I am currently studying different ethical theories to apply to real organisations ethical dilemmas. After my lecture we were asked to consider which ethical approach resonated with us the most. Surprisingly, I found the two ethical theories with opposing theories to contain ideas that I agreed with.
So firstly, what are these ethical theories? One that is a favourite of mine is the Modern Deontological Approach by Kant. He believed in simple terms that a good is not good because of what it effects, aka not good because of its consequences. This makes sense to me because of course a finite mind cannot be expected to predict the future consequences of every action. I also like Kant's theory because its like an onion,, with multiple layers of ideas. For instance he also believed in 'categorical imperatives.' Some rules are absolute such as 'Do not murder.' This reflects the ideas of religion without being constrained to biblical teaching like traditional deontological theory, but I wont dwell further on this point today because the point of this post is to compare these idea to another theory that I find reasonable.
This is known as the Teleological argument. The main argument is about 'telos' which means end. It is not about the action, it is about the consequence. This too makes sense to me especially when put into a realistic context. For instance, a white lie. It's my friends birthday coming up and we are lying to him but with the ultimate consequence to help make his birthday party a surprise which of course isn't immoral? Yet previously I agreed that a consequence was not what defined morality in an action.
Applied to a situation as a PR professional; if you shared a social media posts to help promote a product an organisation sold that was meant to be beneficial to the user it is hard to argue that this action was immoral because the intentions were good. However, the other side of this is that the consequences aka the end (telos), is obviously harmful so you could then argue that they should have predicted this. This could go round in circles as it's not possible to predict the future and know every consequence to every action.
I think what I've discussed in my post today reflects the complexity of ethics and reminds me to prepare for the fact that there may not be a clear answer to problems in business and in PR. Please leave a comment on which ethical theory you would apply to your own life.
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