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Frederick Bruce Bird. The Muted Conscience: Moral Silence and the Practice of Ethics in Business. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1996, 268 pages, $59.95.
Frederick Bird has written a thoughtful book that challenges the reader's mind and conscience. Glancing through the table of contents, one can't help but reflect on the old maxim, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil." The emphasis of the book is on moral blindness, deafness, and silence. The author defines and details moral behaviors of people in both private and business lives, proposes causes for these moral failings, and describes how these vices might best be addressed.
The book is relatively short-250 pages of text-consisting of seven chapters. The final 10 pages of the book is a bibliography of philosophical approaches to moral issues, organizational dilemmas, and psychological perspectives on business ethics.
Chapter 1 introduces the key vices, moral silence, moral deafness, and moral blindness, that prevent an organization or individual from recognizing or acting upon moral issues. The author's goal is to help the reader understand why people remain silent and fail to find voice. Chapter 2, "Moral Silence," opens with a definition of moral muteness. People are morally mute when they fail to speak out regarding their own concerns or about matters they know to be wrong. People can also be morally mute when they fail to question activities which would seem to call for further inquiry. Bird makes a distinction between voicing moral concerns and "carping," whistle blowing, and rationalizing, supporting these distinctions by citing real-world, business examples that demonstrate the implications and consequences of moral silence. Although Bird stresses the importance of speaking out intelligibly in response to moral wrongdoings, he proposes that individuals use simple moral terms like "ought" or "should" instead of philosophical-sounding moral language that may tune...