Page:The Social Significance of Professional Ethics.pdf/2

 Distinction Between Business and Professional Standards

There is in this respect a marked contrast between the world of business and that of the professions. It cannot be said that business has yet attained a specific code of ethics, resting on con- siderations broader than the sense of self-interest and supplementing the minimal requirements of the law. Such a code may be in the making, but it has not yet established itself, and there are formidable difficulties to be overcome. When we speak of business ethics, we generally mean the principles of fair play and honorable dealing which men should observe in business. Sharp dealing, "unfair" competition, the exaction of the pound of flesh, may be reprobated and by the decent majority condemned, but behind such an attitude there is no definite code which business men reinforce by their collective sense of its necessity and by their deliberate adoption of it as ex- pressly binding upon themselves. There is no general brotherhood of business men from which the offender against these sentiments, who does not at the same time overtly offend against the law of the land, is extruded as un- worthy of an honorable calling. There is no effective criticism which sets up a broader standard of judgment than mere success.

If we inquire why this distinction should hold between business and professional standards the social signif- icance of the latter is set in a clearer light. It is not that business lacks, unlike medicine or law for example, those special conditions which call for a code of its own. Take, on the one hand, the matter of competitive meth- ods. It is a vital concern of business, leading to numerous agreements of all sorts, but these are mere ad hoc agree- ments of a particular nature, not as yet

deductions from a fully established principle which business, as a self- conscious whole, deliberately and uni- versally accepts. Take, on the other hand, such a problem as that of the duty of the employer to his work- people. Is not this a subject most apt for the introduction of a special code defining the sense of responsibility involved in that relationship? But where is such a code to be found?

The Ideal of Service

Something more is evidently needed than a common technique and a com- mon occupation in order that an ethical code shall result. We might apply here the significant and much mis- understood comparison which Rous- seau drew between the "will of all" and the "general will." In business we have as yet only the "will of all," the activity of business men, each in pursuit of his own success, not overridden, though doubtless tempered by the "general will," the activity which seeks first the common interest. The latter can be realized only when the ideal of service controls the ideal of profits. We do not mean that busi- ness men are in fact selfish while professional men are altruistic. We mean simply that the ideal of the unity of service which business renders is not yet explicitly recognized and pro- claimed by itself. It is otherwise with the professions. They assume an obli- gation and an oath of service. "A profession," says the ethical code of the American Medical Association, "has for its prime object the service it can render to humanity; reward or financial gain should be a subordinate considera- tion," and again it proclaims that the principles laid down for the guidance of the profession "are primarily for the good of the public." Similar state- ments are contained in the codes of the other distinctively organized profes-