Business Sustainability, Corporate Governance, and Organizational Ethics

CHAPTER 25Where Ethics Come From: Gazing at the Human Condition

1. Introduction

Ethics in the generic sense are derived from a combination of individual and/or family values, moral principles, religious beliefs, cultural norms, and best practices. An individual’s values are derived from moral principles that were taught to or instilled into a person as being right or wrong, whereas an individual’s choices are the actions taken to do what is right or wrong. When conversations about ethics occur, we tend to assume that we have a strong interpersonal agreement about what ethics are. In order to explore this, we first must examine the question of where ethical ideas come from. This can be considered as a prelude to evaluating our acceptance of them, and then what to do about them.

Ethics have been a major concern for many types of people over the course of recorded history. This chapter uses the groups involved in this concern as the basis for subdividing the material presented. We begin with what the philosophers have said, because they produce the broadest view on the subject. We then examine the contributions of the world’s major religions. Both philosophy and religion are treated very briefly, since our aspirations for this material are modest. We next deal with the family and the community as influences upon the individual; these sections speak to the formation of both values and social norms. As a boundary condition upon the emergence of the individual within the group, the ...