Week 4: Day 11

Business in Society

 

Diversity:

Exercise: List 5 nouns that describe yourself and answer the question: "Who am I?"

 

Discussion follows of "social identity theory." What social categories are salient? Why?

 

Diversity: - what are the implications for these types of differences?

Age

Gender/Sexual Orientation

Race/Ethnicity

Religion

Capabilities/Disabilities

Justice/Fairness:

 

The concept of distributive justice refers to how rewards and burdens will be allocated. What is fair? Fairness can be formulated in varying ways:

Specific Principles of Distributive Justice (See Note below.)
Principle	Formulation
Strict Egalitarian	Every person should receive equal benefits and burdens
Merit--Plato's Version	People should be rewarded with positions of responsibility according to their intelligence, capacity for devotion to the public good, and education.
Merit--Seniority	Persons should be rewarded financially according to the number of years they have held a job.
Merit--Effort	. . . according to their work effort.
Merit--Output	. . . according to the quantity and quality of their work
"Socialist"	People should be assigned burdens according to abilities, benefits according to need.
Libertarian	Burdens should be assigned as they are voluntarily accepted, benefits as others voluntarily give them and as one creates them for oneself through labor on materials of which one is rightful owner
From: http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/ethics/justice.htm Jan Garrett at Western Kentucky University

John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971) offered the following:

Imagine that you exist in a new state of nature, an Original Position. You exist in a "veil of ignorance" about yourself  but will act in an informed way to advance your self interest. You can see that there are people "out there" who are disadvantaged, discriminated against.

You are now asked to draw up the rules that will govern society. Because you are ignorant of your own characteristics acting in self interest you would develop policies that do not disadvantage anyone or discriminate.

Because you would not want the generation to which you belong to have fewer resources than other generations, you would endorse the principle that all generations have the same rights to resources, future as well as present.

This reasoning leads to general principles of justice to structure society in the real world:

1. Principle of Equal Liberty: Each person has an equal right to the most extensive liberties compatible with similar liberties for all. (Egalitarian.)
2. Difference Principle: Decisions on resources and opportunities should  (a) provide greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons, and (b) be available to everyone if there is equality of opportunity.

The implication of Rawls argument is that (1) we should profess a society of equals as our goal and (2) in the absence of this ideal society (2) there is an obligation to promote it by advantaging those whom have been included.