In my previous columns I described the Principles Approach to business ethics and indicated that the Big Three ethical principles included Rights, Justice and Utilitarianism. Today, we will look at the Justice Approach and how it applies and creates challenges across many different issue categories.
Not only do people want their legal and ethical rights protected and honored, but they also want justice. One way to think about the Principle of Justice is to say that it involves the fair treatment of each person or organizations. Indeed, the principle of justice is often called the “fairness” principle. Most would accept that we have a duty to be fair to employees, consumers and other stakeholders. But how do you decide what is “due” each person? It often is hard to know because people might be expecting their due according to their type of work, effort expended, merit, need, time spent, or other criteria. Each of these measures could be reasoned to be appropriate in different situations.
What is justice in business and society? There are several kinds of justice, or fairness, that come into play. Distributive justice refers to the distribution of benefits and burdens in organizations or society. Compensatory justice involves compensating someone for a past injustice. Procedural justice, or ethical due process, refers to fair decision-making procedures, practices or agreements. Procedural justice is what most of us really want – to be treated fairly. We want our side of the issue to be heard, and we want to believe that our managers or decision makers treated us properly. This is also referred to as process fairness.
According to my reading, some of the justice issues in Spain include fairness, rights, accountability and the distribution of benefits and burdens. Housing affordability and rent controls is one example. The justice issues here include who gets access to affordable housing, intergenerational fairness, and markets versus regulations with landlords arguing controls distort supply, and tenants arguing that housing is a basic right. From a business perspective, platforms such as Airbnb are blamed for reducing long-term housing supply.
Labor rights in the Gig economy are another issue. The “Rider law” required delivery platforms to classify riders as employees rather than independent contractors. A justice issue here is worker classification fairness. Are gig workers being exploited? Corporate responsibility is also an issue as some firms have resisted full compliance in some cases. In terms of ethical framing, this often involves procedural justice (fair rules) and distributive justice (fair pay and benefits).
Gender equality and workplace justice is another issue. The fairness issues here include workplace dignity, equal pay and opportunity, and institutional accountability in organizations. The broader theme is corrective justice such as addressing systemic inequalities. Migration and border policy is another justice issue. The controversies here include human rights versus border enforcement, treatment of asylum seekers and burden-sharing within the EU. A broad ethical tension here is national sovereignty versus global justice/human rights.
What constitutes justice or fairness in all these realms raises some of the challenging and complex problems faced by individuals, organizations and governments. In my next column I will discuss Utilitarianism in ethical decision making, which is often used in both business and individual decision making.
Professor emeritus, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, USA. Dr. Carroll received his three academic degrees in management (1965; 1966; 1972) from the College of Business, The Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida USA). He is founding author and now co-author of BUSINESS & SOCIETY: ETHICS, SUSTAINABILITY & STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT (2023), 11th edition, with Jill A Brown; Co-author of CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY: THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE which won the 2014 BEST BOOK AWARD at the Academy of Management--Social Issues in Management Meeting; and Author of BUSINESS ETHICS: BRIEF READINGS ON VITAL TOPICS. Carroll won the first Lifetime Achievement Award in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) from the Institute of Management, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, International Association for Business & Society, and the Southern Management Association. He has published over 100 articles, and his citations exceed 100,000 according to Google Scholar Citations.