Table Of ContentPRofiTs ANd PRofEssioNS
ESSAYS iN BusiNESS ANd PRofEssioNAl EThics
CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN
BIOMEDICINE, ETHICS, AND SOCIETY
Profits and Professions: Essays in Business and Professional Ethics
edited by Wade L. Robison, Michael S. Pritchard, and
Joseph Ellin, 1983
Visions of Women, edited by Linda A. Bell, 1983
Ethics and Animals, edited by Harlan B. Miller
and William H. Williams, 1983
Who Decides?, edited by Nora Bell, 1982
Medical Genetics Casebook, by Colleen Clements, 1982
The Custom-Made Child?, edited by Helen B. Holmes, Betty B.
Hoskins, and Mi~hael Gross, 1981
Birth Control and Controlling Birth, edited by Helen B. Holmes,
Betty B. Hoskins, and Michael Gross, 1980
Medical Responsibility, edited by Wade L. Robison
and Michael S. Pritchard, 1979
Contemporary Issues in Biomedical Ethics, edited by John W.
Davis, Barry Hoffmaster, and Sarah Shorten, 1979
PRofiTS ANd PRofEssioNS
ESSAYS iN BusiNESS ANd
PRofEssioNAl ET~ics
EdiTEd By
WAdE L. RobisON
KAlAMAZOO COllEGE
ANd
JOSEp~ EUiN
WESTERN MicHiGAN UNivERSiTY
HUMANA PRESS • ClifTON, NEW JERSEY
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Date
Main entry under title:
Profits and professions.
(Contemporary issues in biomedicine, ethics, and society)
Some of the papers presented at a conference and
lecture series in professional and business ethics,
jointly sponsored by the Departments of Philosophy of
Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan University
during the 1979-80 academic year.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Business ethics-Congresses. 2. Professional
ethics-Congresses. I. Robison, Wade L. II. Pritchard,
Michael S. III. Ellin, Joseph. IV. Series.
HF5387.P76 1983 174 82-23399
ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-5627-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4612-5625-0
001: 10.1007/978-1-4612-5625-0
©1983 The HUMANA Press Inc.
Crescent Manor
PO Box 2148
Clifton, NJ 07015
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo
copying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise without written
permission from the Publisher.
Kenneth Kipnis, "Professional Responsibility
and the Responsibility of Professions. "
© 1978 Kenneth Kipnis. Reprinted by permission
of the author.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1978
CONTENTS
Preface ................................................ vii
Acknowledgments ....................................... ix
Part I: Professional Ethics
Professional Responsibility: An Introduction ................... 3
by Wade L. Robison
Professional Responsibility and the Responsibility of Profes-
sions ............................................... 9
by Kenneth Kipnis
Professionalization: The Intractable Plurality of Values ......... 23
by Lisa H. Newton
Moral Responsibility in Professional Ethics .................. 37
by Gerald J. Postema
Professionals, Clients, and Others .......................... 65
by Michael D. Bayles
Part II: Business Ethics
Business Ethics: An Introduction ........................... 77
by Joseph Ellin
Is Action Within the Law Morally Sufficient in Business? ...... 89
by L. Duane Willard
The Theoretical Twist to Irresponsibility in Business ......... 101
by Robert V. Hannaford
A Laissez Faire Approach to Business Ethics ................ 113
by Donald R. Koehn
The Business of Ethics .................................. 133
by Norman Chase Gillespie
The Moral Status of Bluffing and Deception in Business ...... 141
by Thomas L. Carson and Richard E. Wokutch
The Social Business of Business .......................... 157
by Richard T. De George
v
vi CONTENTS
Part III: Professionals In A Corporate Setting
Introduction ............................................ 177
by Michael S. Pritchard
Moral Leadership in the Corporate Setting .................. 183
by William F. May
Accountability and the Bureaucratization of Corporations ...... 215
by Thomas Donaldson
Evaluating Codes of Professional Ethics .................... 225
by John Kultgen
Professional Autonomy and Employers' Authority ............ 265
by Mike W. Martin
Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Workplace: A Philo-
sophical Inquiry .................................... 275
by Robert F. Ladenson
Whistleblowing: Its Nature and Justification ................. 287
by Gene G. James
On the Rights of Professionals ............................ 305
by Albert Flores
Index . .................................... 317
PREfACE
Suppose an accountant discovers evidence of shady practices while ex
amining the books of a client. What should he or she do? Accountants
have a professional obligation to respect the confidentiality of their cli
ents' accounts. But, as an ordinary citizen, our accountant may feel
that the authorities ought to be informed. Suppose a physician discov
ers that a patient, a bus driver, has a weak heart. If the patient contin
ues bus driving even after being informed of the heart condition,
should the physician inform the driver's company? Respect for patient
confidentiality would say, no. But what if the driver should suffer a
heart attack while on duty, causing an accident in which people are
killed or seriously injured? Would the doctor bear some responsibility
for these consequences?
Special obligations, such as those of confidentiality, apply to any
one in business or the professions. These obligations articulate, at least
in part, what it is for someone to be, say, an accountant or a physician.
Since these obligations are special, they raise a real possibility of con
flict with the moral principles we usually accept outside of these spe
cial relationships in business and the professions.
These conflicts may become more accentuated for a professional
who is also a corporate employee-a corporate attorney, an engineer
working for a construction company, a nurse working as an employee
of a hospital. For then, not only are there the conflicts that may occur
between the requirements of ordinary morality and one's professional
obligations and responsibilities, there is also the possibility of conflict
between all these responsibilities and the legitimate expectations of
employers.
The essays in this volume focus on issues involving professional
ethics, business ethics, and the ethics of professionals in business.
Parts I and II raise the question of whether business and the professions
are-or ought to be-governed by principles and standards markedly
different from those of ordinary morality. Do lawyers and business ex
ecutives, for example, have a right, or even in certain circumstances a
duty, to practice deception, ignore the interests of people adversely af
fected by their actions, or engage in other practices that ordinary mo
rality condemns?
Part III brings together the issues raised in Parts I and II: The eth
ical problems of being a professional and. those of being in business are
compounded for the professional in business. Part III examines the
special problems that professionals, following their professional eth
ics, might encounter as employees of a business organization. Con
sider engineers. To whom do they owe their main loyalty-the firm
that employs them, the users of the products they design, or perhaps
the taxpayer who often foots the bill? Since the vast majority of engi
neers work within a corporate setting, engineering is a profession that,
perhaps more than any other, raises clearly the issue addressed in Part
III: What special problems do professionals within the business world
face? For this reason, we have included several essays that focus on
ethical problems in the engineering profession.
Unlike other approaches, this book is not meant to be an attack on
the current level of ethics in business and the professions. Taken as a
whole, these essays constitute a constructive examination of the place
of ethics in business and professional life. The essays struggle with the
problems faced by those in business and the professions as they try to
be responsible. The book is meant to appeal to people in business and
the professions, as well as those in philosophy and academic ethics.
But, we think the book should also be of interest to every thoughtful
person who is concerned about the very important moral questions that
the institutions of business and the professions inevitably raise.
Wade L. Robison
Michael S. Pritchard
Joseph Ellin
This volume had its inception at a Conference and Lecture Series in
Professional and Business Ethics jointly sponsored by the Departments
of Philosophy of Kalamazoo College and Western Michigan Univer
sity during the 1979-80 academic year. We wish to thank the
Michigan Council for the Humanities and the Franklin J. Machette
Foundation for their financial support for our Conference.
Our volume is not a publication of the proceedings of the Confer
ence. Only some of the papers presented at the Conference are in
cluded, and each of these has been substantially revised for this
volume. Also, many of the papers included were not presented at the
Conference. They were selected becaue of their special relevance to
the themes of the volume.
Several of the essays in this volume have been published else
where. We wish to thank the publishers for permission to reprint these
essays. Michael Bayles's "Professionals, Clients, and Others" is
taken from his book, Professional Ethics (Belmont, California:
Wadsworth Publishing Co.), 1981. A shorter version of Thomas L.
Carson and Richard E. Wokutch's "The Moral Status of Bluffing and
Deception in Business" appeared in Westminster Institute Review,
Volume 1, April 1981. Norman Gillespie's "The Business of Ethics"
appeared in The University of Michigan Business Review, November
1975. Gene James's "Whistle-Blowing: Its Nature and Justification"
appeared in Philosophy in Context, Volume 10, 1980. A shorter ver
sion of Mike W. Martin's "Professional Autonomy and Employer's
Authority" was published in Ethical Problems in Engineering, Al
Flores, ed., 2nd edition, Volume 1 (Troy, NY: RPI Press), 1980.
Gerald Postema's "Moral Responsibility in Professional Ethics" was
published in New York University Law Review, Volume 55, April
1980.
Finally, we wish to give special thanks to Gwen West for her in
valuable assistance in making arrangements for the Conference and in
preparing the manuscript.
CONTRIBUTORS
MICHAEL D. BAYLES • Westminster Institute for Ethics & Human
Values, Westminster College, London, Canada
THOMAS L. CARSON· Department of Philosophy and Religion,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg,
Virginia
RICHARD T. DE GEORGE • Department ofP hilosophy, University of
Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.
THOMAS DONALDSON • Department ofP hilosophy, Loyola Univer
sity of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
JOSEPH ELLIN • Department ofP hilosophy , Western Michigan Uni
versity, Kalamazoo, Michigan
ALBERT FLORES· Department of Philosophy, Rensselaer Poly-
technic Institute, Troy, New York
NORMAN CHASE GILLESPIE • Department of Philosophy, Memphis
State University, Memphis, Tennessee
ROBERT V. HANNAFORD· Department of Philosophy, Ripon
College, Ripon, Wisconsin
GENE G. JAMES • Department of Philosophy, Memphis State Uni
versity, Memphis, Tennessee
KENNETH KIPNIS· Department of Philosophy, University of
Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii
DONALD R. KOEHN • Department of Philosophy, Illinois Wesleyan
University, Bloomington, Illinois
JOHN KULTGEN· Department of Philosophy, University of
Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
ROBERT F. LADENSON • Department of Philosophy, Illinois Insti
tute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois
MIKE W. MARTIN· Department of Philosophy, Chapman
College, Orange, California
WILLIAM F. MAY • The Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown
University, Washington, DC
