5) Marginalisation of Ethics Flashcards
(20 cards)
What does the “marginalisation of ethics” in business refer to?
Ethics being treated as peripheral or secondary to core business concerns like profit, efficiency, and growth.
Why is ethics often marginalised in business?
Because business is seen as a technical or economic system, where “ethics” is outsourced to CSR teams or ignored in daily decisions.
What is the dominant logic of contemporary capitalism?
Efficiency, growth, market competition, and rationalisation — ethics is often subordinated to these goals.
What is the risk of separating “ethics” from core business functions?
Ethics becomes performative or symbolic (e.g. greenwashing), rather than embedded in decision-making.
How does the term “ethics” get neutralised in business language?
It’s replaced by softer terms like “values”, “transparency”, or “corporate culture”, making real moral reflection less likely.
What is “ethical fading”?
When moral aspects of a decision are overlooked or reframed in non-ethical terms, making it easier to act unethically.
What does it mean to “outsource” ethics?
Assigning ethical responsibility to specific roles or departments (e.g. CSR, compliance), removing it from everyone else’s thinking.
What is Bauman’s view of modern business ethics?
Ethics is reduced to procedures and rules, suppressing individual moral responsibility and care.
How does bureaucracy contribute to the marginalisation of ethics?
By turning ethical decisions into technical or procedural matters, stripping away emotional and relational dimensions.
How is the concept of the “Other” (Levinas) relevant to ethics in business?
The Other becomes invisible in systems that focus only on efficiency — ethics requires seeing and responding to their humanity.
What does Bauman mean by the “crisis of responsibility”?
People follow rules but ignore personal moral responsibility — a dangerous shift in ethical thinking.
How do contemporary ethical theories help critique the marginalisation of ethics?
They restore focus on care, responsibility, and emotional engagement with others — beyond rules and profit.
What is the “economisation of life”?
Reducing human experience and value to market logic — people become resources, and worth is measured by output or profit.
What is one danger of performative CSR?
It can create the illusion of ethical behaviour without real moral engagement or systemic change.
How does ethical marginalisation show up in language?
Through euphemisms like “rightsizing” instead of “layoffs” — language distances decision-makers from moral consequences.
What’s an example of moral responsibility being evaded in business?
A manager citing “policy” or “targets” to justify unethical treatment of staff — hiding behind the system.
What ethical theories challenge the marginalisation of ethics?
Levinas (the Other), Bauman (moral impulse), Derrida (undecidability), and virtue ethics (character and care).
How can ethics be re-centralised in business?
By embedding it in everyday decisions, valuing care over rules, and resisting the reduction of people to numbers.
What are the consequences of ethics being treated as optional?
Systemic wrongdoing becomes normalised, individuals feel disempowered, and businesses lose trust and legitimacy.
What does Derrida’s idea of undecidability offer in this context?
It reminds us that ethics involves difficult choices, reflection, and personal responsibility — not easy answers or procedures.
