Business Law and Ethics: Descriptive and Normative Ethics, Ethical Egoism, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development

Running head: BUSINESS LAW AND ETHICS
BUSINESS LAW AND ETHICS
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Author Note

1BUSINESS LAW AND ETHICS
Part 1
Answer 1
Descriptive ethics can be seen defined as involving the description of people behave and
the sorts of moral standards that are claimed to be followed by them. Descriptive ethics can be
said to be found on the belief that humans are hard-wired for being selfish. Human beings can be
seen to be absorbed in fulfilling own desires and goals. According to the descriptive ethics an
individual is morally entitled for pursuing through independent action his own happiness
(McCloskey, 2013).
Normative ethics can be defined as involving the creation or evaluation of moral
standards. Thus normative ethics can be seen to be an attempt for figuring out what people
should be doing or whether the current moral behavior practiced by them are reasonable.
Normative ethics can be seen to be taking the approach of prescribing what morally right human
action is through rational deliberation. Where descriptive ethics can merely be seen to be
documenting what is believed to be morally right, in the normative ethics the merits in such
belies are tried to be found. Therefore it can be said that the framework of normative ethics is
more rationalistic and rigorous than the framework of descriptive ethics.
The application of the framework descriptive and normative ethics can be done to the
issues in the case for understanding ethics. The descriptive approach is the description of the
behavior of Rachel in regard to the shipment of a product. Through the normative approach the
moral issues regarding her decisions can be examined. As per the descriptive approach it has
been described that human beings are hard-wired to be selfish and as such Rachel’s decision to

2BUSINESS LAW AND ETHICS
ship a product having higher likelihood of failure which would result in data loss for the
customers can be morally right as Rachel is thinking about herself, as she knows that if she does
not ship the products having higher chance of failure the competitors of her company would and
it would be reflecting badly on her. However as per the normative approach her decision would
be analyzed on the basis of whether her actions were morally right. Her shipping defective
products for the benefit of the company and her own-self can be seen as morally wrong as per the
normative approach, as the faulty products have a higher chance of failure which would be
resulting in the data loss for the customers.
Answer 2
Ethical egoism can be defined as the normative ethical theory that describes that a person
should be the goal and motivation for their own actions. The view of the ethical egoism is that
each person is ought to be pursuing their own self-interest, and any one does not have any
obligation for the promotion of someone else’s interest. Thus ethical egoism can be described as
a prescriptive or normative theory that is concerned with how a person should be behaving.
Ethical egoism in this respect can be seen to be quite different from psychological egoism that
states that all our actions are ultimately done in self-interest (Machan, 2015).
As per ethical egoism the decision of Rachel to be shipping products with known defects
is pursuing her own self-interest. According to the theory of ethical egoism Rachel is responsible
for pursuing her own self-interest and does not have any obligation for the interest of any other
person. Hence, Rachel would only consider the reflection of her action towards her company and
not the loss of the customer as per the theory of ethical egoism. As per this theory Rachel’s
decision of shipping a product with known defect is morally right.