In this discussion board activity, begin by rereading thescenario about the imminent merger presented in the first paragraphof the Blackboard lecture on Moral Philosophies (located on coursecontent page under Business Ethics) and complete the assignedposting listed below. Pretend that you are the person that foundthe merger information and must decide what to do with it. FOCUS onthe ethical NOT the legal issues. Select one (and only one) of thethree approaches presented for dealing with ethical dilemmas(virtue ethics, deontological, and utilitarianism) and apply it tothis situation. Write a short essay (logical argument) justifyingwhether you should or should not buy stock based upon theprinciples associated with the ethical approach you chose (virtue,deontological or utilitarian). Note: Be sure and state whichprescriptive approach you are using. Your essay should reflect thatyou read the merger story and have an understanding of theprescriptive approaches.

IMMINENT MERGER You accidentally stumble upon a document thatprovides a clear view of your company's intention to merge with amajor competitor. The event is imminent according to thedescription detailed. It is not to be announced to the employees ofthe two companies, the stockholders, or the public for another sixweeks, but according to its author, the senior vice president incharge of acquisitions and mergers, all of the necessaries havebeen negotiated and there appear to be no regulatory obstacles. Youbegin to think about what the merger would mean both in generalterms and in your life in particular. As a mid-level technicalmanager, you believe that the merger will be a great success andthat Wall Street will view it very favorably. You recognize thatknowledge about the merger could be an opportunity for you toinvest in some stock. Although it will not make you rich, it willcover most of the costs of your daughter's treatment and keep yourfamily from being mired in overwhelming debt. The scenariodescribed above, while contrived, is similar to millions ofsituations, called ethical dilemmas, that confront individuals allover the world every day. The ethical dilemmas confronting most ofus may not be as dramatic as the one proposed, but they do at somelevel or other possess similar characteristics. They providemultiple solution alternatives, each of which has its up side andits down side. In the \"medical attention\" example, there are twoalternatives. You could either use the inside informationconcerning the merger or not. If you did use it, you would beviolating the law and company policy, but would be able to providethe necessary medical care for your daughter while not placing yourfamily in indefinite debt. By not using the inside information, youwould be maintaining the integrity of both your company andyourself as well as following the law, but you would bejeopardizing your daughter's health and your family's financialwell-being. A second characteristic that these ethical dilemmashave in common, that results from the dual-edged nature of eachsolution alternative, is that there is no universally agreed upon\"right\" answer. It would be possible for good people to disagree onwhich alternative is best and proper. It might also be possible fora single individual to come to different conclusions depending onthe form of argument that they used to arrive at a solution. So,how does one go about determining which of the solutions to anethical dilemma is best? In order to cope effectively with thesetypes of problems we need an approach or approaches that we canuse. This cyberlecture will provide a brief glimpse of threeprescriptive approaches that a person can use to help reasonthrough ethical dilemmas. First, however, we will examine thequestion of whether or not there is a natural basis for determiningwhat is right to do in any given circumstance or whether what isright is determined by the time and place in which we live.Prescriptive Approaches You will be faced with ethical dilemmas,which require you to choose a course of action. How might you goabout deciding which alternative solution to choose? Philosophershave been grappling with this problem for more than twenty-fivehundred years. During that time, many approaches have beendeveloped, none of which are universally agreed to always yield thebest result. Three broad approaches, consequentialist,deontological, and virtue ethics, find application in our everydaylives and in business settings. Deciding which of thesesapproaches, if any, fits an individual best is a matter of personalstyle and belief. To better understand these three approaches andthereby help you decide your feelings about them, it is useful totravel back in time and view the insights of the men most stronglyassociated with their beginnings. To begin, we travel to ancientGreece where we find the roots of virtue ethics in the writings ofAristotle. Aristotle and Virtue Ethics Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.)was a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. Hisemersion in the Athenian ethos led him to accept the notion thatman has a purpose and that through reason we can come to know thatpurpose and discover knowledge of what is good for man. He believedthat: Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action andpursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason thegood has been rightly declared to be that at which all things aim.. . . If, then, there is some one end of the things we do which wedesire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sakeof this), . . . clearly this must be the good, and the chief good.Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life?Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be morelikely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline atleast, to determine what it is. This chief good, according toAristotle, is \"happiness\", which he describes as consisting of\"living well\" and \"doing well.\" It is the task of ethics to defineprecisely what these terms mean. Aristotle approaches the problemby trying to identify what end or purpose man has. He discounts thepossibility that living itself is man's purpose because even plantslive. Pleasure, in the material sense, is also eliminated as man'spurpose because that is the lot of beasts. What is it, Aristotleasks, that man possesses that sets him apart from all othercreatures? It is his ability to reason. It is through man'srational function, then, that \"living well\" and \"doing well\" cometo pass. To \"live well,\" according to Aristotle, means to live avirtuous life. It is not enough, however, to merely be virtuous inthought. Potential must become actual, through activity, i.e.,\"doing well,\" for man to fulfill his purpose and be happy. Virtueis of two kinds, that of 'intellect' (e.g., prudence) and that of'character' (e.g., temperance). In order for man to becomevirtuous, he must perform virtuous acts. Through practice, mandevelops a virtuous character which then, coupled with reason,allows him to select actions which maintain and improve hischaracter and thereby improve the virtue of the larger community.Over time, a man, who initially performed virtuous acts at thebequest of parents and teachers, comes to understand that virtue ispart of nature and therefore to be sought for its own sake.Aristotle looks at virtue, then, in terms of a disposition to actor a state of character. For Aristotle, the virtuous dispositionfollows, generally, the rule of the Golden Mean. Each virtue,whether of the intellect or character, can be thought of as abalance or synthesis of two extremes. For example, the virtue ofcourage is a synthesis of boldness and cool foresight. Thus the manpossessing of courage does not succumb to the daring of rashness orthe paralysis of cowardice. To be possessed of either of theseextremes permits no choice, but becomes a tyranny from which onecannot escape. While Aristotle would have had no concept of themodern business enterprise, his notion of making choices from avirtuous state of character with an eye on maintaining one's ownintegrity can be readily applied to modern ethical dilemmas. Forexample, suppose that you, as a representative of management, arenegotiating a new labor contract with your mechanics union. Theissue on the table is hourly wages. You are deciding how much moneyto offer. If you are possessed of the virtue of 'liberality', thenyou would be likely to offer neither too much money (disposition of'prodigality'), at the expense of investors, nor too little money(disposition of 'meanness'), at the expense of the employees. Byacting in this manner, you, the negotiator, are able to maintainyour personal integrity and thereby enhance the moral character ofthe organization in which you work. Immanuel Kant and DeontologyImmanual Kant (1724-1804), like so many other Enlightenmentthinkers, dabbled in many different disciplines. His early worksconcerned physics and astronomy and in 1755, he predicted theexistence of the planet Uranus, which was not to be discovereduntil 1881. He is best known, however, for his philosophicalwritings, and is regarded by many as the greatest philosopher ofthe last three hundred years. Kant, unlike Aristotle, did notbelieve that actions are to conform to virtue so as to maintain anindividual's character. Instead, he believed that nature offers upa Supreme Principle of Morality that binds all rational creatures,by way of duty, to act according to a categorical imperative. Thisduty or obligation to act is the cornerstone of deontologicalethics. A categorical imperative is a requirement that binds allpeople, regardless of their own inclinations or the possibleconsequences. For example, it might be said that there are noconditions under which it is permitted to lie. This would includecircumstances in which a person is inclined to lie and in whichlying would lead to unwanted consequences. According to Kant, it isnot an action that is moral or not, but the subjective principle,or maxim, that underlies it that determines that is the determiningfactor. If the belief and intent align with the categoricalimperative, the actor is considered to have behaved ethically evenif unintended negative consequences result. Kant developed severalversions of the categorical imperative in his writings, each ofwhich he believed to be equivalent. Two of them are the formula ofuniversal law ('act only on that maxim through which you can at thesame time will that it should become universal law') and theformula of the end-in-itself ('act in such a way that you alwaystreat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of anyother, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as anend'). To the extent that the impulse to action is in conformancewith these formulae, the actor is behaving morally. So, how doesthe categorical imperative manifest itself when facing an ethicaldilemma? Suppose, for argument sake, that you are graduating fromcollege with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with aconcentration in computer information systems (CIS). While you didwell in school in general and particularly well in your CIScourses, you took a course in the C programming language but didnot learn to program in C++. You are applying for a job at acompany that has a C++ position and that you would very much liketo work for. You have friends that work there and you know that itwould be a great opportunity for you. The issue is that they havean absolute requirement that you know C++. Because you already knowC, you believe that you could learn C++ quickly and do a great jobfor the company. However, you know that they won't even talk to youunless you already know C++. You contemplate including knowledge ofC++ on your resume, so that you can get the job. According to thecategorical imperative, you would have to decide whether or notlying to get a job should be a universal law to be followed byeveryone. If not, then you should not lie on your resume even if itwould benefit all parties involved. John Stuart Mill andUtilitarianism The nineteenth century saw a rapid rise inempiricism. Material well-being was growing in convulsionsthroughout the industrialized world. The age of the machine waswell underway and political and social systems began to treat manas an economic creature. Scientific inquiry was invading all mannerof endeavor including understanding the relationship of theindividual citizen to the state. It is in this context thatUtilitarianism, the calculus of happiness, evolved. Its beginningscan be traced to England and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) whobelieved that the measure of any action was the extent to which itbrought the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number ofpeople. Bentham was trying to devise a rational means of settingpublic policy rather than relying on such notions as natural rightsand social contracts. Bentham's version, of what amounts to anethics of hedonism, made no distinctions concerning the qualitiesof the pleasures, i.e., happiness, that actions were supposed tomaximize. Other things being equal, \"pushpin is as good as poetry.\"John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), a member of Bentham's group of'philosophical radicals,' adopted the core tenets of Bentham'sUtilitarianism, that included the notions of pleasure as being theonly end desirable in and of itself and that actions are to bemeasured by their ability to increase pleasure and decrease pain.Mill believed that pleasure and happiness were synonymous. WhereMill broke rank with Bentham and the ancient hedonists such asEpicurus, is in believing that some pleasures are more valuablethan others. For example, Mill argued that sensual pleasures, whilemore intense than pleasures of the intellect, were of lower qualityand therefore it is preferable to be \"a Socrates dissatisfied thana pig satisfied.\" Since happiness is the only desirable end forman, Mill believed that to act in a way that increases happinessand decreases unhappiness is man's duty. Unlike Kant who said thatonly the motive of an act is important in determining whether ornot it is ethical, Mill was not concerned with the motive of anaction, only the result. If a selfish act led to an increase inhappiness or decrease in unhappiness for the greatest number ofpeople, it is an ethical act. If the motive for an action is pure,but the result turns out poorly, the act is unethical.Utilitarianism is probably the most widely used approach to dealwith ethical dilemmas by modern businesses. Perhaps this is becauseof their penchant for cost/benefit analysis and their comfort withquantitative analysis. Whatever the reason, it is a useful approachto use when decision alternatives can be compared based on thelikelihood of their ability to increase happiness (benefit) and/ordecrease unhappiness (cost). Look again at the C++ example detailedabove. If it is true that you, more than other candidates, could beof much benefit to the company and its customers, i.e., increasetheir happiness, with minimal cost, Mill would say that it is OK tomisrepresent your credentials. In the real world, no singleapproach to ethical dilemmas has been found. The three approachespresented in the text and this cyberlecture have been found to beuseful in many business decision-making environments. It is ofvalue to keep each of them in mind as you make your way through thecomplex web of ethical challenges that will confront you.