All the previously named sins are present in Croatian society. Great ignorance and
practical “moral principles”:
If you help me, I will help you. To be fair means to be a fool. Wrong!
If we want to succeed in work and life, we have to work and live honestly. Correct!
Kant's ethics is founded on the concepts of free will and responsibility: we must have
free will, yet we should not do all that we can.
How do we know whether our actions are ethical?
Blanchard and Peale (1990), the authors of the book The Power of Ethical Management
suggest that, when we are in doubt during decision-making, we should ask ourselves the
following three questions:
1. Is it legal? Will I thus break any civil laws or company regulations?
2. Has the relationship balance been achieved? Is it fair towards all it may concern, in
both short- and long-term perspectives? Does it promote the relations of mutual
profits?
3. How shall I feel afterwards? Will it make me proud? Would I feel good if my
decision was published in the newspapers? Would I feel good if my family found out
about it?
Business morality can be summarized by the following two recommendations:
- do as you say
- say as you do.
Ultimately one sentence can be regarded as a summary: Ethics and morality is what
you do, and not what you say.