Seven Moral Principles


From: Bowie, Norman E. Business ethics in the 21st Century. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013, pp.186-187

  1. The firm should consider the interests of all the affected stakeholders in any decision that it makes.
  2. The firm should have those, or representatives of those, affected by the firm’s rules and policies participate in the determination of those rules and policies before they are implemented.
  3. The interests of one stakeholder should not take priority over the interests of all other stakeholders for all decisions.
  4. When a situation arises in which it appears that the interests of one set of stakeholders must be sacrificed for the interests of another set of stakeholders, that decision cannot be made solely on the grounds that there is a greater number of stakeholders in one group than in another.
  5. No principle is acceptable if it is inconsistent with the principle that we should never treat a person merely as a means to our own ends.
  6. Every profit-making firm has an imperfect duty of social beneficence (benefit to society).
  7. Each business firm must establish procedures to insure that relations among stakeholders are governed by the rules of justice.