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Running head: Business Ethics 5 Business Ethics 5 Name Course Tutor 12th November, 2010 SECTION A I defend Norman Bowie’s arguments in “Relativism and the Moral Obligations of Multinational Corporations” that basic principles do not vary among cultures. Multinationals should therefore uphold universally or otherwise underlying ethical practices that uphold human rights. The basic underlying ethical principles do not vary among cultures and moral relativism is a phenomenon that should be disregarded since it is anchored in shallow soils.
Moral relativism for one, avoids any objections directed at it as regards any kind of utilitarianism and consequentialism. It allows the execution of supererogatory deeds that go above and beyond the set calls of duty; this is the case because these acts may be committed without opposition from the society’s moral code of conduct. In addition to this moral relativism defies the Triviality expostulation since it allows the particular culture to dictate the acts that are morally significant and those that are not.
Criteria on which the judgments of the moral significance of the act are based vary from society to society; this argument is however to the benefit of moral relativism as it fails to impose any other outside standards on their members. It should also be noted that the keeping of the expected code of conduct and the execution of punishments is directly linked to the standards system of the society on which the infractions took place. In this case these actions are evaluated on the same platform as they were performed; the wronged is the judge and the punisher which should not be the case in normal life.
Moral relativism does not allow reformers to try and point out the flaws in a society’s practices so they can improve them, moral relativism is intolerant and calls for acceptance of the society as is. Moral relativism fails to cater for people from more than one society, where each society has its own set of practices or entities such as corporations or church societies. Therefore moral relativity is restricted to people from only one society. SECTION B I believe corruption is corruption for sure undermine human rights.
This can be well explained by practical situations when corruption has led to the diversion of fund intended for the improvement of human rights being channeled to personal enrichment. Let say for instance, funds were allocated for the construction of a hospital to improve access to the affordable healthcare to a community then an individual corruptly makes away with the money, the human rights of the community are infringed. Where funds are misused at the expense of healthcare for the poor this amounts to human rights infringement.
It is a human right to have development and if the economic development of a country is affected by corruption, let say for instance engages in corruption and development of a country is compromised, this constitutes an infringement of a human right. When governments engage in corruption they don’t provide a good environment for development and this constitute human right infringement. Corruption can bring with it disasters since it allows contractors to perform substandard work, if for example work involves civil structures it could lead to the collapsing of bridges, this happed in china and caused several deaths.
Corruption poses a massive threat to not only civic but also political rights this is as is in the case where a sitting government uses government to its advantage in suppressing the opposition. This way human rights are infringed. Corruption does not promote democracy, a fundamental human right. Corruption can also contribute to the acquisition of public land or the destruction of natural resources such as the rainforest that lead to environmental hazard that bring famine especially in third world countries, this is an infringement of human rights.
It is therefore evident that corruption leads to human rights infringement and the world should stand up and against from this article. References 1. Evans D. M. , (2008) The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: the system in practice, 1986-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2. Hinman L. (2007) Ethics: a pluralistic approach to moral theory. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning. 3. Steinmetz S. , (1994) Democratic transition and human rights: perspectives on U. S. foreign policy . Albany, NY: SUNY Press 4. Brink D. O. (1989) Moral realism and the foundations of ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press