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MGX5020: Business ethics in a global environment
Week 4:
Moral Duties and Rights:
Managing Stakeholder
Relations

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Your Tutor (me)
Nathan Eva
– nathan.eva@monash.edu
– 9903 4065
– Building N Level 5 Room 14
– www.slideshare.net/nathaneva

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Week 3 Lecture
• Consequentialism
– Utilitarianism
> considers the consequences for all effected by the action.
– Egoism
> considers only the consequences for the individual (the actor/
agent).

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Assignment 1
• Guided Reading Activities
• Weeks 2-11
• Worth 20%
• Need to submit at least 8 of 10
• Handed in to Cristina
• Put your name, my name, your student number and
class time on the front
• Info on Moodle

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Assignment 2
• Group Assignment (groups of 4)
• Research Paper with subheadings
• Week 8 Monday September 16 4pm
• 3,000 words
• Worth 30%
• You are required to explore the ethical and business
dimensions of a chosen issue falling under one of
the topics in the assignment guide.

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Assignment 2
• Does anyone not have a group?
• We will have time for group work towards the end
of the class

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Week 4
• Deontology
– If the principle is good, then the action is morally right
– If the principle is bad, then the action is morally bad
– Knowledge of wrong from sacred or human reason
• Kant
– Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same
time will that it should become a universal law. (consistency)
– Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in
that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.
(human dignity)
– Act only so that the will through its maxims could regard itself at
the same time as universally lawgiving. (universality, not
subjectively)

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Shareholder and Stakeholder
• Define stakeholder and shareholder?
• Where do you believe the duty lies of an
organisation?
• In groups, use the stakeholder or shareholder
perceptive to defend/condemn the actions of Enron
and Ford?

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Question for you
You are a doctor in a hospital. You have four patients who
need organ transplants. One requires a lung, one requires
a heart, two require kidneys. You have another patient who
has just been admitted with a gunshot wound which, if not
treated, will prove fatal, but treatment will save her. The
wounded patient is a suitable organ match for each of the
four requiring transplants, and the gunshot has not harmed
any of the organs. If you withhold treatment, and she dies,
you will be able to harvest her organs for transplant, and
save the other four. If you treat her, her life will be saved,
but the four other patients will die. Should you treat her?
Why, or why not?

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Kant
1. Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same
time will that it should become a universal law. (consistency)
Test question: Is it overall desirable that all agents, confronted with a
similar situation, acted in the same way? (e.g. breaking terms of
contract)
2. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in
that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.
(human dignity)
Test question: Is my act (behaviour) treating each human being as
valuable in their humanity (for their own sake) and not just as a means
to other ends? (e.g. treating employees only as ‘commodified labour’ or
‘human resources’)
3. Act only so that the will through its maxims could regard itself at
the same time as universally lawgiving. (universality, not
subjectivity)
Test question: How would this act be received if it were reported in the
press? (e.g. Enron accounting practices)

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Question for you
You are a doctor in the same hospital in the same
situation. The only difference is that the gunshot patient will
not die without treatment, she simply requires a bed to
recuperate. She is on a drip (hospital procedure for any
wounded patients), but she would still survive without it.
You could, without her knowing, administer Lethabarb
through the drip. It is a heavy anesthetic that will painlessly
kill her, without any adverse effects upon her organs. Once
she is clinically dead, you could, again, harvest her organs,
saving those four patients requiring transplants. Should
you administer the Lethabarb? Why, or why not?

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Milgram Experiment
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f6LLV3fkXg
• What are the different theories we have covered
that link with what we are seeing in this video?
• Where does the duty lie – the scientist or the
participant?
• Talk me through the ethical dilemma

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Assignment 2
Spend some time now:
Preparing a brief research plan for their project:
• Topic you will do
• Who will do what part and by when
• Timeline of completion