will follow after you

*reading your email, returning calls, and passing on messages

*returning what you borrow (pens, files, catalogues)

*maintaining an agenda when you lead a meeting

*refilling the coffee pot, the copy machine, the company car

*giving recognition to others for their ideas, work (sharing the spotlight)

*exercising patience with others’ occasional bad days

*taking the blame for mistakes you made

*respecting others’ private lives, personal preferences, and eccentricities

*speaking up when a blatant injustice is being done to another

To be avoided

*making others waste their time as they wait for youto show up or be ready

*demanding a quid pro duo for promotions, job security, or just doing your job

*requiring excessive overtime of subordinates

*relying upon force and coercion to get the job done

*using others’ ideas without giving credit

*finding entertainment in others’ conflicts

*shifting the blame, always finding a scapegoat, demonizing

*upbraiding a subordinate or colleague in public

*always taking, never reciprocating

*allowing others to “stew” as they await your next action

In conclusion, our authentic moral intuitions (and our commitments to them) are developed and acted out in the manner by which we treat our fellow employees, supervisors, underlings, customers and suppliers in daily situations. If we don’t learn to treat our co-workers with dignity, respect, and kindness, this reduces the prospects for ethical decision-making when big money is at stake. Or, even if we do act ethically in the larger sphere – perhaps out of fear of legal consequences – there is a strange kind of hypocrisy and schizophrenia in projecting a public image of being a “good guy” while maintaining a workplace behind the scenes which is little better than a hell-hole. Such hypocrisy is not unknown, but perhaps we can do more to eliminate it by giving heed to the ethics of everyday business life.

                            (Dr. Douglas Chismar)

 

b) Highlight the following expressions with the help of the episodes and situations based on your personal experience:

 

1) maintaining a set of personal standards of excellence;

2) delegating when necessary;

3) blending flexibility with reliable structure;

4) going off on others;

5) being a sleaze, a whiner, a slacker, a missing person;

6) giving recognition to others for their ideas, work.

 

c) Work in pairs. Decide what other business ethics you would include.

 

XII. Read the text and find the answers to the following questions in it:

1) Why do concepts of “virtue” and “character” become necessary?

2) What does a human being need that enables him to behave consistently in an appropriate manner?

3) What kinds of virtue are distinguished?

4) What do human beings need to guide their actions?

5) What does prudence mean?

6) How is the skill in thinking of the needs and rights of others interpreted?

7) What are pleasure drive and the power drive? What do these virtues control?

 

 

              Text 3. Virtues and Character

The concepts of “virtue” and “character” become necessary when we observe that human behavior is modified by learning. Furthermore, this learning is not simply the acquisition of information but of skill in using that information in ways that are effective in satisfying human needs. Thus intellectual education is not just learning facts and explanatory theories, it is also acquiring skill in using this information for various freely chosen purposes, for example to be a lawyer or a doctor. Such skills are needed not only to solve the more difficult problems people meet in satisfying their needs, and especially the needs that are fixed in human nature but also to do so consistently and without undue stress and strain on the human organism.

Human beings are complex, bodily organisms that undergone constant change and variation. Consequently it is quite difficult for any of us who have made a choice of behavior to carry that through to the goal. We are easily distracted, discouraged, act impulsively, fail to adjust and adapt to change, etc., and consequently often end by frustrating ourselves. We need, therefore, a set of skills that enable us to behave consistently in an appropriate manner throughout the course of whole career, indeed of a whole life. It is too obvious that many people lack such skills and get in a life time get nowhere.

Since human beings have intelligence and free will they can use these to guide their actions to satisfy realistically and effectively not only to meet freely chosen goals, such as to make a million dollars, but also to satisfy those needs that are so much a part of our human nature that if they are not met we will be miserable and eventually will not survive. For example, our need to eat and drink is not something we choose, although we can choose within a certain range the kind of food and drink that we will use to meet this need and we can devise various technologies to produce these kinds. We must, however, eat and drink and we can do this in a way that truly satisfies our fixed need for proper nourishment and enables us not only to survive but be healthy. On the other hand, sadly enough, we can eat too little or too much or foods that do not make for health.

Thus for all of us, whether we be thick or thin, what, how much, and when is one of the fundamental problems of human life that each of us has the ethical responsibility to solve and this solution is not always easy. To consistently make good decisions about our eating we need an intellectual virtue that helps us realistically and cautiously yet with ingenuity decide how, what and when to eat. This is in part a problem that a skilled dietician who has acquired the technology or practical science of dietetics can help us with. But even after we have the dietician’s advice we have to apply it intelligently to the concrete situations we meet in life; for example, to choose or not to choose to have some desert at a party. To do this consistently requires the intellectual skill or virtue of prudence, skill in practical thinking about satisfying our innate nutritional needs.

Prudence is a virtue that especially requires a great deal of experience beyond book learning or set of rules.

It can be assisted, however, by a systematization that resembles a scientific theory since it is based on the life sciences and this is called ethics from the Greek ethos, “character”. To have a fully developed virtue of prudence at least an intuitive kind of ethics is required and for difficult problems in life a systematic, scientific ethics itself or the advice of those who know such an ethics. Thus prudence is the guide of human life and in practical living serves the same governing role as wisdom does in the theoretical order. It is practical wisdom. Thus it is primarily an intellectual virtue and yet it governs the ethical or moral order. Aquinas argues that it is, therefore, the greatest of the four cardinal moral virtues.

We cannot think realistically about our needs, however, if we do not take two other kinds of problems into consideration, namely, our relations with other people, and the control of our own emotions. Since human beings, as Aristotle said, are “political animals’, that is, social beings who cannot achieve their personal goals except in cooperation, communication and sharing with others in a common good, nothing could be more imprudent than to lack respect for the rights of others. Thus skill in thinking of the needs and rights of others is the second cardinal virtue, justice. It is difficult for us to be either prudent or just, however, if our emotions or rather the drives that produce these emotions prevent us from thinking clearly and objectively. Aristotle and Aquinas concluded from experience that we have two basic sets of such drives. One of these sets of drives are those that move us to seek what gives us physical pleasure, for example our pleasure in food; and another that moves us to seek power over our environment or other persons who raise difficulties for us in attaining our goals. The cardinal virtue that controls the pleasure drive is moderation (temperance) and the one that controls the power drive is courage (fortitude).

 

b) Agree or disagree with the following statements. Give your reasons.

1) Human beings are complex, bodily organisms that undergone constant change and variation.

2) Intellectual education is also acquiring skill in using the information for various freely chosen purposes.

3) If human beings’ needs are not met we will be miserable and eventually will not survive.

4) The skill in practical thinking about satisfying our needs is prudence.

5) In Freud’s opinion the power drive is aggression.

 

c) Referring back to the text prove that:

 

1) Virtues are skills that need to be developed require a great deal of experience.

2) We need a set of skills that enable us to behave consistently in an appropriate manner throughout the course of whole life.

3) There are four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, moderation and courage.