CSR Series: On Dignity and Virtues

Ethics has been a very delicate issue especially in business. Numerous principles and frameworks, such as utilitarianism and deontology, have been developed and even applied to the business setting to address the need for enterprises to have guiding principles.

This is a tricky situation, indeed. How do you mix ethics in an environment where results are measured down til the final centavo? How do you apply principles to highly competitive results-driven performers?

Can virtues such as honesty, fortitude, and temperance directly achieve multi-million dollar profits?

How do you mix soft and intangible things to an entity that must maximize income and minimize cost?

This is where CSR and business ethics enter.

It disproves the notion that businesses are just profit achieving entities filled with selfishly-driven individuals. Instead, it sees using different lenses, that businesses are also organizations with benevolent intentions, fueled by human beings capable of being stewards of God’s creation.

We are entering a major paradigm shift, wherein these noble things are being appreciated and are now even used ti mitigate the harshness of exploitive capitalism.

We are in a world where one does not anymore need to sell one’s soul to the devil ti achieve greatness. And this is the way that things ought to be, transcending the past, the present, and the future.