The idea is that “human beings should be treated with dignity and respect because they have rights.” Put another way, it could be argued that in deontological ethics “people have a duty to respect other people’s rights and treat them accordingly.” The core concept behind this is that there are objective obligations, or duties, that are required of all people. He was known for the ‘Categorical Imperative’ that looks for transcendent principles that apply to all humans. The second prominent concept, deontological ethics, is associated with the father of modern deontology, Immanuel Kant.
13TH FILM THEORY PROFESSIONAL
Many scholars in public relations identify these issues, as well as others, as evidence that utilitarianism, sometimes called consequentialism due the concept relying on the consequence of a decision, is not as strong of a fit for public relations professional ethics. Professionals must be able to evaluate decisions and choices with concrete ethical guidelines instead of hoping that certain outcomes will result in them having made an ethical choice. Using outcomes as a measurement of ethics will not, therefore, provide an accurate way for professionals to measure whether decisions are ethical.
Bowen points out that “consequences are too unpredictable to be an accurate measure of the ethics of a situations.” In other words, consequences of actions can be highly volatile or impossible, even, to predict. The third objection is that it is not always possible to predict the outcome of an action. In other words, if a solution drastically harms a minority group, would it be ethical if the majority benefited from that decision? This seems to contradict the goal of public relations to build mutually beneficial relationships, regardless of the number of people in a particular stakeholder group. Second, utilitarian ethics also “presents questions of conflict with regard to which segment of society should be considered most important” in weighing the “good” or outcome.
Grunig believes this is a faulty line of reasoning when he suggested that: “We believe, in contrast, the public relations should be based on a worldview that incorporates ethics into the process of public relations rather than on a view that debates the ethics of its outcomes.” In other words, ethics should be about the decision-making process, not just the outcome, which can’t be guaranteed. There are three main concerns that seem to arise when public relations professionals rely on utilitarian ethics to make decisions.įirst, rather than looking at the choice or action itself, decision-makers are forced to guess the potential outcomes of their choice in order to determine what is ethical. While this idea initially may seem appealing, particularly with a field that has a core duty to the public, it does not provide a solid ethical framework for decision-making. Interestingly, Curtin, Gallicano and Matthew found that, when faced with ethical situations in public relations, “Millennials will use utilitarian reasoning to avoid confrontation and achieve consensus.” The attraction of this ethical perspective may lie in the fact that it appears to be a way to weigh out the impact of behavior and determine the greatest good for the greatest number.
The first ethical system in normative ethics, utilitarianism, is often equated with the concept of “the greatest good for the greatest number.” The idea is that ethical decisions are made based on the consequences of the action, which is why it is also sometimes called consequentialism. When people talk about these areas, they are usually discussing an area of ethics known as normative ethics, or the process of considering and determining ethical behavior. There are generally three philosophical approaches, or what may be considered the science, to ethical reasoning: As mentioned previously, Rae suggests that ethics are a process that is both an art and a science.