D EONTOLOGICAL E THICS

teleological attitudes towards ethical behavior. This is not surprising as such attitudes are consistent with traditional productivity goals with emphasis on the bottom line and timely achievement of organizational objectives. In the western business world it is not uncommon to conduct cost-benefit analysis to determine which alternative that would create the most utility measured in for example jobs, economic growth, and organizational growth.

contractual agreements in a coordinated manner are rewarded (Ferrell and Skinner, 1988, Akaah and Riordan, 1989).

Deontology is most often related to Kant’s ethics of duties. Kant’s deontological system is founded on rules or principles that guide our decision-making. What matters here, is the rightness of the rules and the goodness of the will rather than the consequences of actions (Hartman, 2005: 8).

Thus the first proposition of morality is that to have moral worth an action must be done from duty. The second proposition is: An action performed from duty does not have its moral worth in the purpose which is to be achieved through it but in the maxim by which it is determined. Its moral value, therefore, does not depend on the realization of the object of the action but merely on the principle of volition by which the action is done, without any regard to the objects of the faculty of desire. (Kant, 1959: 16)

So, for Kant it is not enough that one follows the rules, it is evenly important that the rightness is felt and intended—that it is a deeply felt duty. Kant further argued that any person has a sense of duty within him or herself. Therefore, it is possible for everyone who knows how to act in line with this sense of duty to become a moral person.

“This pre-eminent good, which we call moral, is already present in the person who acts according to this conception, and we do not have to look for it first in the result.

(Kant, 1959: 17)

Even though Kant emphasized an ever-present moral duty, he did not turn to theological considerations in his formulation of these duties. Instead, he relied heavily on the rational human being’s ability to perform a rational argument

(Rachels, 1993: 118). “From what has been said it is clear that all moral concepts have their seat and origin entirely a priori in reason” (Kant, 1959:

28). By reason or logic alone, humans know what is right and wrong, and that reason determines our conduct.

With the use of reason, Kant ends in the claim that there is only one categorical imperative. Kant’s categorical imperative can be viewed as the ultimate moral law. Decision-making should in this way be based on only reasoning processes in order to be ethically correct. For Kant, nothing was good in itself, except from the good will (Chonko, 1995). Through reasoning, we can arrive at a moral law that will oblige everyone without exception to follow it (Tsalikis and Fritzsche, 1989). The ultimate moral rule must therefore be that you should want your action to be universal. If you perform an action, which you don’t want to be universal law, it cannot be moral responsible. Kant then says the following about the categorical imperative:

Under this condition alone the will can be called absolutely good without qualification. Since I have robbed the will of all impulses which could come to it from obedience to any law, nothing remains to serve as a principle of the will except universal conformity of its action to law as such. That is, I should never act in such a way that I could not also will that my maxim should be a universal law. (Kant, 1959:

18)

The most important ethical ‘test’ for Kant is that every time I make a decision, I have to ask myself, whether I want this to be a universal law—whether I want this to count for myself as well. And he therefore continues:

Can I will that my maxim become a universal law? If not, it must be rejected, not because of any disadvantage accruing to myself or even to others, but because it

cannot enter as a principle into a possible universal legislation, and reason extorts from me an immediate respect for such legislation. (Kant, 1959: 20)

As a consequence, only those rules I myself want upon me can be accepted as moral rules. Kant’s reasoning is simply that only good will can be universalized.

Furthermore, the categorical imperative implies that a person should not be treated as an object. “The categorical imperative would be one which presented an action as of itself objectively necessary, without regard to any other end” (Kant, 1959: 31). We as humans can be distinguished from other animals as being rational of nature, and a rational being always proposes an end to itself. “For all rational beings stand under the law that each of them should treat himself and all others never merely as means but in every case also as an end in himself” (Kant, 1959: 52). As the beings he is talking about are always rational beings, treating them as ends in themselves means respecting their rationality. Thus, we may never manipulate or use people to achieve our purposes no matter how good those purposes may be. This is in great contrast to the above example of Mill where one is obliged, if necessary, to kidnap and steel to safe a life. But since we would never want this kind of behavior to be universal law, it could never be considered moral by Kant.

There are of course also problems with deontological ethics. A question that immediately arises for me is how a person of good will knows what is right.

What makes one person’s intentions better than another’s, and who is then to judge who is right? How do we (and who is this we, and are we not of good will?) judge who is a person of good will? I can will something to be a universal law and another person can will something else. Which one of us is the moral person? Thus, there is obviously a problem of deciding who holds

the good will. But another problem is that of universality. If only those actions that can become a universal law are moral, it leaves very little action to be judged moral.

It is also problematic to define the limits of each right and to balance/adjust one right against another conflicting right. As such, reasoning from the categorical imperative does not give solutions to stakeholders’ conflicting interests and their relative importance. The demand for universal or general validity is not precise and cannot be used in order to sort out ordinary dilemmas. Furthermore, the theory does not give guidance on how to secure interpersonal agreement about basic duties—neither what they are nor how to weight them (Goodpaster, 1984). As such deontological analysis is often very inflexible, which makes it difficult to implement (Smith, 1993).