Ethics and Communication

1
Ethics and Communication

• Johannesen, 1983
• Arent all communications persuasive?
• Is it right to change the message in any way for
  the audience?
• Communication effectiveness vs. deception
• Freedom of speech vs. responsibility
• Does sincerity release us from responsibility?
• Does intent matter?
• Ethical analysis requires consideration of
  communicator-motives-ends-audience-means
  (intentional/unintentional)-message-situation-effe
  cts

2
Why Study Ethics?

• Make us more effective communicators
• Protects us by making us more critical listeners
• Promotes internal consistency and satisfaction
• Promotes external consistency and satisfaction
• Opens our minds to more complex thought
• Intellectual and emotional maturity

3
Chapter 1

• Ethics is the study of morality
• Morality is the study of the rights and wrongs
  of behaviors, the rules that govern those
  behaviors, and the values reflected in those
  behaviors
• Study of morality is too often only descriptive
• Ethics is a discipline that should not only
  describe, but prescribe
• Ethical study does not assume a stable,
  correct, morality

4
Definition

• Ethics is a
• systematic attempt to make sense of our
  individual and social moral experience, in such a
  way as to determine the rules that ought to
  govern human conduct, the values worth pursuing,
  and the character traits deserving development in
  life (pg. 19-20).
• Ethics presupposes the existence of morality
• But the specifics of morality are not
  necessarily universal

5
Questions

• Should the government require ethical standards
  in corporations?
• Are organizations moral, immoral, or amoral?
• Myth of amoral business
• Who defines the standards?
• Isnt competition (capitalism) self-regulatory?

6
Questions

• Myth of Amoral Business
• What is it?
• Why do we accept it?
• What evidence is there that were changing?
• Courses like this
• Scandal reporting, environmental movements
• Social audits, ethical codes
• 1991 Federal Sentencing Guidelines for unethical
  corporate behaviors

7
American Business Value System

• What defines our values in America?
• Built on the concept of individualism and free
  enterprise
• Freedom requires that some fail, some get more
  than others
• Some forms of inequality are required. It is a
  necessary component of freedom
• We must be free to choose less efficient/more
  efficient processes. Not all choices are equal

8
Limits Fairness and equal opportunity

• Fairness
• What is fair?
• Honest and complete information is necessary for
  informed choice
• Equal opportunity
• What does this mean?
• What are the signs of a system with equal
  opportunity?
• NOT the same as equal representation
• Competition identifies and removes the less
  productive aspects of business
• Darwinism

9
There would be no immorality without morality
10
Ownership of Property

• Fundamental tenet of American free enterprise
• What is ownership?
• Freedom to use, destroy, sell ideas and things
• Ownership bestows exclusivity to these rights
• But, can we ethically say we own natural
  resources?
• Are those who happen to be born in barren land
  doomed?

11
Law and ethics?

• What is the relationship?
• Laws avoid the difficult ethical decision-making
  process
• Every law triggers a variety of loopholes
• People often equate legal with moral
• We cant make all immoral behavior illegal
  (lying)
• Laws are generally reactive ethics is proactive
• The retreat to law is not because of a desire
  to be immoral, it simplifies a very complex
  process
• Most organizations dont have the abilities,
  time, money, etc. to deal with moral issues

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Types of ethical study

• Descriptive ethics describe, compare, contrast
  moral systems
• Normative ethics make a coherent whole of
  variety of ethical norms, offers procedures to
  deliver moral standards that help us cope with
  dilemmas
• Metaethics define terms (good, bad, ethical,
  responsible etc.), looks for inconsistencies in
  the presuppositions and logic of ethical systems
• Special ethics ethical study in specialized
  areas (business, medicine, engineering etc.)