We are pre-conditioned to trust a lot of things in society. Think about the food you eat: you are trusting the farmers, the transporters, the stores, the preparation, etc.
What about infrastructure? We trust that traffic lights to function properly. We trust the building we work in to stand day after day. We trust our furniture to hold up. We trust our computers to power up and work as commanded by keystroke and click.
How important is trust to a business or society?
We all agree that trust is very important in business, and should be more valued in society. Some of the call-outs from the group on why trust is important included: risk and cost reduction, competence, motivation, and relationships.
To be trusted, you have to be trustworthy. We defined this as being dependable, committed, consistent. Overall, a general ‘do what you say you’ll do’ approach.
Within defining what makes one trustworthy, there are moral exhortations:
- Tell us what we should do if we are to be moral
- Do not prescribe specific actions (tells us to give money to the poor, but not how much)
- Do not tell us how much of a positive moral action is necessary to fulfill a generally accepted standard of moral propriety
and there are moral prohibitions:
- Tell us what we shouldn’t do if we are to be moral
- One either obeys them or not, there are no matters of degree
Trust and moral failures
In contrast, there is no objective basis for asserting that a failure to obey a moral exhortation is a moral failure. However, failure to obey a moral prohibition clearly constitutes immoral behavior.
Moral exhortations require resources, whereas moral prohibitions only require inaction therefore, everyone can do them. For example, The Ten Commandments are all specific prohibitions. Anyone can do these – they are an objective moral standard.
Trust and moral restraint
Harm-based moral restraint is where we start to rationalize prohibitions. We will break the law or the rule if we think that no one will get hurt. We speed on open highways because no one is there. – works in a patter like this:
- A self-serving action is considered that will likely bring hard to one of more individuals
- Empathizing with the harmed individuals leads to sympathy
- Sympathy lead + culpability lead to voluntary feeling of guilt
- Strong feelings of guilt lead to moral restraint
- Moral restraint precludes opportunism
- Trustworthiness
- Trust
- Consequentialist – no one is actually going to get hurt if I do this
- Empathy problem
But, principled moral restraint is a little different, as it is the moral belief that undertaking negative actions is inherently wrong, wrong as a matter of principle, and there wrong even if no harm is done to others. It’s a non-consequentialist position that frequently comes from religion.
The problem: the ‘Greater Good’ rationalization (breaks down trust)
- We may feel guilty about a negative moral action (moral prohibition), but even more guilty about not doing a positive moral action (moral exhortations)
- Trading off positive moral actions against negative
- (prohibition says don’t steal, exhortation says my kids need to eat…)
- No objective way to measure value of moral exhortation
These decisions are made in business – bypassing difficult conversations with difficult people. Or, when there’s a reduction in force, the business may be forced to choose between two employees: one who is a high performer; and one who is not… but has a disabled wife or child. The business may let the performer go based on the assumption that because they are a performer, they will have no trouble finding a job.
The solution: The Lexical Primacy of Moral Prohibitions
The Lexica… what?
- Moral prohibitions precede moral exhortations
- To be a moral person, one must first not be immoral by obeying all moral prohibitions against negative moral actions
- If this condition is not met, no matter how many positive moral actions a person takes, the person is still immoral
“An individual who very strongly believes that undertaking negative moral actions is wrong as a matter of principle, and who also believes that obeying moral prohibitions is lexically primary to obeying moral exhortations, possesses and ethic of duty-based moral restraint” -
Recommend Resource: Moral Foundation of Economic Behavior – David C. Rose
