I.1.1. Comment: the different kinds of ethics

When specialists or philosophers try to classify ethics, they generally use a qualitative clustering, based on psychological, mental, or philosophical variables. Therefore, when analyzing the available documentation, in most case studies, one considers three or four different types of ethics [YAN 14].

Here, as an example, we will consider four main ethical segmentations based on individualism, utilitarianism, Kantianism or virtues, relevant to an action or decision that can be seen as ethical or unethical:

1. 1) Individualism: individualism states that the main goal of a business is to maximize profit for a part or all of the stakeholders….or customers. The objective is to act in order to maximize a profit. In doing so, the executive only chooses to keep the cheaper and more efficient solutions to boost some profits. This is what happens, for example, with big department stores. The damages can be significant as they can harm the producers and providers, and develop non-sustainable practices. Ultimately, this a non-ethical behavior.

2. 2) Utilitarianism: utilitarianism’s main intent is to make everyone happy. Here specialists consider the societal environments that are developing in the area of hedonism and eudemonism. This was developed in Business Ethics Volume 1, but also in [MAS 15a].

   Utilitarianism theory consists of bringing happiness or justice to everyone and acts in the interest of the overall good. When doing so, people put their cooperation in jeopardy, but are trying to make the best from a bad situation.

3. 3) Kantianism: Kantianism is based on making rational decisions and allowing others to do the same for themselves. There is no lying or deceit of any kind or the use of people without their rational consent; also, people must act from a sense of duty in order to be sure to go the right way. This consists of treating the situation as a mere means but rather globally and always as an end. This is seen as a non-ethical approach, with regard to Kantian theory, when the people need to be given the necessary knowledge to act only on their own rational being. So deviances, in the behaviors can be observed, if the consequences of actions that make a decision right or wrong are not evaluated. It is also non-ethical, from Kant’s perspective, when a decision process, is conducted against, or in a clear violation for, the motive and consciousness of the decision maker.
4. 4) Virtue theory: virtue theory focuses on four main characteristics: courage, honesty, self-control and fairness. (We have great similarities with the cardinal virtues as defined by Plato: courage, justice, prudence and temperance.) Therefore, generally speaking, a business must act while keeping these characteristics in mind. They must be willing to take a stand for the right ideas and actions.

Virtue theorists recommend being honest in the mutual agreements and relationships with both employees and customers. Also, people must work hard, produce quality, have good ideas and should be fair in their practices. Finally, people are required to be courageous in their actions they merely conform to the nominal security.

For the sake of simplicity, in our book we did not consider such philosophical classifications. Several times we said it was necessary to use our best judgment according to our consciousness considering the following three factors: lack of skills, ignorance and greed. It is a kind of “social” ethics that causes the death of a civilization, or any type of organization, and inevitably leads to exclusivity. In the framework of the Rotary, or even in social networking or businesses, it may cover most of the encountered situations.

I.1.2. Objectives of this book

Volume 1 presented an overview of what is happening in the working world. Theory, practice and current recommendations were developed through examples issued from the Rotary or industrial companies.

In it we spoke primarily of our experience in ethics and BE. We described some notions of complexity and evolution, and we could better understand why and how ethics is becoming essential for the sustainability of our systems.

Moreover, we saw how BE can be implemented in current enterprises according to a corporate and societal culture, the geographical context, etc. Thus, in this book, we are both in the present and in the short-term horizon.

BE is linked to system complexity and evolution theory. In its more mundane context, BE expresses the fact that responsible people and executives are afraid of losing control of complex phenomena. It is associated with the need to preserve a situation in the face of apparently irreversible changes. This is the reason why “integration” of BE becomes so important.

Also, concerning the intrinsic system complexity and the growing complexity of nature: we stated in this book that simplexification was necessary to manage, monitor and control complex systems. I will add that simplexification enables us to understand complexity. Indeed, as often said in the Advanced Technology Group, within IBM EMEA, the simple modeling of a complex system is able to generate 50% of the solution about a given problem, while re-engineering provides the remaining part of the solution: everything starts with an organization, everything ends with another.

In this book, some people will find that a lot of things are wrong. This may be true, but some of them will be useful: it is a positive statement, since the whole content is not just a survey and review of conventional and various integrated processes.

Finally, concerning learning principles and the need for diversity developed in the book, we will recall two points:

• – it is only the one doing nothing who is never wrong;
• – in a complex situation, we do not learn efficiently if we are simply trying not to commit any error.

I.2.1. Paradigm changes

In this book, we consider that the world is changing. We are living in a very dynamic environment following Moore’s Law. The future will again impose a paradigm shift.

This is mainly related to the new context, with the impact of new technologies, advanced sciences and societal evolution. Thus, we will talk about the extension of concepts related to the dissemination and intrusive impact of the advanced sciences.

Indeed, ethics (BE) will now manifest itself along several directions:

The new technologies considered and described in Chapter 1 are related to the general concept of NBIC. NBIC refer to Nanotechnologies, Biotechnologies, Information technologies and Cognitive sciences.

Thus, it will here be very important to describe this new context, in order:

• – To anticipate the emergence of any improvement that affects human performance and sustainability. More specifically, this concern is related to robotics and the development of artificial Intelligence (the role and influence of humankind is both enlarged by and subject to transhumanism, but all of this can come at a loss).
• – To see how the business and human environment evolves: where are we going? What are the benefits for human beings?
• – To better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and artificial intelligence, in terms of task optimization, transhumanism, Asimov, etc. (Chapter 2).
• – To better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and logistics, transportation, the shared economy, and new work organization (Chapter 3), including uberization of the business (the economy of sharing) with the development of new ways of consuming products and services.
• – To better understand the relationships we will have between ethics and social networks, the sharing of ideas, the emergence of new needs and innovation, the new working modes based on cooperation and collaboration (Chapter 4). More generally, social networking based on the emergence of new patterns and orders will produce the development of new business models which we may suffer without being able to control.
• – The handling of big data and cloud computing inevitably leads to data breaches, glitches and data hacking that lead to loss of control in large databases and to the generation of the whistleblowing effect associated with risk and alarms management (Chapter 5).
• – Finally, in the same way, the world becomes spiritual: relations to virtue (and religions) raise new problems concerning the evolution and adaptation of BE; this will be addressed in the last chapter of Volume 2.

This is consistent with the following results concerning a review of the main challenges involved in sustainable (then ethical) systems.

I.2.2. Global challenges of ethics in advanced sciences

“The 15 Global Challenges” report, updated annually, is a good introduction to the key issues of the early 21st Century in professional areas and vocational services [MAR 16].

In Figure I.1, the last challenge (Global Ethics, #15) is in fact the most important one. Here, ethics is a comprehensive concept, covering, influencing, or relating to the whole word. As usual, the whole word is considered as a set of elements closely interconnected through telecommunications networks, and as being interdependent economically, technically, socially, and politically. The description of the above figure, with a range of views and actions to address each issue, enriched with regional views and progress assessments have been updated each year since 1996 and published in an annual status report [MAR 16]

In “The 15 Global Challenges”, a framework to assess the global and local prospects for humanity is provided. We can briefly describe these 15 challenges through a set of questions as follows:

1. 1) How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change?
2. 2) How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?
3. 3) How can population growth and resources be brought into balance?
4. 4) How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?
5. 5) How can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long-term perspectives?
6. 6) How can the global convergence of information and communication technology work for everyone?
7. 7) How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor?
8. 8) How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and pathogens be reduced?
9. 9) How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions change?
10. 10) How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism and the use of weapons of mass destruction?
11. 11) How can the changing status of women help improve the human condition?
12. 12) How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?
13. 13) How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?
14. 14) How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition?
15. 15) How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions?

The challenges studied and covered in Volume 1 are those included between 1 and 11.

In Volume 2, we will address the challenges 12, up to 15.

Whatever the volume considered, and considering the complexity theory, we can say that all the challenges are interdependent: an improvement in one makes it easier to address others; in the same way, the deterioration in one makes it harder to address others. No challenge is more important than the other: they are transnational in nature and trans-institutional in solution. They cannot be addressed by any executive or institution acting alone. The best fitted or balanced solution is the result of a consensus obtained through auctions or game theory approaches.

I.2.3. An iterative process

The development of new concepts of ethics is the result of several steps and feedback loops in an evolutive process. In the case of the impact and influence of advances and progress in our society, we could think about the following graph.

In this graph (Pierre Massotte), the regulation is not coming from the legal or moral laws, but from “mother nature” which is guided by a whole sustainability relevant to the code types that underpin evolution in the nature [MAS 15a].

In Volume 2, BE should draw our inspiration from another world. It is a type of perspective, concept, advice and recommendation that we will detail and integrate in order to develop a more global and realistic paradigm leading to the “whole ethics”.

Therefore, the “whole ethics” concept will become a more consistent concept.