We have dozens of ethics articles
that can be accessed through our site map.
Disclaimer:
Information contained in pages and articles on this site
provides general information and does not provide legal advice on any specific
legal matter or factual situation. This information is not intended to create or
provide a lawyer-client relationship. It is not legal advice. Readers should not
act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Use of this site
does not create an attorney - client relationship, even if you provide
information to us by any means including using a contact form on this site.
Read full
Disclaimers and Legal Notices.
© Copyright
Leonard H. Bucklin 2000 to 2011. All rights
reserved. No copying or distribution of this
material may be made without the express written consent of the copyright
holder. For more information - Read
the Legal Notices.
|
Business Pragmatism: the theory.
By Leonard Bucklin
If you are an ethics professor, or a working bioethist, or the chair of a
hospital ethics committee, you probably have heard of Clinical Pragmatism.
Clinical pragmatism is recognized as an important method of moral problem
solving in bioethics and medical practice. I have adapted the
theory of this popular method of medical ethics assessment and solutions to
the business world, to provide Business Pragmatism™ as a matter-of-fact way
of approaching or assessing or solving business ethics problems.
Business Pragmatism™ is practical and practicable.
As a philosophical ethics theory, process pragmatism focuses
on the interpersonal processes of assessment and consensus formation as well
as on the ethical analysis of relevant moral considerations. Process
pragmatism is derived from the pragmatic philosophy of American philosophers
William James and John Dewey. Process pragmatism does not use a
"principles down" to solving moral problems in clinical practice; it is not
based on the authority of pre-existing standards; it is based on the
authority of the most practical ethical outcome among alternatives.
What ethically (note the emphasis: "ethically") can be done to
solve the problem is more important to process pragmatism than purity of a
pre-existing theory existing in advance of the problem.
Dewey believed that:
The problem of restoring integration and cooperation between man’s
beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the
values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest
problem of modern life. It is the problem of any philosophy that is not
isolated from life. (Dewey, J. Quest for Certainty. New York: Minton,
Balch, 1929, 255).
Dewey emphasized the practical outcomes and the ethical consequences of
specified beliefs rather than emphasizing the authority of any theoretical
reasoning that might be created in advance of results. This pragmatic
reasoning allows for open reception to presenting individual differences,
rather than a theory based clinical stance which assumes to know better
before the actual case is at hand. Pragmatic reasoning is always willing to
test and retest its interpretations against the lived experience of the
involved parties. Pragmatic resolutions are understood to have only
instrumental, rather than a priori value, so the resolutions of the process
are to be considered ‘true’ only to the degree that they can help us into a
satisfactory relationship with the other parts of our experience. Cf., S.
Fesmire, John Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics.
Bloomington: Indiana U. Press (2003).
A clinical
ethicist is not a person who deals in abstractions. A clinical
ethicist is one who by study and experience can make an informed
judgment on ethics, and (importantly) expresses it in a way that
informs others, allowing those people to use that information to
take practicable and practical action.
Academicians criticize the clinical pragmatism method
because Step 3 of clinical pragmatism calls for a consensus acceptable plan
of action. Clinical pragmatism does not assume there is only "one"
correct ethics solution, and does not attempt to find the "one" correct
solution. Clinical pragmatism finds the "best" solution. Hospitals
and other medical providers believe the method to have been generally
successful in solving their bioethics problems. Cf., A Consensus
About 'Consensus'? , Mark P. Aulisio, Robert M. Arnold, Journal of Law,
Medicine and Ethics, Vol: 27, No: 4 (1999). The very weakness seen by
academicians turns out to be a principal strength in day to day
administration of a medical provider, e.g., a hospital. And, in
practice, the consensus best solution found by clinical pragmatism usually
turns out to be the one solution that other ethics resolution methods
produce as a product.
Taking the clinical pragmatism method out of the medical
setting and moving it over to the business setting results in
business-appropriate problem solving. The adaptations needed to move
the medical community's Clinical Pragmatism to the business setting cause it
to be labeled: Business Pragmatism. To summarize the primary theoretical
bases of Business Pragmatism™ method:
-
Primary to the success of business ethics solving are
the group dynamic roles played by past practice, present purpose, and
plurality of values and viewpoints
-
Businesses must make decisions rather quickly, not in an
academician's months long time interval.
-
Businesses must make decisions that minimize error in
resolving ethics issues.
-
The consensus acceptable plan of action used in Business
Pragmatism meets the business requirement of relatively quick action
that minimizes error in the plan of action used to resolve the issue.
Underlying this process is a belief that intelligent
business committee members, when properly nurtured, will exhibit culturally
acceptable ethical values. Human individuality is in large part
a social process of interactions in participation with social systems.
Business is an ever-changing adaptation to contingency, and the Business
Pragmatism approach to moral dilemmas is rooted in ethical coping strategies
that business leaders and committee members are comfortable in following.
The Bucklin adaptation of clinical pragmatism into Business
Pragmatism™ includes a business-important step of "Justification" which is
expressed as
| The aim of moral problem solving in a corporate
clinical setting is to reach a consensus resolution that can
withstand moral scrutiny of both the decision made and also the
process of reaching and implementing the decision. |
The successful method does take training and guidance from
an ethics clinician. Building ethical consensus is a process using
independent, ethical value that can help resolve individual cases.
Business Pragmatism is not instinctive, and the process must be lead
by an ethics consultant if the committee members have not previously
been taught to use it.
Overview and the five steps of Business Pragmatism
|
™ is
the corporate ethics division of
™