So What Now? Three Ethical Frameworks, One Recommendation
How each ethical framework reads the Kohl's scandal differently, including what each one misses. I've spent four posts laying out what happened at Kohl's, who's involved, and what people think about it. This last one is about what the company should actually do next, and which ethical framework gives us the most useful lens for thinking about it. I'm going to apply three frameworks we've studied this semester, explain what each one would recommend, and make the case for why one of them fits this situation better than the others. But I also want to be honest about what each framework misses. None of them is perfect on its own. But before going to the main content, here is a short educational video on 3 main strands of moral philosophy: Deontological Ethics (Duty-Based, Kant) Kantian reading of this case is clean. Buchanan had a duty to disclose conflicts of interest. That duty was spelled out in Kohl's code of ethics. He violated it. From a deontological st...
