Business Ethics: Kant, Virtue, and the Nexus of Duty by Richard M. Robinson

Author:Richard M. Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783031631221
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Deriving the Rules of Fair Negotiation

It is established below that the rules of fair negotiations are more explicit and extensive than perhaps previously envisioned by the reader. The work of the late twentieth-century American philosopher John Rawls (1921–2002) centered on justice as derived from fairness. Rawls’ major works include Outline for a Decision Procedure for Ethics (1951), Justice as Fairness (1958), Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory (1980), and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001). His philosophy is Kantian.

This article uses Rawlsian notions of fairness, plus the Rawlsian characteristics of a virtuous manager (a reinterpretation of competent moral judge as reviewed in previous chapters) to derive the rules of fair negotiation (in part a reinterpretation of the previously reviewed considered moral judgment).10 We can delimit the so-called initial characteristics required of those who seek to fairly negotiate, and also the rules to be followed in that negotiation, so that the negotiation itself can be judged as ethical. Thereupon we can judge the resulting agreement as fair or unfair according to its consistency with our “fairness criteria.” This is a bifurcated process, that is, the initial characteristics of the negotiators pose one set of criteria, and the characteristics of the actual negotiations pose another. Both sets must be applied (as previously reviewed).

The material presented here poses an ethical norm for management-stakeholder relations; it offers a contribution to the stakeholder literature concerning ethical norms. This norm of fairness in negotiation presents a theoretical mechanism for indicating various violations of the above mentioned justice. For example, reciprocity is an important issue concerning fairness in negotiation.11 Such reciprocity might affect the long-term performance of the firm so that clarity as to violations of this aspect of fairness is important. The fairness in negotiation material provided in this chapter should assist in achieving this clarity concerning all potential violations.

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