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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Professionalism, ethical codes and the public interest

Halden Bank's chief executive is described by colleagues as honest, fair and courageous. When the bank's sales targets encouraged mis-selling, she asked herself 'what would a person of good character do?' rather than consulting a rulebook or calculating outcomes, and halted the scheme. Which approach does this best illustrate, and what is its main limitation in a corporate setting?

This is virtue ethics, which judges actions by the character of the decision maker, asking what a person of good character would do. Its main limitation is that it offers little specific guidance and relies on subjective judgement about what virtue means, unlike rule-based or outcome-based approaches.

  1. AVirtue ethics; it gives little concrete guidance and depends on subjective views of what good character isCorrect
  2. BDeontology; it is inflexible when rules conflict with outcomes
  3. CUtilitarianism; it is hard to measure and compare stakeholder benefits
  4. DPluralism; it fails to consider more than one viewpoint

Explanation

Focusing on the character of the decision maker, not rules or consequences, is virtue ethics (Aristotle). Its weakness is that it provides no clear procedure, and what counts as virtuous may be judged differently by different people. The limitations in the other options belong to the other theories.

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