Good intentions aside: drafting a functionalist look at codes of ethics

摘要

Codes of ethics on a corporate, industry or professional level are probably the most widely employed ethics tool. Our paper takes a sceptical look at these. The most interesting questions are related to the ethicalness of codes. The answers to these questions depend on one's concept of ethics and on the underlying moral philosophy framework (deontology and utilitarianism have probably fewer problems with code justification than discourse ethics and virtue ethics). In a next step, social science functionalism is used to develop typologies of code functions, of mediating conditions for code functions and for illustrating how codes could be understood as functional equivalents within an ethics toolbox containing more than just codes. After illustrating how target group attitudes towards codes could be measured the paper concludes with suggestions for future work on codes of ethics.