Using the 'Principle of Duties' in Business

The principle of duties states that people will do what is ethically considered right and acceptable most of the time, because people are guided by a moral obligation to themselves and others around them to do what is right. The beliefs and ethics that are fostered behind this principle come from relying on the belief systems or statements of authorities, whether it is from God or a man-made law.

This principle becomes important in the business arena because the theory is that individuals will then make choices that are more in line with universally accepted social and cultural beliefs depending on the location in the world and particular situation. For example, here in the United States doing the morally correct thing means not harming individuals or manipulating them to cause them harm for personal gain or profit.

This means a co-worker could leave a bag of Reese's Peanut butter eggs sitting on her desk unattended and then leaves the room. The typical understanding is that other co-workers are morally obligated to not touch the bag of candy for his or her own personal profit or gain. If the co-worker had given other co-workers unlimited access at any time with verbal permission, in her absence they could easily take a small handful to enjoy. However, if the co-worker had given them limited access such as, "Sure, you can have some, but only take a couple of pieces. I want to save the rest for my family when I go home later," then the other co-workers would be under moral obligation to only take two pieces of candy and leave the rest. Going against her spoken or lack of spoken instructions would cause emotional harm to her in not being able to trust the co-workers around her and create negative consequences in the working relationship.

Because co-workers would be operating the in the principle of duty, they would not use reason or logic to justify an egotistical desire to shape their morals independently of the consequences to her or their relationship. Taking the candy without permission would be violating the moral and ethical beliefs behind the principle of duty in the first place.

On another note, in business, that means delivering what the client expected or exceeding it without having had violated any said spoken or unspoken principles of the culture. Many mission statements, code of conduct rules, and ethics training in the workplace follow the principle of duties, which basically is doing the best they can to exceed the customers and share holders expectations by doing what is morally and socially right. Do customers expect honesty all the time or some of the time? The company would be under moral obligation to behave honestly and even in some cases as publicly held companies, to take it one step further and behave transparently, i.e....opening the books for the world to see. The company would have a duty them to behave this way. Using the principle of duties is a very good guideline when attempting to achieve excellence in demonstration.