The traditional division between philosophical approaches to ethics that emphasise prescriptive guidelines for addressing ethical issues and scientific approaches to ethics that emphasise descriptive accounts of moral phenomenon.
Published in Chapter:
Voicing Possibilities: A Performative Approach to the Theory and Practice of Ethics in a Globalised World
Mark G. Edwards (University of Western Australia, Australia), David A. Webb (University of Western Australia, Australia), Stacie Chappell (Western New England University, USA), Nin Kirkham (University of Western Australia, Australia), and Mary C. Gentile (Babson College, USA)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 27
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7476-9.ch012
Abstract
Business ethics is witnessing the emergence of new activity-based, communicative approaches to ethics theory and pedagogy that go beyond the conventional normative-descriptive distinction. The authors call this emergent approach “performative ethics” and recognise it as a fundamentally innovative new orientation towards theorising and teaching ethics. They apply this notion of performative ethics to the topic of sustainability, and illustrate their discussion using “Giving Voice to Values” (GVV). GVV is an innovative approach that focuses on implementing ethical values and how they might be expressed at multiple levels of organisational life. The challenge of intergenerational sustainability requires a multilevel orientation to the practical expression of core values in a globalised world. To illustrate this, the authors present three short case studies and explore them from a GVV perspective. They show how GVV can be applied, both theoretically and practically, to the task of expressing and acting on shared values for developing sustaining and sustainable personal, organisational, and global futures.