First published 2017 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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ISBN 978-1-78630-237-3
Humanity, which as a topic is so difficult to define, is a creation of everyday life, of which we are not always sufficiently and consciously aware. Yes, it involves all of us collectively, but especially every one of us individually. This global community is the fundamental issue that must gather all men and women in a single worldwide project because it is a referral for unity and inclusivity.
It is naive to try to make us believe in the immediate feasibility and unimpeded achievement of such ambition. The contribution of Humanity is also the result of advanced progress: that of the sciences, whether physical or mathematical, natural or environmental, technological or philosophical.
This last philosophical dimension confronts us with deep thinking: it is an invitation to give a meaning to the progress of technology, that only morality and ethics can bring.
There is no greater task than trying to confront human beings with themselves. Although human nature has always been invited by man and science to progress, it is clear that evolution has not systematically followed natural courses, which in any case are harmonious and inclusive. The risk that humanity runs is that of perverting itself in a vision that goes beyond the highest interest of the community, to serve only that of individual destinies. Subjugation emerges under this condition.
The principles of good ethical conduct depend on postures which do not appear to be simply “spontaneous” and which call for a real awareness of the actions generated and the indirect consequences resulting from them.
We are therefore dealing with the question of what can constitute intangible principles related to the matter of foundations in morality: this is a means of having a strong source of inspiration and reference values.
It is therefore natural that Pierre Massotte invites each of us to discover the Ethics of Responsibility, outlined in the essential registries of good conduct of people in the world of business. Therefore, we have a code of conduct that crosschecks and merges all the implications of human beings in their relationships within a global societal framework.
There is certainly a difficulty in formalizing a modeling framework in this subject matter. Indeed, forging vital reference values naturally leads to creating and defining the conditions for the necessary in-depth elaboration, before a given action, of the elements that will be used in different inherited situations. It provides an inspiration based on the values of virtue, coming to question societal relationships, either socially or business oriented. Finally, they form only one whole, as soon the implied behavior of anybody, at this level of involvement, is to be virtuous.
It is not by chance that many of the references quoted in this book come from large companies or social organizations across many fields. Among the organizations, the Rotary plays an important role that cannot be ignored because, for more than a century, it has created the conditions for a global involvement in ethics, to provide an active contribution to working towards peace, and therefore working for humanity as a whole.
Through its programs, and its members’ requests for impartiality and integrity, both on a personal and vocational level, the Rotary calls on its members to adopt an ethical conduct in all of their actions. The goal is thus to set up a reference framework with which to bring together or interconnect people, in order to lead a noble novation. There is a distinction to be made between what makes cohesion possible and what enables the resilience of this cohesion. The humanitarian challenge is thus converging toward the principle of necessity in ethics.
The Rotary’s four-way test urges its members (Rotarians) to ask themselves the following questions before making a decision and putting it into action:
It is not enough to be convinced in order to assert an ethical posture. Each of us must be responsible for this, which inevitably refers to the question of “public affairs”, in the sense in which the Romans understood it; that is to say, in the so-called res-publica, which corresponds much more to the common domain of the society rather than the public domain.
This is the strength of Pierre Massotte’s invitation in this book, for which he did me the honor of writing this foreword. The best intent is to serve the development thus produced at the level of humanity, convincing us that this development is an incentive to go even further.
The acceleration of time we are currently experiencing, due to the arrival of new information and communication technologies, gives an even greater dimension to this issue. We must continue believing that it is sometimes necessary and important to take a break and make time for a period of thought and analysis.
Thus, it is up to us to answer and live up to this invitation, and to make the aspirations and dreams which arise from this more real, in order to make Ethics a good deal, but above all an ambition to be shared and realized.
In this introduction, we recall some theory and practices introduced in Volume 1 [MAS 17a]. The objective is to have a common understanding about these practices either in the enterprises or in the organizations leading to the corporate culture specific to the various populations in some different countries.
Furthermore, we may find some weaknesses and shortcomings that we will try to refine or enhance in the second volume, in order to better face the new challenges of our environment.
The first book (Volume 1 [MAS 17a]) is dedicated to the conventional approach of ethics, as developed by the ancient Greeks: due to our rationality, we keep looking for items, facts, approaches, causes and implementations that govern the design and governance of a new business world.
We have focused on the operationalization of business ethics either in the Rotary or in industry and organizations. To summarize our approach and to avoid any misunderstanding, in the future, we will consider the following concepts.
As often recalled, it is an alternative each time no laws, no rules and procedures are available. However, it is of help when developing codes of conducts, rules and principles (norms) by which executives and others in positions of responsibility will judge and guide meaningful decision-making.
BE covers the ethical and moral principles and problems that arise in a business environment. It is expressed through written and unwritten codes of principles and values: it governs decisions and actions within an organization. In most cases, BE makes the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do what is right according to the consciousness of the decision maker.
To be more precise and to make it easier to understand BE, we will provide a rule that we have applied across the two volumes: according to the level of the structure to be considered, we denote personal ethics (the kind of ethics used on a microscale such as very small SME, entrepreneurship, small team work, etc.), professional ethics (on an intermediate scale such as a production unit, etc.), and corporate ethics (on a macroscale such as a large company, etc.). All three levels are intricately related as in a fractal structure [MAS 06].
When specialists or philosophers try to classify ethics, they generally use a qualitative clustering, based on psychological, mental, or philosophical variables. Therefore, when analyzing the available documentation, in most case studies, one considers three or four different types of ethics [YAN 14].
Here, as an example, we will consider four main ethical segmentations based on individualism, utilitarianism, Kantianism or virtues, relevant to an action or decision that can be seen as ethical or unethical:
2) Utilitarianism: utilitarianism’s main intent is to make everyone happy. Here specialists consider the societal environments that are developing in the area of hedonism and eudemonism. This was developed in Business Ethics Volume 1, but also in [MAS 15a].
Utilitarianism theory consists of bringing happiness or justice to everyone and acts in the interest of the overall good. When doing so, people put their cooperation in jeopardy, but are trying to make the best from a bad situation.
Virtue theorists recommend being honest in the mutual agreements and relationships with both employees and customers. Also, people must work hard, produce quality, have good ideas and should be fair in their practices. Finally, people are required to be courageous in their actions they merely conform to the nominal security.
For the sake of simplicity, in our book we did not consider such philosophical classifications. Several times we said it was necessary to use our best judgment according to our consciousness considering the following three factors: lack of skills, ignorance and greed. It is a kind of “social” ethics that causes the death of a civilization, or any type of organization, and inevitably leads to exclusivity. In the framework of the Rotary, or even in social networking or businesses, it may cover most of the encountered situations.
Volume 1 presented an overview of what is happening in the working world. Theory, practice and current recommendations were developed through examples issued from the Rotary or industrial companies.
In it we spoke primarily of our experience in ethics and BE. We described some notions of complexity and evolution, and we could better understand why and how ethics is becoming essential for the sustainability of our systems.
Moreover, we saw how BE can be implemented in current enterprises according to a corporate and societal culture, the geographical context, etc. Thus, in this book, we are both in the present and in the short-term horizon.
BE is linked to system complexity and evolution theory. In its more mundane context, BE expresses the fact that responsible people and executives are afraid of losing control of complex phenomena. It is associated with the need to preserve a situation in the face of apparently irreversible changes. This is the reason why “integration” of BE becomes so important.
Also, concerning the intrinsic system complexity and the growing complexity of nature: we stated in this book that simplexification was necessary to manage, monitor and control complex systems. I will add that simplexification enables us to understand complexity. Indeed, as often said in the Advanced Technology Group, within IBM EMEA, the simple modeling of a complex system is able to generate 50% of the solution about a given problem, while re-engineering provides the remaining part of the solution: everything starts with an organization, everything ends with another.
In this book, some people will find that a lot of things are wrong. This may be true, but some of them will be useful: it is a positive statement, since the whole content is not just a survey and review of conventional and various integrated processes.
Finally, concerning learning principles and the need for diversity developed in the book, we will recall two points:
In this book, we consider that the world is changing. We are living in a very dynamic environment following Moore’s Law. The future will again impose a paradigm shift.
This is mainly related to the new context, with the impact of new technologies, advanced sciences and societal evolution. Thus, we will talk about the extension of concepts related to the dissemination and intrusive impact of the advanced sciences.
Indeed, ethics (BE) will now manifest itself along several directions:
The new technologies considered and described in Chapter 1 are related to the general concept of NBIC. NBIC refer to Nanotechnologies, Biotechnologies, Information technologies and Cognitive sciences.
Thus, it will here be very important to describe this new context, in order:
This is consistent with the following results concerning a review of the main challenges involved in sustainable (then ethical) systems.
“The 15 Global Challenges” report, updated annually, is a good introduction to the key issues of the early 21st Century in professional areas and vocational services [MAR 16].
Figure I.1. Interconnected challenges Network
In Figure I.1, the last challenge (Global Ethics, #15) is in fact the most important one. Here, ethics is a comprehensive concept, covering, influencing, or relating to the whole word. As usual, the whole word is considered as a set of elements closely interconnected through telecommunications networks, and as being interdependent economically, technically, socially, and politically. The description of the above figure, with a range of views and actions to address each issue, enriched with regional views and progress assessments have been updated each year since 1996 and published in an annual status report [MAR 16]
In “The 15 Global Challenges”, a framework to assess the global and local prospects for humanity is provided. We can briefly describe these 15 challenges through a set of questions as follows:
The challenges studied and covered in Volume 1 are those included between 1 and 11.
In Volume 2, we will address the challenges 12, up to 15.
Whatever the volume considered, and considering the complexity theory, we can say that all the challenges are interdependent: an improvement in one makes it easier to address others; in the same way, the deterioration in one makes it harder to address others. No challenge is more important than the other: they are transnational in nature and trans-institutional in solution. They cannot be addressed by any executive or institution acting alone. The best fitted or balanced solution is the result of a consensus obtained through auctions or game theory approaches.
The development of new concepts of ethics is the result of several steps and feedback loops in an evolutive process. In the case of the impact and influence of advances and progress in our society, we could think about the following graph.
Figure I.2. Main Interacting factors involved in the BE evolution
In this graph (Pierre Massotte), the regulation is not coming from the legal or moral laws, but from “mother nature” which is guided by a whole sustainability relevant to the code types that underpin evolution in the nature [MAS 15a].
In Volume 2, BE should draw our inspiration from another world. It is a type of perspective, concept, advice and recommendation that we will detail and integrate in order to develop a more global and realistic paradigm leading to the “whole ethics”.
Therefore, the “whole ethics” concept will become a more consistent concept.
According to [CAR 02] and Figure I.1 related to the 15 challenges of ethics, the final objective is to obtain a “global ethics” within a full sustainable environment.
Figure I.3. One world: the ethics of globalization [CAR 02]
“Many people have written about the economic meaning of globalization”; in his book, ‘One World: The Ethics of Globalization’, Peter Singer [CAR 02], explains its moral meaning. The world has been fully transformed in recent years by phenomena affecting us all: digitization and globalization.
Today, national borders have less meaning regarding issues of trade, environment and health. Associated with the most important technological advances, they left us with a legacy of connectedness that we cannot ignore since it surrounds us.
Globalization has changed the way societies work and the way individuals think and interact with one another. In such a world, what do we ethically and morally owe to our fellow human beings? This question is of key importance. However, we will not go so far: we will just try to anticipate what is going on, what possible impacts we may have on the human species level, and then we will try to deduce some BECC.
As technologies, advanced sciences, society evolution and globalization move forward, we may ask the following question: how can we govern the ethics of nations and of individuals? How will BECC evolve in all companies? Since we are mainly involved in “applied ethics”, as described above (in the different types of ethics), we will say that what is important is to stick with our values and morality that have been referred to, in many countries, as the Judeo-Christian inheritance in Europe, for instance.
A person who is able to examine important questions with integrity, rigor, originality, with his own emotions and consciousness, can be described as intellectually astute, morally serious and ethical.
As we can see, we are far from philosophical considerations; we are just trying to be responsive, efficient and effective, and… preparing the big move of ethics.