The Role of Ethics in Economics and Management: Galbraith–Drucker approaches

Ethics has been linked to virtue, considering it within an individual sphere. It has also been related to good social behaviour or even religious factors, and so on. In general, economic thinkers have not questioned some of the basic principles which help to shape the fundamental ethical criteria in economic behaviour. The pursuit of individual interest has been identified as pecuniary profit maximization and, in this sense, Peter Drucker states that this has been the fundamental motivation of any economic agent, even before capitalism was born and Galbraith pointed out that the lack of consideration of other motivations, apart from earning money, has been one of the biggest mistakes in economics. The main goal of this paper is to analyse the Drucker and Galbraith approaches on ethics.