Moral specification of gift giving in business: A typology from a “first-person” judgment

Most ethical studies on gift giving in business are limited to the application of rationalist ethical principles through a “third-person” judgment to condemn certain practices such as bribes or manipulative actions, or to question the morality of certain commercial gifts or actions in corporate philanthropy. Such ethical analyses are generally based on extrinsic principles that lead to a dichotomous discussion on the morality of gift-giving in terms of ethically acceptable and unacceptable gifts. Much less attention has been paid to the gift giver's “first-person” moral judgment. Thus, this paper contributes to this vacuum by drawing from Thomas Aquinas's approach to internal human acts and their moral evaluation. One of Aquinas's crucial points is his distinction between the object chosen (finis operis) and the intention of the agent (finis operantis) as a structural mental unity. From this perspective, the paper proposes a typology of gift giving, which aids reflection when making personal moral judgments in a variety of situations. Accompanied by illustrative examples, eight types of gift-giving acts are identified and grouped into three categories: ethically unacceptable giving (bribery and manipulative and malevolent gifts), ethically acceptable giving (instrumental and reciprocal gifts), and ethically excellent giving (gratitude, gratuitous, and solidarity gifts).