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10 - Looking forward, looking back

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Terence Jackson
Affiliation:
Middlesex University Business School
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Summary

In Chapter 1 I alluded to Neil Brady's book Ethical Managing: Rules and Results. The cover of his book portrays an image of the Roman god Janus. Indeed he uses a ‘Janus-headed view’ as a metaphor for his rules (looking back – deontological) and results (looking forward – teleological) approach to ethics. Janus is the god of doorways, beginnings and endings. The month of January, the beginning of the new year, is named after him. He is always depicted with two heads, one looking backwards, the other looking forwards. Brady (1990: 62) tells us that ‘this view portrays the social process of resolving ethical issues simultaneously looking to the past as well as to the future’. His distinction between utilitarians as the forward-looking ethicists and the ‘formalists’ as the backward-looking ones, may still be slightly too simplistic, yet does provide the basis for viewing how tradition links with change, and how we must incorporate these two fundamental views when making an ethical decision. Ethical decision making is all about making sense of ambiguity, by trying to understand what has led to where we are; then taking risks, making a leap in the dark almost, by taking some kind of action based on what has worked in the past, and your estimation of what the results of your action will be. Often, the making sense of ambiguity might involve considering religious precepts, as we saw in Chapter 7.

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International Management Ethics
A Critical, Cross-cultural Perspective
, pp. 269 - 276
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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