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CH 6] Business 101 6-5

they sound funny. Regardless of how it sounds, we can learn important points from
listening to the words they use.” They say things like this: “How’d you like it if
anyone did the same to you?” “That’s my seat, I have sat there from the beginning of
this class.” “Leave him alone, he isn’t doing any harm.” “Why should you show them
first?” “Give me some of your apple. I shared mine with you yesterday.” “Come on,
you promised.” My personal favorite is “You have a moral obligation.” People say
things like these every day, educated people as well as the uneducated, children and
grownups alike.
Note that the person making these statements is not merely saying that the other
person’s behavior is not pleasing, but is also appealing to some standard of behavior
which he expects the offending person to know. Does the other person respond with,
“To hell with your standard.”? Probably not. What will typically occur is that the
offender will try to make out that his actions are not really against the standard, or that
there is some special excuse (reason) for the infringement. The offended person will
argue that there is some special reason, why the seat is theirs—they have sat there
since the beginning of the class, and thus they hold a clam, a title to that seat in the
class, and as such the offender may not keep the seat. The offender may argue that
since he got to class earlier today, and there is actually no title to seats, he need not
yield.
It looks, in fact, very much as if both people have in mind some kind of Law or
Rule of fair play, or decent behavior, or morality or whatever rationalized reasoning
can be made, about which they each really agree. And they have. If they have not, they
might resort to fighting like animals in a territorial dispute; but they did quarrel in the
human sense of the word. Quarreling is an effort of trying to show that the other
person is in the wrong; and there would be no sense in trying to do that unless all
parties have some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are. Just as there
would be no sense in saying that a football lineman had committed a foul unless there
was some agreement about the rules of football.
The Law or Rule about Right and Wrong which is referred to here, used to be
called the Law of Nature. In our modern lexicon when we talk of the ‘Laws of Nature’
what is usually meant are things like gravitation, or genetics and heredity, or the laws
of chemistry. But when the older thinkers spoke of the Law of Right and Wrong ‘the
Law of Nature’, they were actually referring to the Law of Human Nature. The idea 6
was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation, and organisms by
biological laws, so the creation called man also has his law, which he is subject to.

To create a better working
environment for its employees,
U.S. Shoe replaced its
assembly production lines with
modular work units, where
employees perform several
steps in the production
process rather than one
tedious task. The modular
system creates a greater
feeling of camaraderie,
teamwork, and pride in
workmanship. Under the
modular system, employees
participate in daily decision
making, problem solving, and
new-idea development. The
company invested heavily in
cross-training for modular
work areas and in training
managers and employees in
the skills of communication
and group dynamics.

Photo Source: Courtesy U.S. Shoe Corporation

We will not lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.
—United States Air Force Academy Code
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