Moral Principles for Global Managers

Today's managers. Who increasingly work across cultures in a global economy, need more than lectures about behaving better. They need specific ethical criteria and moral principles to help them gauge the tightness or wrongness of their decisions. According to experts on the subject, history has produced three major ethical criteria.

1. Utilitarian theory, Goal: Judge actions by their consequences; achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. 
2. Theory of rights. Goal: Basic human rights should be respected.
3. Theory of justice. Goal: Rules and rewards should be administered impartially, fairly and equitably.

Differing value systems and perceptions guarantee competition among these three ethical criteria. Consider, for example, a situation in which the head of a company says a layoff of 10 percent of the payroll is needed to avoid bankruptcy. A utilitarian probably would agree to the layoff because relatively few would suffer while many would benefit. Meanwhile, a rights advocate concerned about the unfortunate layoff victims would object to the layoff. A layoff also would be unacceptable to a justice advocate who believes it would be fairer to cut everyone' pay before resorting to a layoff..