Team Ethics Paper

July 27, 2013
MGTOP593
Section 3 Team 4

Normative Ethical Decision Making Frameworks
1. Utilitarian approach is an ethical theory stating that the rightness and wrongness of an act depends on the consequences the act produces not the act itself. There are four components of the utilitarian approach: 1) the act does not need to maximize benefits but rather focuses on utility, 2) when calculating benefits, utilitarian’s consider themselves equally with others in the equation, 3) utilitarian’s focus on long-term consequences in addition to the short-term benefit-harm ratio. According to utilitarianism an act is not moral only because its benefits outweighs its harm, instead one where utility i.e. satisfaction has been maximized. (Frederick, 1999, pp. 17-19)
2. Unlike the utilitarian approach, the Virtue ethics approach does not take into account the principles of the action, the action itself, or the consequences of the action, rather focusing on the values and moral character of the person performing the act. Characteristics are the personal virtues. (Frederick, p. 30) The shortcomings of virtue ethics are its inability to solve the problem of dilemma when a person has contradictory values. Second, the justification problem, because every culture has different virtues how do you justify which character traits are virtues. (Hursthouse, 2013)
3. Deontological ethics approach judges the morality of an action based on expectations from the person based on a rule. Different forms of deontology include: rights, contractualism, divine command ethics, monistic deontology and duty. In the first form of deontology, Rights, an action is moral if it respects the right of other individuals. Contractualism considers an action morally right if it agrees with the rules and rational moral agents bring into social relationships. Divine command ethics,