Question

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Rawlsian approach to business ethics?

Answer 1

Rawls had proposed a theory of justice based on the ideas of political thinkers like John Locke and Rousseau, who promoted the social contract theory and always believe in the distribution of wealth equally among the people.

Rawls primarily used Utilitarianism as the main theory for comparison with his own, and hence he responds at length to this Utilitarian objection and argued for his own theory in preference to Utilitarianism.

In business ethics, Rawl's theory provided a normative foundation for stakeholders theory and stated that the citizen of a country should get participatory rights in terms of economic activities similar to the way they execute the right in the political domain.

Strengths

1. Universal system of fairness and a set of procedures was defined to achieve the aim of equal distribution of wealth

2. A practical, empirically verifiable system of governance was promoted using this theory, the effect of which was supposed to be political, social, and economical in nature.

3. Citizen gets the rights to decide the economic activity and thus Business will run with the whole participation of citizen.

4. People will be more accountable either for the growth or decline of business as they are participating in economic decision making.

5. The system will be more transparent and thus help in better economic planning for the future.

Weaknesses

1. This approach can be helpful for the person putting less effort to make the business better as they will also be getting equal benefits relative to the person working hard to make the business better.

2. Difference Principle involves unacceptable infringements on liberty and thus can hamper the taxation structure of the society.

3. Veil of Ignorance theory excludes in order to promote rationality.