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Environmental Risk Problems and the Language of Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Robert E. Frederick  and
W. Michael Hoffman
Robert E. Frederick
Affiliation:
Bentley College
W. Michael Hoffman
Affiliation:
Bentley College
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Abstract:

In this paper we present six criteria for assessing proposed solutions to environmental risk problems. To assess the final criterion—the criterion of ethical responsibility—we suggest another series of criteria. However, before these criteria can be used to address ethical problems, business persons must be willing to discuss the problem in ethical terms. Yet many decision makers are unwilling to do so. Drawing on research by James Waters and Frederick Bird, we discuss this “moral muteness”—the inability or unwillingness to use moral language to solve moral problems—and suggest some underlying causes of moral muteness.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , October 1995 , pp. 699 - 711
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1995

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References

1 Frederick B. Bird and James A. Waters, “The Moral Muteness of Managers,” California Management Review, vol. 32, no. 1, Fall 1989, pp. 73–88.

2 The discussion of moral muteness in the sections labeled (1), (2) and (3) follows Waters and Bird very closely. Although there are no quotation marks in the text, several of the sentences and parts of the sentences are direct quotes.