Principles of Responsible Commerce

1968 Words8 Pages
Journey of learning in COMM101 - Principles of Responsible Commerce I, Ken Teo, originally from China have been stay in Singapore for about 15 years. During my first lecture of COMM 101 – Principle of Responsible Commerce, I took out my smart phone and go ‘Google’ to find out the vocabularies that I don’t know. The word ‘Utilitarianism’, ‘Kantian’s ethics’ was alien to me and I tell myself that how am I going to pass this module. This question keep popping out from my mind, the more lectures I attended with Professor Mario Fernando, the more confuse I am. At first, I only heard about Confucius. That is all I know about Philosophy. In the first tutorial, my understanding of the term ’Responsible Commerce’ is about how company function or conduct their business activities and how company deal and manage their conflicts & issues, and also how the consumers overcome the problem and get satisfactions. When there is a new product launch, how the problems had been created, e.g. work safety when developing the product, and pollution to the environment? When there is an issue rise, e.g. the new product line had damage the environment, how to minimums or savage the damage and are there any standard guidelines for us to follow? I hope that what I learn in this module will also apply in my work and personal life and if there is any conflicts come out, we should able to seek for solutions from the standard rules of Kantian’s ethics. ‘What a person should do and what a person wants to do are often not compatible. Doing what one wants to do would usually bring immediate gratification/happiness, but might not benefit the person in the long run. On the other hand, doing what one should do may cause immediate discomfort/unhappiness, even if it is good for the person. This is the underlying message of Kantianism: the purpose of morality is NOT to make you happy! (Although in
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