Toward a foundational normative method in business ethics

Business ethics as an applied inquiry requires an expanded normative method which allows both philosophical and religious ethical considerations to be employed in resolving complex issues or cases. The proposed foundational normative method provides a comprehensive framework composed of major philosophical and religious ethical theories. An extensive rationale from the current trends in business ethics and metaethical considerations supports the development of this method which is illustrated in several case studies. By using this method, scholars and business persons gain greater certitude about the ethical quality of their deliberations and decision making than what may be achieved with current nonsystematic or nascent normative methods.Lester F. Goodchild teaches business ethics, religious studies, and history in the School for New Learning at DePaul University. His business experience includes management and consulting in several regional and international corporations. He received his doctorate from the Department of Education at the University of Chicago in 1986. His dissertation described how strategic policy decisions created the missions of three Catholic universities in the midwestern United States from 1842 to 1980.An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the Midwest American Academy of Religion Meeting at George Williams College, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin on April 8, 1983. I would like to thank William K. Frankena, Dennis McCann, Robert Cooke, Thomas McMahon, C. S. V., Patricia H. Werhane, and James A. O'Donohoe for their helpful comments in its revision.     

On economics and business ethics

Economics has an impoverished view of virtuous human behaviour in general, and corporate social responsibility in particular. We claim that this is due to a particular, albeit currently dominant approach to economics. This approach focuses on the pursuit of wealth through efficient allocation of scarce resources by 'rational' utility-maximizing economic agents and institutions, such as markets, firms and states, in the exclusive pursuit of 'efficiency'. This results in an ethic-free and often inimical approach to virtuous behaviour. However, a different approach to economics, which focuses on sustainable global resource creation and allocation, asserts virtuous responsible behaviour to be part and parcel of economic analysis and performance.     

Quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics research

The aim of this article is to discuss quantitative content analysis as established in communication sciences as a method for research in business ethics. We argue that communication sciences and business ethics are neighboring disciplines, which allow the transfer of quantitative content analysis from communication sciences to business ethics. Technically, quantitative content analysis can be applied through human as well as software coding. Examples for both applications are provided and discussed. We make reference to the software solutions ‘Leximancer’, ‘Crawdad’, and ‘Wordle’, and examine their suitability and limitations with regard to ethical questions for researching business ethics. We recommend a mixed-method approach, combining human and software coding. Furthermore, we propose a three-step process that discusses quantitative content analysis as a method for business ethics, including an ethical research objective, and most importantly, concluding with ethical reasoning and interpretation of the quantitative results.     

Rorty,Caputo and business ethics without metaphysics: ethical theories as normative narratives

Using the works of Richard Rorty and John Caputo, I want to suggest that we might be better off treating the traditional ethical theories of Kant, Mill, Aristotle and Hobbes as normative narratives rather than as justificatory schemes for moral decision making to be set up against one another. In a spirit akin to Husserl's ‘bracketing’ of metaphysics, when discussing ethical theories in business ethics, we can easily avoid metaphysics and use an approach that sees ethical theory as socially convincing normative narratives – narratives that unify us with others insofar as they describe our phenomenological experiences in a way with which many of us mutually resonate. I will do this by attempting to show how John Caputo's thinking in Against Ethics and Rorty's postmodern pragmatism might be appropriated to some extent by us in business ethics.     

The Great Gatsby as a business ethics inquiry

The author argues for the use of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel,The Great Gatsby, as a text for studying business ethics. The author presents a documented analysis of the major ethics themes in the book including, for example, moral growth, Gatsby's life of illusion, the withering of the American Dream, and the parallels between the 1920s and the 1980s. Fitzgerald's fiction analysis is then tied to the '90s via current social science and philosophical evidence addressing Fitzgerald's 1920s concerns. Data examining the incidence of lying in contemporary American life, a review of Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral development, and data-based studies of wealth distribution in America are among those strands of evidence. The article concludes with a brief look at students' responses toGatsby in a legal and social environment of business course.In effect, the author presents a lesson plan for teachingThe Great Gatsby as a general introduction to ethics and American values. As such, theGatsby discussion is designed to precede a more pragmatic and specific inquiry employing conventional business cases and the like.Tony McAdams is professor of business law in the Management Department at the University of Northern Iowa. Professor McAdams' articles have been published in theHarvard Business Review and theAcademy of Management Review, among other journals, and he is the principal author of the text,Law, Business, and Society. He received the 1978 Distinguished Teaching Award from the student government at the University of Kentucky.     

The business of ethics and the ethics of business

This is an essay in personal business ethics of executives as distinguished from the institutional ethics of corporations. Its purpose is to give practical moral guidance to executives for the conduct of their lives both as corporate decision-makers and as human beings. The pivotal concept in this model of personal business ethics is a direct appeal to the self-interest of executives in their being moral. Our thesis is that generally there is a twofold return on investment in ethics (ROIE) for executives. The first one is related to employee output: by becoming a self-actualizing moral type, executives indicate commitment to excellence. Accordingly, they so manage employees that the latter can also live up to their full potential and excell. And that would increase corporate productivity and product or service quality. The second payback of morality is personal: fully developed, self-actualized managers are generally happier people than those whose growth has been arrested. In brief, moral self-actualization is the same as commitment to excellence and there is a payback in being the best. Return on investment in ethics and return on investment in excellence can both be abbreviated as ROIE. We accomplish the purpose and establish the thesis of this essay by seeking answers to the following questions: What business does ethics have in business? What business does business have in ethics? Is there a return on investment in ethics for executives? and Does being moral help executives become more effective managers? In sketching answers to these questions, we first show why executives need a personal business ethics especially in today's world. Then, we sketch the nature of ethics and of business. After these introductory materials, the body of the paper argues for a personal business ethics for executives by correlating elements of management theory with ethics. Specifically, it links a theory of employee motivation with a scale of values, management character types with moral types, and management leadership styles with morality. Then, the practical technique of life by objectives (LBO) is explained. It can help executives manage their lives more effectively in both the business and ethical sense. We conclude by explaining ideals of excellence which can guide executives in their work and development both as managers and as human beings.     

Theological ethics and business ethics

Philosophers have constituted business ethics as a field by providing a systematic overview that interrelates its problems and concepts and that supplies the basis for building on attained results. Is there a properly theological task in business ethics? The religious/theological literature on business ethics falls into four classes: (1) the application of religious morality to business practices; (2) the use of encyclical teachings about capitalism; (3) the interpretation of business relations in agapa-istic terms; and (4) the critique of business from a liberation theological point of view. Theologians have not adequately addressed the questions of whether there are particular theological tasks in the field as they define it, and whether, if they define it, the theological definition is different from the philosophical.     

Small business economics

The paper presents an overview of small-business economics. Small businesses are shown to comprise a substantial and expanding segment of the U.S. economy. The role of small businesses in the economy is considered from the standpoint of various economic theories of the size distribution of firms. Firm-size related empirical regularities are reviewed and their implications for economic theory is discussed. Several small-business policy issues are discussed, including the role of small businesses in labor, macroeconomic, and regulatory policies, along with a review of research on small-business economics that might help guide these policies.We wish to thank Zoltan J. Acs and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.     

Transatlantic business ethics

The Business Ethics Center of the Budapest University of Economic Sciences organized a Transatlantic Business Ethics Summit on September 15–17, 2000 in Budapest, Hungary. The Summit was sponsored by the Community of European Management Schools (CEMS) and Procter & Gamble.
The main function of the Summit was to provide a forum for leading American and European scholars to explore the background theories and value bases of business ethics from the perspective of the 21st century. The participants reflected on the state of the art of business ethics as it has been practised in the USA and Europe; however, the future of business ethics as a discipline was the main focus of the Summit. Since business ethics is closely related to business and capitalism, some considerations of the 21st century economic, political, and social reality were presented too. The paper is based on and composed from the abstracts provided by the participants of the Transatlantic Business Ethics Summit. The abstract booklet can be obtained from Laszlo Zsolnai, the Convenor of the Summit.     

Teaching business ethics

Business ethics should be taught in business schools as an integrated part of core curricula in MBA programs with a dual focus on both analytical frameworks and their applications to the business disciplines. To overcome the reluctance of many faculty to handle ethical issues, a critical mass of faculty must develop suitable materials, educate their peers in its use, and take the lead by introducing it in their own courses and on senior management programs.Jeffrey Gandz is an Associate Professor in the School of Business Administration, The University of Western Ontario. Following ten years of management experience in Europe and North America, Professor Gandz completed his Ph.D. at York University. He is active as a mediator and arbitrator in labour disputes, teaches Organizational Behavior, Human Resource Management, and Labour Relations at Western, and has published widely in those fields.Nadine Hayes is a Ph.D. candidate at The University of Western Ontario and a graduate of Western's Honors Business Administration Program. She has written several case studies in the field of Business Ethics and has worked with Jeffrey Gandz in developing the School's approach to the teaching of business ethics.     

Professionalism: Foundation for business ethics

Professionalism includes the essential contents of other key notions within the field of business ethics. As a term involving the notion of vocation it may be understood as containing a religious content, since vocation refers to a man's most intimate personal decisions, destiny and providence. Professionalism also connotes respect for law and so includes a reference to commercial law as a guide to right conduct. Professionalsim thus lifts the requirements of law to the level of personal commitment.Like an honest act, professionalism may not be easy to define, but you will know it when you see it. As for professionalism's practitioners, like the practitioners of honesty, their art is learned not by seeking definitions of what they do, but by practicing professionalism. Only if this practice becomes an obsession with the Business Aristocracy can we expect professionalism to seize the soul of lesser businessmen and suffuse the entire business community. Thomas E. Schaefer, Ph. D., is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Texas, Permian Basin. He was formerly Head of the Department of Business Administration, University of Alaska, and Dean of Business Administration, Sacred Heart University, Puerto Rico. He has received a Private Sector Award of Pres. Reagan for Extraordinary Contributions to Small Business. His most important publications are: The Process of Management: What Supervisors Do (O.C. Press, 1982); Leadership Through Followership, Business Horizons (September/October, 1982) and many others.Paper presented at the 16th Conference on Value Inquiry, entitled: Ethics and the Market Place: An Exercise in Bridge-Building or On the Slopes of the Inteface.     

A quick justification for business ethics

The article examines the question of whether business ethics courses ought to have an impact. Despite the still common attitude among students and some business professionals that ethical considerations are less pressing in business, I argue that moral obligations are just as important there as elsewhere. The emphasis on profits in business is related to other realms (e.g., hobbies and seeking and education) in which, though private goals are dominant, moral limits remain in force. Business ethics courses can play a crucial role in emphasizing the necessity of ethical analysis in business. Louis G. Lombardi is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Lake Forest College and the author of Inherent Worth, Respect, and Rights in Environmental Ethics.     

Christ and business: A typology for Christian business ethics

H. Richard Niebuhr's typology of the relation between Christ and culture can function as a heuristic device to identify different approaches to Christian business ethics. Five types are outlined: Christ Against Business, The Christ of Business, Christ Above Business, Christ and Business in Paradox, and Christ the Transformer of Business. This typology may facilitate discussion on the relative adequacy of various theological assumptions about ethical change in business. Louke Siker received her Ph.D. in Religion and Society from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1987 (dissertation: Interpreting Corporate Cultures: Philosophical and Theological Reasons for Doing Business Ethics in a Hermeneutical Mode). She has taught Christian ethics and business ethics at Wake Forest University and Loyola Marymount University. Her research interests include methodology in business ethics. She is the author of An Unlikely Dialogue: Barth and Business Ethicists on Human Work, Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics, 1989.     

Is there any ethics in business ethics

It is argued, against Richard T. De George, that while clarification of concepts, implications, and presuppositions in business ethics largely relies on a neutral territory of reason, determination of what moral intuitions are correct depends on non-neutral ethical theories. The latter posit ethics in business to varying degrees. Thus while the Kantian and utilitarian ethical theories are, for De George, proper (philosophical) approaches to business ethics, they are as reliant on affirming and encouraging moral sentiments outside parameters of pure reason as theological approaches. And hence if theological approaches can make no unique contribution by virtue of relying on more than reason or experience alone, then philosophical approaches can make no distinctive contribution either. Either both are viable or neither are. Oscillation between the mutually dependent notions of business ethics and ethics in business obfuscates what the field of business ethics is and renders De George's position inadequate.Robert Trundle, Jr., received his Ph.D. at the University of Colorado, and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northern Kentucky University where he teaches Business Ethics. He has worked at such companies as Stearns-Roger and Rogerson-Hiller Corporation where he was a member of the Hazardous Materials Safety Committee.     

Blockchain and business ethics

This paper provides, from a business ethics perspective, a basic clustering of the morally (a) favorable, (b) unfavorable, and (c) ambivalent dimensions of blockchain technology and its various emergent applications. Instead of proffering specific assessments on particular aspects of blockchain‐based business models, we aim to offer an initial overview that charters the territory so that future research can bring about such moral assessments in an informed and orderly fashion. The main contribution of this paper lies in identifying several morally ambivalent dimensions of blockchain technology, which we finally link to two strands of business ethics research: ethical and legal aspects of legislation as well as a link to Habermasian corporate social responsibility theory arguing for transparent data production and consumption on the blockchain. We conclude that future research is necessary for moral assessment of the ambivalent cases, since their ethical evaluation changes depending on whether one analyzes them through the lenses of utilitarianism, contractarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics, respectively.