‘Kantian ethics provides the best approach to business ethics.’ Discuss

Kantian ethics is deontological, meaning that the actions rather than the consequences matter in ethical decision making. For Kant, the essence of morality is the goodwill, and, reason is at the centre of morality. This means that good will must overcome emotion. Moreover, duty is a crucial element to the doctrine as it provides the moral motivation. The core tenant of Kantian ethics is the Categorical Imperative which has three formulations: 1) universal law, 2) respect principle, 3) kingdom of ends. Ultimately, under Kantian ethics one must think of how one’s fully rational self would act. 

Applied to business, Kantian ethics is too rigid as the principle of duty stifles progress. For example, in a family run business, they may be partial to choose employees based on who they know and so are motivated by personal interest. However, such sort of partiality is essentially cronyism and cannot be accepted under a Kantian ethical framework. Yet, for the family run business, this system may deliver reliable and beneficial results, vastly improving the quality of the services they provide. This shows that a direct application of Kantian principles is too optimistic, impractical and not always straight forward. Other ethical frameworks such as utilitarianism or virtue ethics allow for more contextualisation.