Essay on Utilitarianism and Its Principle
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Added on 2020-05-01
Essay on Utilitarianism and Its Principle
Added on 2020-05-01
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Running head: ETHICS AND HRMETHICS AND HRMName of the StudentName of the UniversityAuthor Note
1ETHICS AND HRMHuman resource refers to the people who constitute the workforce of any businesssector, organization or any economy. Human resource management or HRM refers to themanagement of the workforce of an organization. Utilitarianism refers to the ethical theorythat states that the action that helps in maximizing utility is considered to be the best action.Utility may be defined in a number of ways, most commonly in the terms of well-being of theliving entities. The following essay deals with the discussion of utilitarianism and thehappiness principle of utilitarianism. The essay further goes on to define human resourcemanagement and the contemporary people management or CPM and attempts to find arelation between the concepts of utilitarianism and human resource management. The essayconcludes with an attempt to establish the contribution of human resource managementtowards the utilitarian saying that happiness can be considered to be an ethical goal.The concept of utilitarianism was founded by Jeremy Bentham. He had describedutility to be the sum total of all the pleasures derived from any action. The suffering of anyperson involved in the action is not taken into consideration while calculating the utility ofany action. The concept of consequentialism claims that consequences of a particular actiondefine the standard that may be used to justify a certain action to be “good” or “bad”.Utilitarianism is considered to be a genre of consequentialism. The concept of utilitarianismtreats the interest of all living beings with equality unlike the other genres ofconsequentialism, like egoism. The advocates of utilitarianism disagree on a number oftopics. They seem to be at a conflict between the choice of agents that follow the set ofregulations devised to ensure maximum utility and the actions that are selected on the basis oftheir assumed outcomes. The upholders of this theory also disagree on the amount of utilitythat should be maximized. The utilitarian theory finds its roots in the theory of hedonists likeEpicurus and Aristippus. The hedonists believed in the fact that happiness was the only
2ETHICS AND HRMvirtue. Bentham may be considered to be the founder of the modern day tradition ofutilitarianism.Happiness principle states that the morality and immorality of an action depends onwhether the action promotes utility (White 2013). The actions that promote utility areconsidered to be moral. According to the famous philosopher Stuart Mill, utility may bedefined as happiness without the presence of pain. According to Bentham, the value ofpleasure or pain can be measured keeping in mind the duration, intensity remoteness and thecertainty or uncertainty of the pain or pleasure that needs to be measured. According to theEnglish philosopher, the fruitfulness of any act must be taken into consideration whilecalculating the value of the pain or pleasure encountered in an act. There are many factorsthat should be taken into consideration while calculating the happiness that may be achievedon performing a certain act. The happiness principle deems any action to be good or baddepending upon the fact that whether they help in increasing the level of happiness that isattained after the completion of the action. The actions that help in increasing the level ofhappiness on completion are classified as good actions and those that bring about a decreasein the happiness level are known as bad actions.According to John Stuart Mill, human pleasures are much higher than just the basicanimalistic pleasures. People need to be made aware of their higher capabilities in order tohelp them enrich themselves by cultivating those potentials that they own. Thus happinessmay be argued upon to be a sign of the fact that the concerned person is being able to put touse the potentials that he is capable of using. Utilitarianism takes into consideration thequantity as well as the quality of the pleasures that can be derived from a certain kind ofaction. Mill classifies the different kinds of pleasure that can be derived from the variety ofactions. It is generally seen that people prefer to utilize and perform those actions that provethemselves to be appealing to the higher senses of competence. A person would never be
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