What is an "ethic of care?" How could your definition apply to the practice of your daily life and future career?
According to Maurice Hamington and Dorothy C. Miller, "Care ethics addresses both the nature of ethics and the nature of knowledge" ("Introduction: A Modern Moral Imperative", XII). In other words, it's following the law and doing what's right while using common sense and showing compassion toward others. This new approach to ethics "emphasizes relationships, empathy, and compassion over formulations of principles" (XI). I believe when someone takes a "care" for something, that person genuinely tries to do the right thing, not because they have to but because they want to. For example, I work at a car dealership and we have a motto that everyone works by: "Doing the right thing, not just doing things right". Here is a realistic scenario which might better explain this saying.
A customer comes into the service department to pick up their vehicle. Their total bill is $1423.53. The advisor explained the bill to the customer over the phone and now the customer is at the cashier counter ready to pay. However, when the cashier goes to collect the money, the customer states he is not completely satisfied with his experience because he was not made aware of a few charges on some of the repairs before the repairs were completed and now he has to pay for them. And while the customer is willing to pay the entire bill, he is not very happy about it. The cashier has two choices. She can collect the total amount of $1423.53 from the customer because that is what all of his repairs cost. That would be doing it right. After all, a customer comes in with a problem, the dealership fixes the problem, the customer pays for the problem that was fixed. The other option the cashier has is to take off the charges that the customer was not happy about paying for and subtract it from the total amount due. Now, this might not be doing things right, but it is the right thing to do. The bottom line is to make the customer happy and by taking off the some of the charges of the bill, by doing the right thing, not just doing things right, that customer will most likely come back in the future and we as a company can walk away knowing we did the right thing.
Ethics of care always applies when working with people. Although I'm not sure what my career will be, I do know I will be working with people and I will be using the ethics of care on a daily basis.
