| |
The second thing I’ve noticed is the focus on the
big unethical acts such as bribing officials, deliberately
manufacturing substandard products which will hurt or poison people or
manipulating annual accounts to lie to tax officials and investors.
I’m sure extensive work has been, and will continue to be, done on why
people undertake such unethical acts and what needs to be done to
reduce them.
However, there are many examples of unethical acts that seem to have
low impact or are on the borderline of being unethical and I wondered
what part ethics education could play in reducing them. Here are some
of the low-level unethical acts I’m thinking about.
- Making products which are legal but have
harmful effects on people’ health and burden the taxpayer in later
years, such as tobacco.
- Dumping small amounts of waste in a drain or
stream. This one act seems insignificant but eventually accumulates
and harms people and animals.
- Spreading rumours about competitors in order
to damage their business.
- Stealing from competitors in subtle ways. For
example, some businesses pay Google to advertise on websites and
they pay on a per-click basis. This means that Google gets paid
every time someone clicks on the advertisement. Some people click on
their competitor’s advertisements in order to exhaust their budget.
Similarly, some website owners will click on advertisements on their
web pages (or get others to do so) merely to get the commission
Google gives them.
- Sales people striving to sell people things
they know the people don’t need.
- Saying that things are free when they are not
(you have to buy or do something to get the freebie) or hiding
charges that are revealed only at the end of the transaction or
telling people they can get something very cheaply but not
mentioning that there are only three items at that low price.
- Stealing from customers by passing on
counterfeit coins, deliberately giving the wrong change or charging
twice for the same item.
I’m sure you can think of several other examples.
How can ethics education alleviate these unethical acts?
I suppose we have to start with the question: why do people do these
unethical acts? Superficially, the answer is clear – greed. But why
does greed drive people? It’s the short-term gain of the pleasure of
spending the additional money gained or of seeing ones’ competitor
destroyed (which again goes back to monetary reward). Clearly, those
who act unethically aren’t thinking of the pain they cause others or
if they are, don’t care or regard the hurt as so small as not to
matter.
It’s clear that lecturing won’t work to change unethical behaviours.
People know they are doing wrong and they know there is the
possibility of being disciplined and even fired. It seems there is
little else one can do until you think of the power of ethics
education.
Imagine if every employee in a business was required to do an ethics
education workshop where issues like those already listed were
discussed in detail. There would be extensive discussion about the
rights and wrongs. For example, if a member of the public gives
counterfeit coins to us aren’t we justified in giving them to another
member of the public?
Given enough time and detailed questioning by a skilled values
educator, people’s empathy would be awakened – they would eventually
realise the pain they’d cause others if they did unethical acts – even
small ones. They would feel the pain because they would realise they
wouldn’t like someone to do the same unethical act to them.
Not only that, people would be brought to a point where they can see
that hurting others actually is hurting oneself. In the long-run
hurting others will bring the unethical person pain in the form of
loss of self-worth, loss of respect of others, dismissal from ones job
and even a jail sentence.
Much more work needs to be done on the effectiveness of ethics
education as a way of getting people to think emotionally to such an
extent that they do come to realise the ineffectiveness of being
unethical for their own well-being.
There is considerable scope for research in the field of ethics
education and Dr Bill would be happy to assist postgraduate students
(with approval of their university or college) design and undertake a
study. Contact him on
bill.robb@valueseducation.co.uk
Copyright © 2008 Values Education Ltd
Note to editors. Feel free to use this article as long as the
following details are retained. “A values education article from CAVE
www.valueseducation.co.uk
”
|
|
