In practice, this issue is also a special challenge to people living in a time of economic transition. In China, since the economic reforms began at the end of the 1970s, the economy has become the central concern of the people and economic values have risen to an unprecedentedly high position. For a time, "money became the only object", economic value overruling all others. However, after the excessive enthusiasm for money and wealth, people gradually miss the charm of ethical values. Once left out in the cold, now they are eulogized in terms of "spiritual civilization".

In the West, before the 1970s, economic gain was the only object of business. "The business of business is business" is a famous expression of this view. However, since the movement of business ethics in the 1970s, driven by many social and cultural currents, people have challenged that view. As a result, economics and ethics came together, and ethical value entered the economic kingdom. Though now many claim that their decisions are affected by considerations of ethical value, others still doubt that this is so. In other words, they believe that economic values still overrule ethical values, that the latter is no more than a means for the former.

Therefore, this issue is still a problem for both theory and practice. If this issue is not solved both the union of economics and ethics and the role of business ethics in practice will make no sense.

What is of interest here is not the definitions of value and its basis, but the two problems contained in these claims: (1) upon what is value founded: the problem of the basis of value; and (2) according to what is value defined: the problem of the definition of value. Proceeding from this distinction, answers to those two problems can serve as prerequisites for the discussion of the two values in the next section.

What is value? On this there exists a large literature with many theories and a variety of definitions. I would suggest a very simple definition: value is what is affirmed within objects by subjects. This includes three points: (1) it meets the needs of subjects; (2) it is what a subject willed or created; (3) it is what a subject appreciated or enjoyed. Value is not the same as object. To say a book is valuable is not to say it is value itself. Value is what a subject finds, experiences and enjoys in an object: one finds, senses, knows, cognition, etc.; it is also what a subject needs, chooses, supposes, and expects. In most cases, it is taken as the purpose of an action: by will and feeling it is brought into being. At the end of the process one can experience, enjoy, savor, and thereby affirm it.

The theory of literary value in aesthetics notes that a book is first there before a reader opens it. One reads it according to one’s unique aesthetics, needs and expectations, employing one’s imagination, life experience and aesthetic experience. With the help of one’s imagination and reason one re-imagines and artistically conceptualizes the structure of characters. Thereby, one forms and creates one’s own aesthetic image, not exactly like that of the author of the book. That image or concept formed and created in the process of the reading and appreciating is precisely the aesthetic object. It is not the book; nevertheless, it is where the value of the book lies. The book in the natural world is not made by us; but we can find and experience it, and so confirm its value for our body and mind in their process of meeting our needs.

Hence, value is not far from us; it is in our feelings, cognition, experiences and enjoyment. It is what we hold and confirm by use of our body and mind. It might be some utility, function or meaning that is to be found, experienced and enjoyed, but could not be reduced to only one of them; rather it is a general term for all of them. This might be the reason why G.E. Moore thinks that good (value) cannot be defined. He lets us experience or confirm it in our own context, but does not reduce it to a single function, property or meaning.

Thus, value can be of many kinds in relation to a subject’s needs, creations and enjoyment. However, though they can be distinguished in terms of their subject as individual or social, they are relative, and rely on wholeness, harmony and compatibility, as will be discussed below.

Change in values is often observed: something already found valuable, if it can be pursued and enjoyed only at the expense of other values, may no longer be considered a value, even a so-called end value. The reason for this might be sought in the needs, activities and pleasures of a subject. Needs are many: material and spiritual, natural and social, basic and non-basic, etc. All of these distinctions are relative and it is difficult to say that some needs, such as that for food and drink, are totally material or natural of a need of a human being can be met by food or drink it is material. But, even such a natural and material need is mixed or interwoven with other needs, in more social and cultural terms, as with the hygienic, economic and aesthetic expectations of food and drink. Thus there is a so-called "culture of food and drink."

Therefore even the most simple, natural and basic needs are mixed and linked with other needs. In the tree of human needs, the branches can be distinguished from the trunk, and every branch is connected and mixed with others. Every branch extends many leaves for sunlight, water and air. Thus, for example, the human need for aesthetics is connected and mixed with one’s need for amusement, knowledge, morality, etc. The human need for wealth is also connected and interwoven with other needs for community, amusement, knowledge, morality, etc. The more a subject develops, the more his needs are varied and mixed; in other words, a subject’s needs tend to be varied and harmonious, belonging to an organically developing whole. If a value meets a need that is compatible with other needs, it will be increasingly pursued and affirmed.

A subject’s activities are also many, such as economic, political, social, scientific, educational, literary, artistic and theore-tical. Any that exclude or stifle other activities will be a problem. Though a subject cannot engage in many activities at the same time, often an activity, instead of being in opposition to others, includes or takes account of the purposes of other activities, so that one can "kill two birds with one stone". For example, labor is taken for granted as the first human need; it is considered characteristic of human life and the most basic value, as is confirmed in a practical way. However, if labor is reduced only to satisfying bodily human needs at the expense of other activities, then it will be a cursed rather than valued.

A subject’s pleasures might be divided into feelings, cognition, experiences, utilities and so on. Many people in commerce, though very rich, find themselves split in two. What one holds and confirms with one’s body is just what one loses and denies in mind. Since money cannot be used to fill the void in the soul, one doubts if money is really the thing to pursue. Only on the basis of wholeness, com-patibility, and harmony of diversity in subjects, do we find the basis for values.

For a subject as an individual, the basis of value is related to that of other’s or of society. The social basis of values will influence and restrict those of the individual, and vice versa. Obviously during a time of transition, under the influence of new forces or ideas, there will be dissension and bigotry in the short term. By laying undue stress on a need, one value will overrule an other or even all values; and this unbalanced stress on one social value will influence individual practice, leading to related dissension over values and to prejudice. However, if wholeness, harmony and compatibility are the basis of value then they should create an opening for value, even in an unbalanced situation. From a long term point of view, only values with such a basis can stand because: (a) they are not at the expense of other values; (b) they are related to what we take as an end value; (c) this end value, the survival and development of either mankind or of the individual, opens space for their consideration; and (d) such a value has a firm and balanced foundation.

ECONOMIC AND ETHICAL VALUES

Returning now to the two values: economic and ethical. Economic value is what is found of a subject’s material needs in object, and is willed or created, appreciated or enjoyed by a subject. Economic values are efficiency, benefit, profits, richness, prosperity, wealth, well-being, etc. Unlike other kinds of value, usually these require material products and can be measured or characterized by money. In political economics, the classical definition is that value is the social labor of the producer of commodities, which is con-densed in commodities (concrete labor creates concrete utility value and abstract labor exchange value). My definition may not conflict with this: economic value can meet the subject’s material needs, that is to say, it has use value; it can be measured or characterized by money, and has exchange value; and it is appreciated or enjoyed by subjects for all these reasons. Since either use or exchange value should be affirmed finally by subjects, for a consumer the use or exchange value of a commodity is only a possible value. Only through one’s willingness and behavior, e.g., in choosing, buying and using, is the value affirmed in personal experience and cognition. Thus, economic value is one kind of general value.

Ethical value is affirmed by subjects in human behavior or their spiritual products. This includes three points: it can meet the subject’s needs for moral life; it is willed or practiced; and it is appreciated or enjoyed by subjects with moral satisfaction and a lofty feeling. Such ethical values as honesty, loyalty, benevolence, justice, good, and so on, are also categories of ethics. Like all other spiritual values, but unlike economic value, it is carried by human behavior or its spiritual products, but unlike other spiritual values it has unique normative function.

(1) The single value model: this lays undue stress on only economic value as in the USA before the rise of business ethics, or only on ethical value as in China before the reforms.

(3) The identity model: this also is of two types: one identifies economic value with ethical value: some claim that efficient economic behavior itself has ethical value and therefore that efficiency is identified with ethical value. The other maintains that ethical value is identified with economic value, because Yi is public Li; the difference between Yi and Li is only whether it is public or private.

Which model is right; how should we treat the relationship between the two values? We might deal with it on the basis of values as the last section argued:

First, in terms of the three points of value (meeting needs, being willed, and being appreciated), economic and ethical values are not separate or isolated. The first point is that it can meet the subject’s needs, but as mentioned above, this is not isolated or separated from the others, but when a central, e.g., economic, need is met it is mixed and connected with other needs, including ethical needs. If this central need is compatible with helping forward other needs including ethical ones, then this connections will support and confirm the central need. On the contrary, if the central need is met at the expense of, and opposed to, other related needs, its position will be shaken.

Second, the activity realizing these complicated needs is not isolated. In other words, since each need of a subject is not separate, it is not just economic or material; hence the activity also is not purely economic or by a purely economic agent. When one meets this complicated need in one’s actions, one must consider how to adapt to economic, ethical, social and environmental requirements, and hence must deal with ethical, social and environmental relations. Hence, this activity becomes complicated; it is not just making money, but also a kind of moral and public activity.

Third, what subjects appreciate, enjoy, and confirm cannot be only economic or material things: it can be measured by money but also is confirmed by our sense of moral satisfaction and social or public opinion.

The relation of ethical values to utility through moral norms means that the connection with ethical value with the need for Li is manifested in connection to public Li. Though Li relates to moral agents, due to their connection with public Li, if this is not realized by them, there behavior will lack ethical value. This is not contrary to the above view of the bases of values as relevance, compatibility and harmony of diverse needs, activities and enjoyment on the part of the subject. On this basis we can deal with the relationship between ethical and economic values.

But there seem to be some weaknesses in all the above models. The model of only the value separates one value from another, without seeing that one value can be achieved only if it is compatible with other, related values. The authors of Business Ethics—Reading and Cases in Corporate Morality, say:

Business ethics in the USA proposes that we should not pursue economic value without consideration of it being compatible and harmonious with other values, specially ethical values. In China, before the reforms, we disregarded the rationality of economic values, cut off political and ethical values from economic values, and took such political and ethical values as having no relation to economic values and the objects of economic activity. As a result, people not only could not enjoy values from economic activity, but lost their belief in so-called political and ethical values.

As for the model of end-means, the claims regarding whether value is the means to economic values or vice verse all arbitrarily divide the two values into means-value and end-value. But the relationship between the two seems different. All are related to, pursued and affirmed by subjects without distinction of end-means. If helping forward economic value is the basis of rejecting or accepting ethical values, could we say that even cheating is beyond reproach since it too may be used to make money? In the case of ethical end-values, many think there is no cause here for criticism, but in economies, which certainly overlap and connect with other activities, economic value is central for meeting the subjects’ needs. Here, the issue is whether this be supported by relevance, possibility and harmony, which are not questions of ends. Without the support of related ethical values, economic values cannot stand. This happens often in the connection of economic with ethical values. To say that economic values have lost this basis does not mean that one should take ethical values as the end of economy. To me, the model for cooperation of the two values should be the pursuit of economic value with the support of ethical values. This model has relevance, comparability and harmony.

As for the model identifying economic and ethical values, it confuses value with the basis of value. To say that efficient economic behavior itself has ethical value is to say that efficient behavior has the support of ethical values; therefore it has ethical meaning, and is affirmed ethically. But it is difficult to identify efficiency with ethical value. Similarly, ethical value can be confirmed in the perspective of public utility, but it is ethical because it meets the subject’s moral need in ethical form.

In fact, in our cultural heritage, many economic values were supported by ethical values and solved the problem of their cooperation. They were not reached by a hierarchy of values, but were basic to business ethics.

I noted that economic values can be either with or without ethical value. Economic values are especially with ethical value. More ethical business values will be found and created if we note this important conjunction. In this much is to be learned from our cultural context as well as from that of other nations.

In changing times, since people’s concepts of value and their basic, especially their economic, life is in transformation, their needs, pursuits and enjoyments change, and the bases of values will be influenced. Where some factors were overstressed, the connections will be broken, as mentioned in the beginning of this paper. But from a long term point of view, economic value and ethical value will be revived. It is hoped that business ethics can help people to shorten the time "without" values.

NOTES

1. Georges Enderle, "What is Business Ethics?" Business Ethics: Japan and the Global Economy. T.W. Dunfee and Y. Nagayasu, eds. (Boston: Kluwer Academy Publishers, 1993), pp. 133-150.

2. Richard T. DeGeorge, "Will Success Spoil Business Ethics?" in R. Edward Freeman, ed., Business Ethics-The State of the Art (Boston: Kluwer Academy Publishers, 1993), p. 42.

3. Quote from The History of Contemporary Western Ethics (Beijing: The Beijing University Press, 1990), p. 406.

4. C.L. Sheng, A New Approach to Utilitarism (Shanghai: Jiao Tong University Press, 1996), p. 136.

5. R. Edward Freeman, ed., Business Ethics, p. 1.

6. Amartya Sen, "Does Business Ethics Make Economic Sense?" in Paul M. Minus, ed., The Ethics of Business in Global Economics (Boston: Kluwer Academy Publishers, 1993), pp. 51-56.

7. Georges Enderle.

8. Ibid.

9. Li Yining, The Ethical Issues in Economics (Beijing: The San Lian Books, 1995), p. 3.

10. Wang Keqian, "What is Value?" (Guangzhou: Zhongshan University Press, 1992), p. 134-135.

11. Ibid.

12. W. Michael Hoffman and Robert E. Frederick, Business Ethics (Waltham, MA: Bentley College, 1990), p. 1.

13. A.S. Hornby, E.V. Gatenby and H. Wakefield, The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English with Chinese Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 345.

14. Dictionary Words (Shanghai: Shanghai Dictionaries and Works Press, 1979), p. 1246.

15. The Business Ethics in Asian Countries and Related Regions (Tokyo, 1996).

16. Pong Yue Collection, no. 6, 1993.