In the modern world of business, quest for an application of ethical theories that bring about doing the right thing in business has been on the increase. As such formal ethical theories have been formulated in order to guide the freedoms that a business has based on the standards of morality. Formal ethics covers issues to do with the moral principles that have been set to govern business activities or rather business conduct. As a matter of fact, some of such theories that bring about formal ethics involve the ethical theory on morality by Kant. Kant points out actions are morally right in virtue of their motives, which must derive more from duty than from inclination (Sullivan, 1989).
In regard to export of capital for production abroad, constraint ought to be placed on the business regarding this freedom as from a moral point of view, it should be the duty of the ones involved in the business to act out of duty not to export all the resources for production abroad without necessarily regarding the welfare of the country and also based on ill motives (Ietto-Gillies, 2005). In the same line of thought, export of commodities which have been banned from sale in the United States is not morally right and in this case, a constraint should be put in order to regulate this. This is for the reason that the businessmen involved should view it as their duty not to export commodities whose sale has been banned out of sale in US. This is because, if it is banned in the US, why then sell it to another country?
From Kant’s point of view, this is wrong and the involved should instead take it as their duty to act morally and fail to export the commodity to other countries. Since actions according to Kant, are morally right based on the motives, downsize in the face of economic difficulty can be in some cases allowed while in others constraint. This is due to the fact that if the reason or motive for it is ill, then this is immoral and unethical as the involved have not taken into consideration the aspect of duty in acting morally right or rather being ethical. Along with this, there is the issue of breaking union contracts in the face of economic difficulty. Such an issue may arise due to several factors. For one, it may be driven by ill motives of unwillingness to fulfill the contract or to quit the contract without following of the right channel (Peng, 2008).
In such like a case, Kant formal ethical theory of morality provides that acting right, doing the right thing, should be a matter of duty rather than inclination. Therefore in this context, if a business is breaking union contracts in the face of economic difficulty, it should be out of the right motives rather than bad ones. From a broader point of view, the constraint ought to be placed on the freedom of a business to carry out the above mentioned issues as they can easily be abused. Also, Kant’s moral theory calls for doing the right thing or acting morally right as a duty rather than an inclination along with the fact those actions are morally right in virtue of their motives (Sullivan, 1989). Thus, constraint ought to be placed on the freedom of a business to carry out some of the issues as stipulated above.