The TERA Model: Ethics of Critique, Justice, and Care
This paper examines the TERA model, an ethical framework built on three foundational ethics: critique, justice, and care. The paper defines each ethical perspective, explores its applications in organizational contexts, and identifies its respective limitations. Ethics of critique focuses on uncovering power imbalances and systemic injustice. Ethics of justice balances individual rights with the common good through transparent governance. Ethics of care emphasizes interpersonal respect and human dignity in the workplace. The paper applies all three ethics to a case study involving a human resource advisor named William, who discovers discriminatory hiring practices at his firm, illustrating how the TERA model supports ethical decision-making and corporate social responsibility.
- Introduction to the TERA Model: Overview of ethics and the TERA model's foundations
- Ethics of Critique: Uncovering power imbalances and systemic injustice
- Ethics of Justice: Balancing individual rights with the common good
- Ethics of Care: Interpersonal respect and human dignity at work
- William's Ethical Dilemma: A Case Study: Applying all three ethics to a hiring discrimination scenario
- Conclusion: TERA model's value for organizational ethics
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper clearly defines each ethical framework before applying it, giving readers a solid conceptual foundation before moving to analysis.
- The William case study effectively integrates all three TERA ethics simultaneously, demonstrating how the model works holistically rather than in isolation.
- Each ethical framework is accompanied by an honest acknowledgment of its weaknesses, showing balanced critical thinking rather than uncritical advocacy.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs a framework-application structure: it introduces a theoretical model, unpacks its components individually, and then tests the model against a concrete scenario. This technique is particularly effective in applied ethics writing because it grounds abstract principles in recognizable situations, making the argument more persuasive and accessible. The case study section demonstrates how multiple ethical lenses can converge on a single dilemma without contradiction.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a general introduction to ethics and the TERA model, then dedicates a section to each of the three constituent ethics (critique, justice, care), including definitions, organizational examples, and limitations. The final analytical section presents William's hiring discrimination dilemma and maps all three ethics onto it, before a brief conclusion reaffirms the model's value for organizational responsibility. This clear, modular structure makes the argument easy to follow and the model easy to remember.
Introduction to the TERA Model
Ethics is a process that allows us to analyze the principles underlying a decision and how those principles culminate in a specific action. Ethical analysis involves norms such as possibilities and prohibitions that guide human behavior, as well as the practical rules and values that lead us to choose one course of action over another, and the moral principles we strive to respect in our relationships with ourselves and with others.
The TERA model is part of an existing ethical vision that aims to discover and highlight elements enabling moral reflection. This model was inspired by theoretical construction, and its utility has been confirmed by several research studies as well as training sessions involving different organizations and a variety of employee categories. The TERA model is based on three fundamental ethics: critique, justice, and care.
Ethics of Critique
The ethics of critique seeks to unveil injustices that can be perceived in social relations, created by laws, or perpetuated in organizational structures — or through language that obscures the real problem or renders one party dominant over another. In other words, proponents of this approach aim to uncover situations that benefit one person or group while being detrimental to others. The ethics of critique aims to determine whether a group is dominating another, and to reveal how that situation arose so the injustice can be corrected.
This ethical perspective comprises four guiding questions designed to aid understanding of power relations: Who benefits from a situation? Is there a dominant group? Who defines the structure? Who determines what is valued or undervalued? Whenever an injustice is discovered, those applying this ethical perspective attempt to raise awareness in order to achieve a better balance in the distribution of social benefits. Those acting on the basis of the ethics of critique work to ensure that social arrangements and organizations align with human rights. It also enables stakeholders to offer recommendations, suggestions, or critiques necessary for improving a society or organization.
This can be understood as a form of social responsibility — one that perceives injustice and ensures that the well-being of those who find it difficult to be heard is protected. Examples in which the ethics of critique is relevant in an organization include: prejudice toward other religions and cultures, racism or sexism in the hiring process, unfair representation on committees, racist or sexist language, and the absence of programs that promote equality. These examples present ethical challenges because they involve unjustified presuppositions or offer disproportionate advantages to some at the expense of others.
A notable weakness of this ethic is that critique can sometimes become exaggerated and destructive, questioning all decisions and detecting abuses of power everywhere. Another weakness is that it rarely offers strong proposals for how to reconstruct unsatisfactory social orders.
Ethics of Justice
There are two schools of thought regarding the ethics of justice. According to the first, social justice is a technique that serves to harmonize the needs and desires of individuals independently and autonomously of one another within society. In this view, justice is grounded in individual choice. According to the second school of thought, ethics has its roots in community practices; moral reasoning and choice are therefore facilitated by a community environment, and justice is based on collective choices that aspire toward equitable governance.
In the workplace, both perspectives are engaged: individual choices are made with some awareness of the community, while organizational choices represent the sum of individual choices made each day at work. The ethics of justice requires that an institution serve both individual rights and the common good. The goal, therefore, is to strike a balance between the two. Effective governance requires continuous consultation with stakeholders on policies and regulations, and the goal of this ethics is to provoke exchange, engage in debate, demonstrate transparency within management, and foster understanding and consultation.
Those acting according to this ethics aim for responsible autonomy grounded in cooperation and the promotion of a just social order within an organization. Fostering the ethics of justice in a workplace involves incorporating ethical training activities and collective decision-making so as to sharpen the sensibilities of all participants. This could include programs such as conflict resolution, multicultural understanding, and value clarification. A weakness of this ethics is that it requires considerable effort from the community to manage its affairs while simultaneously accounting for the common good and individual rights. Another disadvantage is that it can become mired in minimal or procedural considerations.
Conclusion
The TERA model is a very helpful framework, especially when it comes to navigating situations that involve an ethical dilemma. The TERA model helps organizations foster corporate social responsibility by providing a basis for ethical accountability within the organization. It guides organizations in their ethical responsibilities so that their operations are conducted with integrity, fairness, and genuine care for all stakeholders.
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