Economy suspended: the possibilities of a Badiouian business ethics

In the philosophy of Alain Badiou, ethics can only arise in relation to an evental truth procedure that breaks from the economic logic of a situation. Further, because for Badiou there cannot be economic truths per se – rather, economic matters must be understood in their relation to one or more truths in the domain of love, art, science or politics – a Badiouian business ethics would look entirely distinct from any ethics that simply places limits on certain kinds of economic activity. Although Slavoj ?i?ek, among others, has suggested that this marks an essential weakness in Badiou's economic/political theory, it may actually be the greatest strength of his position. Within a capitalist system, a Badiouian business ethics would then be a question of mobilizing economic resources in order to serve the ongoing construction of a truth procedure. For a business to be considered ethical on Badiou's terms, it must break – and continue to break – from the dominant logic of capitalism and its merely economic pursuit of profit maximization.     

Business Ethics in Theory and Practice: Diagnostic Notes A. A Prescription for Value

A business ethics practitioner and a moral theologian discuss business ethics. Drawing from value-added accounting principles, and extending them to include the company's stake-holders, especially its employees, Welch explains their significance for the origin, formation, and direction of his company's new ethics program. Primeaux responds to Welch from a perspective rooted in the economic theory of profit maximization and its ethical implications. Among the similarities in their thinking is a serious consideration of the role of profit for business and business ethics.     

Roche’s Clinical Trials with Organs from Prisoners: Does Profit Trump Morals?

This case study discusses the economic, legal, and ethical considerations for conducting clinical trials in a controversial context. In 2010, pharmaceutical giant Roche received a shame award by the Swiss non-governmental organization Berne Declaration and Greenpeace for conducting clinical trials with organs taken from executed prisoners in China. The company respected local regulations and industry ethical standards. However, medical associations condemned organs from executed prisoners on moral grounds. Human rights organizations demanded that Roche ended its clinical trials in China immediately. Students are expected to review the economic and ethical issues regarding the outsourcing of clinical trials to controversial human rights contexts, and discuss how to make business decisions when there are conflicts between making profit and ethical considerations. Was Roche complicit in the human rights violations that were related to its clinical trials? Future patients might benefit from these clinical trials. Do profit and the greater good, in general, trump morals?     

附加值最大化的经济效应分析

文章对附加值最大化问题建立了数学模型,对附加值最大化的经济效应分国内贸易和国际贸易两方面进行了利润最大化对比.附加值最大化具有产业结构提升效应,并且在国内贸易中可以和利润最大化相容,而在国际贸易中不一定相容;并对利润最大化在国际贸易中的效率损失和政策导向提出简单建议.     

Circles within a Circle: The Condition for the Possibility of Ethical Business Institutions Within a Market System

How can a business institution function as an ethical institution within a wider system if the context of the wider system is inherently unethical? If the primary goal of an institution, no matter how ethical it sets out to be, is to function successfully within a market system, how can it reconcile making a profit and keeping its ethical goals intact? While it has been argued that some ethical businesses do exist, e.g., Johnson and Johnson, the argument I would like to put forth is that no matter how ethical a business institution is, or how ethical its goals are, its capacity to act in an ethical manner is restricted by the wider system in which it must operate, the market system. Unless there is a fundamental change in the notion of the market system itself, the capacity for individual businesses to act in an ethical manner will always be restricted. My argument is divided into two parts. The first part is to show the inherent bias towards unethical outcomes that is inherent in the market system. The second part is to suggest how to reorient the general economic framework in order to make ethical institutions more possible. The question then becomes, how to define economic behavior in terms other than competition for profit.     

Shareholder wealth maximization,business ethics and social responsibility

The primary objective of this article is to develop a framework for analyzing the ethical foundations and implications of shareholder wealth maximization (SWM). Distinctions between SWM and the more widely examined construct of profit maximization are identified, the most significant being the central role played in SWM by the market mechanism for pricing the corporation's securities. It is argued that empirical tests concerned with evaluating the ethical implications of SWM will almost surely involve a joint hypothesis. A number of recent empirical studies aimed at testing hypotheses with explicit ethical content are reviewed.Geoffrey Poitras is an Associate Professor of Finance and International Business in the Faculty of Business Administration at Simon Fraser University. The author's published work has appeared in various journals includingThe Journal of Futures Markets, Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation andApplied Economics. This paper was written while the author was a visiting Senior Fellow at the National University of Singapore.     

Ethical Transparency and Economic Medicalization

This article introduces the concept of economic medicalization where non-medical problems are transformed into medical problems in order to achieve the objective of corporate shareholder wealth maximization. Following an overview of the differences in ethical norms applicable to medical ethics and business ethics, the economic medicalization of medical research practice and publication is examined in some detail. This motivates a general discussion of the problems involved in the ethical approval process for medical research that balances the interests of both business and government in the market for medical products and services.     

转型期中国民营企业发展的伦理困惑剖析及对策

经济基础的转轨要求我国民营企业进行从思维方式到价值观念的全面变革,实现从基于血缘与亲情关系的极端均衡向企业产权高度社会化的综合平衡的转化。本文认为,在这个过程中,民营企业会遭遇如利润最大化与价值增值是否矛盾,机会成本决策中伦理决策如何定位,转型期不完全市场短期与长期利润的博弈权衡,个人权威的存在与企业伦理由个人责任向企业责任转化等一系列伦理困惑。文章认为,民营企业要走出伦理困惑,必须对企业伦理进行重新定位,把价值增值作为成败的基础和伦理判断的根基;由同质关系向以社会信任为基础的弱关系方向伸展;采取具体措施为CEO和企业管理者设定道德基调;以“过程咨询”的形式通过伦理培训与设立伦理规则来达到竞争与合作的统一;借助企业伦理质量模型进行企业伦理审计和外部道德审计。     

Managerial ethics and microeconomic theory

There is a very apparent conflict between economists and ethicists over the moral standards that should be applied to the managers of business firms. The view of most economists is that moral standards in business are not relevant, beyond the normal personal obligations to speak the truth and observe the law, because profit maximizing behaviour, under market and resource constraints, leads inexorably to social welfare optimization. The opposing view of most humanists is that modern markets are not competitive enough to be constraining, that profit maximization often leads to social harm, and that welfare benefits are unjustly distributed. The article examines the moral constructs in microeconomic theory and the ethical objections to that theory at both the pragmatic and theoretic levels, and concludes that inappropriate assumptions about the nature and worth of human beings in the economic paradigm require the use of moral standards for business decisions and actions. LaRue Tone Hosmer is Professor of Policy and Control at the School of Business Administration, University of Michigan. His most important publications are: The Entrepreneurial Function, Prentice-Hall, 1977; Academic Strategy, University of Michigan Press, 1979; Strategic Management, Prentice-Hall, 1982; and Formation Planning, McGraw-Hill, 1984.     

Putting ethics and economic rationality together: an Aristotelian and philosophical approach

The gap between economic rationality, as embedded in utility maximization, and ethical rationality, identified with a set of rules that prescribe the right course of action, has been a challenging issue for economists, philosophers, and business ethicists. Despite the difference and the noncompetition between a scientific economic approach of economics and business ethics, and a behavioral and philosophical one, we highlight the importance of the Aristotelian concept of prudence or phronesis applied to business activity. Phronesis allows for a conceptualization of rationality that can be simultaneously applied to economics and ethics. It also allows conceiving the intrinsically ethical nature of economic rationality. This relationship requires an appropriate education and the intervention of the state.     

Profit and More: Catholic Social Teaching and the Purpose of the Firm

The empirical findings in Collins and Porras' study of visionary companies, Built to Last, and the normative claims about the purpose of the business firm in Centesimus Annus are found to be complementary in understanding the purpose of the business firm. A summary of the methodology and findings of Built to Lastand a short overview of Catholic Social Teaching are provided. It is shown that Centesimus Annus' claim that the purpose of the firm is broader than just profit is consistent with Collins and Porras empirical finding that firms which set a broader objective tend to be more successful than those which pursue only the maximization of profits. It is noted however that a related finding in Collins and Porras, namely that the content of the firm's objective is not as important as internalizing some objective beyond just profit maximization, can lead to ethical myopia. Two examples are provided of this: the Walt Disney Company and Philip Morris. Centesimus Annus offers a way to expose such myopia, by providing guidance as to what the purpose of the firm is, and therefore as to what kinds of objectives are appropriate to the firm.     

Three Simple Techniques to Analyze a Complex Economic Phenomenon: The Case of Profits

This paper seeks to characterize the behavior of profits over the business cycle as a model for analyzing any economic series by a practicing business economist. It addresses three fundamental questions about profits that are common and critical to identifying the behavior of any macroeconomic series—mean-reversion, volatility, and trend. First, does profit growth over time exhibit mean-reverting behavior? Second, how volatile are profits, and does this volatility obscure the message of average profit growth? Third, how can we estimate a long-run trend growth component for profits and thereby separate profit cycles from its long-run trend growth component?     

The transactional ethic: The ethical foundations of free enterprise reconsidered

A review of the evolution of the ethical foundations of free enterprise reveals the essentially utilitarian ethical foundation prevailing today. To enrich those foundations the article attempts to establish the ethical validity of free transactions by relating them to the basic principle of interpersonal ethics: the Golden Rule. The validity of the transactional ethic is presented as an articulation of freedom in a valid social and economic context. Jeffrey A. Barach is Professor of Management, A. B. Freeman School of Business, Tulane University. His DBA ('67), MBA ('61), and AB ('56) are from Harvard. His interests include business ethics, business policy and marketing. He has published articles and cases in these areas and on pedagogy. His text Individual, Business, and Society was published in 1977. Recent articles concern social marketing (Business Horizons), management of family firms (Sloan Management Review), and the ethics of hardball (California Management Review).John B. Elstrott, Jr., is the Sponsored Research Coordinator at the Freeman School of Business, Tulane University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado (1975). His interests include business ethics, entrepreneurship, economic development, and environmental economics. He is working on several interdisciplinary research projects including one on economic evaluation of solid waste management alternatives. Dr. Elstrott is an active entrepreneur and serves on the board of several profit and not for profit corporations.     

Managerial Incentives and Durable Goods Monopoly

In many cases durable goods monopolists who sell out output do not appear to act in the competitive fashion suggested by Coase (1972). This indicates the firm‘s owners mitigate their commitment problem with buyers in some manner. This paper shows that managerial incentives provide a natural mechanism for the owner to mitigate its commitment problem without explicitly contracting with buyers. Owners will optimally shift their managers from the singular goal of profit maximization by penalizing them for sales. Additionally, the paper demonstrates that the degree to which managerial incentives and compensation diverge from pure profit maximization is in large part a function of the durability or quality of the product.     

Collaborative economy,a society service? Involvement with ethics and the common good

The company at the service of today's society is reinventing itself to satisfy people's needs in a more efficient and adapted way. Globalization and digitization promote increasing interaction and new forms of economic organization such as collaborative economy. However, can it be understood that this new business model, more than others, has as its raison d'être in the search for the “common good”? A first approach suggests the presence of values related to collaboration between equals aiming at a common good. However, the possible existence of a profit motive and the labor relations framework in which certain activities are carried out have created a debate on their ethical qualification. In this context, considering 278 companies in the collaborative economy sector, the relationship between the concept of “common good” and the collaborative economy is analyzed, while examining whether these new realities have an explicit ethical intention (of search for goods for people). According to the results, it is not possible to assert that these platforms have an ethical concern, but it is observed that they are in line with the common good and implicitly contribute to the service of society.     

The Response of Canadian Business Schools to Consumerism

Of the major issues dominating the public interest in recent times, perhaps consumerism is by far the most vital one. Reaching the forefront during the second half of the past decade, consumerism has drawn considerable attention from virtually all groups having a stake in the performance of the market place. The interest of the academic community in consumerism is no exception. For business educators, the prevalence of consumer protests and dissatisfaction with the market behavior yields a number of compelling but, nonetheless, crucial issues. For instance, should a business school try to improve its existing image—that of preparing its student to be a shrewd businessman with one pervasive criterion in mind, namely, profit maximization? Or, should business schools adopt the concept of training its graduate to be an enlightened businessman who attempts to maximize the profit of his firm, but in the context of what is best for the whole society? Should a business school play the role of a mediator between consumers and the business sector at large? It is to these and similar questions that the present investigation is directed.     

The Ethics of Speculation

Recently there has been an outpouring of consumer frustration over rising food and energy prices. Many politicians railed against “speculators” who allegedly drove up the prices of key necessities. Is speculation unethical? This article reviews the traditional arguments against speculation. Many of the standard criticisms confuse speculation with gambling. In much the same way as ethicists now draw distinctions between usury and normal business interest, we draw a distinction between socially useful speculation and gambling. Gambling involves taking on risk with no plausible expectation of making a profit. Gambling may provide entertainment value to some people, but like other addictive activities causes grave harm to a subset of users. Speculation involves taking on a business risk with a plausible expectation that a profit will result. Speculators provide an important risk bearing service by taking on risks that others do not want. They help markets to function better by helping to incorporate information into prices as well as providing liquidity. Speculators may actually reduce shortages by causing quicker price increases that motivate producers to increase production and consumers to conserve. But even socially useful speculation may have an ethical dark side. Does such speculation cause damage by adding excess volatility to prices? Speculators may contribute to price bubbles. At what point does legitimate speculation become odious “price gouging?” We also draw an ethical distinction between speculation, which seeks to benefit from changing prices, and manipulation, actions taken to push prices away from their economically appropriate levels.     

对我国加入世界贸易组织后会计目标的再思考

我国的会计目标理论主要有受托责任观和决策有用观。加入WTO后,会计目标的选择应设为“如实反映效用最大化的信息”,以满足不同会计主体最大效用的需求。新会计目标更符合我国的现实经济环境,有利于建立公正客观的信息市场和提高会计信息质量,有利于微观经济和宏观经济利益的统一、规范和发展资本市场。