In today’s world, we are constantly changing and working to increase sales and our incomes. This makes the ethical theories inside the hearts of our promotional bodies change just as often and in a more extreme way. The greed over just the past few decades has grown exponentially – and it is no longer just in the financial escapades of Wall Street.
The main difference I see in the Classical Theories and our more Modern Theories is the cost issue. It drives the client or consumer to move on and find other agencies or representatives too quickly. The cost of making new ad campaigns and new PR events has grown exponentially. So, there needs to be more faith in the client and more precise work from the agent.
Another issue I see very relevant to today’s world as compared to the decades of the past – the issue of international and cultural differences or respects. For many years, advertising and public relations campaigns didn’t need to transcend throughout the world and be accepted. In today’s world, with the rise of technology we are finding a need for international transcendence and favor.
From a deontological or a teleological standpoint, we find the two largest ethical factors. Deontology looks more into the morality of a person’s action inside them, and puts no weight in the consequence. Teleology will focus more on the moral act when the consequences present to be good or bad. So if ‘ends justify means’ to a teleological manner, we can say that breaking the law would be okay if there were positive consequences. All of these classical theories have a big driving factor to them. Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative is the supreme of the deontologist beliefs and one of the most popular theories is the utilitarianism one. Here, we try for the greatest good for the greatest numbers. The utilitarian will care much less for the act alone or those harmed in it as long as the greatest number of people can largely benefit from it. The last major theory, growing in popularity and contagion is egoism. This can either be applied to one single person or to a larger company of people. Individualism is just like it sounds – whatever is best for that one person no matter the consequence is the moral. In a universal way, people are selfish for a group of people in order to advance the group as a whole.
An egoist example very familiar to Americans is Chevron’s Oil company. Chevron has been accused of many environmental discrepancies and human rights abuses. The company has also been related with the idea of dumping billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon of Ecuador. The oil service giant obviously has no PR person (or just a really bad one). In either case, the ethical dilemma is still hard to put into one box because of the international effects and cost issues. There is no doubt that dumping toxins is wrong however, what we could also take into account is why they chose that solution. Pure Egoism? Probably, considering the human rights abuse case that followed soon after the toxic dump.
The problem with some of these theories is that more often in today’s world, we are seeing situations that represent an exception to the rule of the theory. More often in the modern world, we see situations that cannot be judged solely by the consequence to one person or a single company. Now that there is a domino effect in today’s companies that will do harm or good to all different people, it is very hard to use a certain theory for the beneficial consequence of a specific person or group.
That is not to say that these theories do not show us a great amount about people and human natures. In every way, they do. Human natures and the survival instinct are something that will transcend time, even if they don’t solve a specific problem or dilemma.
Sources: Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/
Ethically Questionable in the Modern World
Vera's Blog #2
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