This article considers the relationship between business ethics and philosophy, specifically in relation to the field and persons working in it. The starting point is a grammatical one: business ethics by the rules of grammar belongs to ethics. In terms of academic disciplines, it belongs to applied ethics, which belongs to ethics, which belongs to practical philosophy, which belongs to philosophy. However, in the field of business ethics today one will seldom meet colleagues from philosophy; instead, they will come from (...) business, applying business studies perspectives, approaches, and increasingly quantitative methods. This article provides empirical evidence that today the three top journals with “business ethics” in their titles are mostly run by business scholars with PhDs in business. The article compares the three journals today with their inaugural issues and finds that at their inception all three were run by a majority of philosophers. The article discusses six possible explanations for this shift and provides suggestions for how to bring business ethics back to philosophers. (shrink)

Empathy is a specific moral aspect of human behavior. The global workplace, and thereby a consideration of employee stakeholders, includes unique behavioral and ethical considerations, including a consideration of human empathy. Further, the human aspects of workplaces are within the domain of human resources and managerial oversight in business organizations. As such, human emotions and interactions are complicated by daily work related expectations, employee/employer interactions and work practices, and the outcomes of employees’ work routines. Business ethics, human resources, and risk (...) management practices are endemic aspects within workplaces. Increasingly, the understanding of models of AI-reliant business practices underscores the need for the consideration of the ethical aspects of AI impacts on employees in the workplace. This paper explores a systematic ethical lens of the opportunities and the risks of AI ideation, development, and deployment in business-employee relations practices beyond a compliance mindset, and that introduces a further set of workplace considerations. Empathy is concerned with human intentions. As such, attributive ethical indications of the role of AI in the workplace and its impacts on employees is necessary. Moreover, this paper uses a cognitive lens of empathy and focuses on artificial morality related to the ethical concerns, implications, and practices of AI development, deployment, and workplace practices that may impact employees in a variety of business aspects. (shrink)

Corporate/collective moral responsibility is a thorny topic in business ethics and this paper argues that this is due a number of unacknowledged and connected epistemic issues. Firstly, CSR, Corporate Citizenship and many other research streams that are based on the assumption of collective and/or corporate moral responsibility are not compatible with Kantian ethics, consequentialism, or virtue ethics because corporate/collective responsibility violates the axioms and central hypotheses of these research programmes. Secondly, in the absence of a sound theoretical moral philosophical foundation, (...) business ethicists have based their ideas on legal and political epistemologies, yet still claim to be ethics-based. Thirdly, research is often driven by an intention to prove that a specific social goal is right, not by open and critical inquiry. Finally, today, corporate/collective moral responsibility is widely accepted as the Truth as most researchers are unaware of any issues because they are untrained in philosophy. The paper identifies the confusion about the epistemic basis as a major impediment for delivering a thick concept of the role of corporations as moral agents. Thus, the paper does not argue against corporate or collective agency as such, but points out an obvious but forgotten paradox: corporate and collective personhood cannot, at the moment at least, be epistemologically grounded in the field in which business ethics claims to operate: moral philosophy. (shrink)

The ancient virtue of practical wisdom has lately been enjoying a remarkable renaissance in management literature. The purpose of this article is to add clarity and bring synergy to the interdisciplinary debate. In a review of the wide-ranging field of the existing literature from a philosophical, theological, psychological, and managerial perspective, we show that, although different in terms of approach, methodologies, and justification, the distinct traditions of research on practical wisdom can indeed complement one another. We suggest a conciliatory conception (...) of the various features of practical wisdom in management. This we take as a point of departure for a discussion of the significant implications of the subject for the theory and practice of management and for the direction of further research in the field. (shrink)

Much has been written about the general moral duty to love one’s neighbors. In this article, I explore the specific application of this moral duty in the work setting. I argue from a secular perspective that individuals have the moral duty to love their stakeholders. Loving one’s stakeholders is an affective valuing of the stake-related values these stakeholders pursue and as such is the real recognition of one’s stakeholders as stakeholders and of oneself as a stakeholder of one’s stakeholders. This (...) moral concept of stakeholder love offers promising contributions to stakeholder theory, leadership theories, and ethical theories in general and business ethics theories in particular. (shrink)

The Confucian tradition, which places the virtue of ren or fellow feeling at its heart as a ‘gateway’ to the more concrete virtues of common Western parlance, offers a potential antidote to the excesses of a Western business ethics which, even after its recent academic reembrace of the Aristotelian tradition, in practice still too often instrumentalises virtue in the service of a ‘rational’ or ‘reasonable’ constraining of the profit motive. The deeper, intrinsic ‘ethos’ promised by a Confucian approach also finds (...) its echo in the West in the work of Hans Küng’s Weltethos project, led today on the business ethics front by Klaus Leisinger and Claus Dierksmeier. This paper explores a dilemma at the heart of the World Ethos movement seen from the twin peaks of the World Ethics Institute at Peking University and the Weltethos Institut at the University of Tübingen: namely, whether a business ethics culture accustomed to thinking in terms of CSR-esque lists of corporate values, virtues or principles can best be reformed via documents like the UN Global Compact, the 2010 Global Economic Ethic Manifesto, or even the UN Sustainable Development Goals, or whether a more radical, revolutionary quest for an inner ‘ethos’, to be lived and experienced by self-cultivating individuals engaged in business all over the world regardless of background, ought somehow to be undertaken parallel to these endeavours. The authors outline possible steps towards such a transformation of the management community’s understanding of virtue, without, however, dismissing the contribution of traditional, dilemma-oriented Western thinking about applied ethics in general, and business ethics in particular. (shrink)

This paper urges contemporary Business Ethicists to reconsider the relationship between habit and virtue in the light of recent debates between contemporary philosophers and scientists. Synthesizing insights from current Neuroscience, from twentieth century American Pragmatism and from nineteenth century French Aristotelianism, this emergent intellectual tradition proposes a dynamic account of habit’s embodiment which we will first describe and then advocate. Two recurring suggestions within this habit renaissance are of particular relevance to Business Ethicists: firstly, that there is a ‘plastic’ structure (...) pertaining to habit and, secondly, that there is a processual ‘double-law of habituation’. Taken together, these accounts of habit and habituation provide virtue ethicists with a basis for claiming analytic and pragmatic authority within applied ethics debates in general and within Business Ethics debates in particular. We develop this argument in three steps. Firstly, we elaborate upon why habits are said to be plastic and why the process of habituation is said to be characterised by a double-law. Secondly, we distinguish this account of habit’s relationship to virtue from, and where necessary defend it against, the influential articulations of the habit: virtue relationship provided by situationism, by deontology and by communitarianism, respectively. Finally, we draw practical lessons from the initial elaborations made in the argument’s first step, and the subsequent clarifications provided in its second step, by announcing seven characteristics of highly effective virtue habituation projects. (shrink)

Ethically questionable leader conduct continues to garner headlines. It has prompted the leadership field to renew their focus on research regarding the ethical dimensions of leadership. Empirical emphases have focused on understanding negative leader behaviour, with the typical leadership study reliant upon positivist approaches. I critique these studies as not having produced meaningful, practicable or wholly relevant insights regarding the challenges and support mechanisms required to lead ethically. Few studies have in fact examined leadership in not-for-profit organisations where decisions might (...) reasonably be expected to possess elevated moral capital. To test this, my study interviewed leaders from professional sectors in both the USA and the UK, to offer a more holistic interpretation of what underpins and directs leader moral disposition. As corollary, this research explicates issues of practicability and how other sectors might learn from leaders who perpetually practise their ethicality. To gain insights that develop the field of leadership research, my thesis centres on the experiences of ten high-level, elite and specialised leaders. Although not selected as ethical, they were found to be principled, ethical decision-makers. A specific type of in-depth, qualitative interviewing was conducted and justified to more readily reflect the status of the leaders. Elite and specialised interviewing has not been widely used as a data collection tool, but it offered a unique opportunity to garner specialised data, once access issues had been overcome. The findings reveal unique insights into the underexplored ethical leader mindset and highlight the complex processes of leader decision-making in situ by demonstrating what underpins leaders’ behaviour, with reference to how they understand experiences for themselves. This study uncovers the symbiotic and interconnected nature of the variety of ideological frameworks at play, positing theological concepts alongside sociological and philosophical counterparts. Ethical awareness, the notions of trust and responsibility are shown as bedrock and explicit. This research presents a new ethical leadership, a typology that shows how ethical leaders are created through experience, sustained and developed over time, and nourished by awareness beyond the self. Current conceptions have done little to inform ethical leadership development, whereas I offer a more practical and holistic way to use the unexpected, traumatic, and intense crucibles of leadership experience to explicate and consolidate ethical foundations. This thesis presents a vision of a welfare driven leadership originating from the self, in the service of others, and for society; an ethical leadership for all. (shrink)

In both their external and internal communications, organizations tend to present diversity management approaches and corporate social responsibility initiatives as a kind of morally ‘good’ organizational practice. With regard to the treatment of employees, both concepts largely assume equality to be an indicator of organizational ‘goodness’, e.g. in terms of equal treatment, or affording equal opportunities. Additionally, research on this issue predominantly refers to prescriptive and imperative moralities that address the initiatives themselves, and values them morally. Schopenhauer opposes these moralities (...) by conceptualizing morality as exclusively being based on the incentives of acting instead of the actions themselves. He identifies egoism, compassion, and malice as the sole incentives for every human action, whereby only those actions solely motivated by compassion can be ascribed genuine moral worth. In this context, this article shows that from a Schopenhauerian perspective, CSR and DM initiatives only have a genuine moral worth in so far as the individuals who have initiated or supported their implementation were exclusively motivated by compassion. Stressing the narrative of a business case, if utilized as a façade for true compassion that attaches economic legitimacy to these initiatives, does not necessarily harm their moral worth. The approach and the findings developed in this paper contribute to the discourse on the ethical behavior of organizations, as well as to the discourse on CSR and DM. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

In order to provide context and ground for a future assessment of the manifold overlap and possible differences between the Humanistic Management Project and the Weltethos Project, this article offers a comprehensive assessment of the history, arguments, and relevance of the Weltethos Project as applied to economics and business. A literature review of foundational documents on “Weltethos” and “Weltethos for business” outlines essential elements and arguments from two main Weltethos Project pioneers. It first recounts how its founder, the theologian Hans (...) Küng, has launched a fruitful academic and public discourse spanning almost three decades since 1990, including the presentation of the Manifesto for a Global Economic Ethic by world leaders at a joint event with the UN Global Compact at the UN headquarters in New York in 2009, calling for business to serve human dignity. Then, the agenda of Claus Dierksmeier, Küng’s academic successor and a philosopher with foundational contributions to the Humanistic Management Project, is assessed both in regard to Weltethos motifs and Humanistic Management arguments, spanning from Dierksmeier’s conception of qualitative freedom as the foundation of unity in diversity to his effort to reframe economic theory and ethics, the inclusive and innovative practices of Humanistic Management, and to the capability approach. The article ends by highlighting how these two different approaches to Weltethos commitments converge in their care for human dignity, the idea of globally responsible freedom, and the capacity for dialogue as a learning process for creative change leadership. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The language of virtue is gaining wider appreciation in the philosophical, psychological, and management literatures. Ethicists and social scientists aim to integrate normative and empirical approaches into a new “science of virtue.” But, I submit, they are talking past each other; they hold radically different notions of what a virtue is. In this paper, I shall examine two conflicting conceptions of virtue, what I call the reductive and the non-reductive accounts of virtue. I shall critically study them and argue that (...) the non-reductive view is the best philosophical account of virtue and the only one that can account for the way we talk about virtue in business and in everyday life. We can only understand what it means to act virtuously through the examination of the attitudes, beliefs, desires, and inclinations of the virtuous agent. I shall illustrate the differences between the reductive and non-reductive accounts by considering the virtue of gratitude. (shrink)

AbstractMultinationals’ aggressive tax lobbying that involves free-riding behaviour and results in disproportional benefits to the disadvantage of other taxpayers, is problematic for several reasons. Such lobbying undermines the legitimacy of tax legislation and has a negative impact on trust in the tax system. Based on Immanuel Kant’s ethical theory, this article first suggests a new normative basis for a moral duty that requires multinationals and their leaders to be transparent about their political activities and tax lobbying. Next, it introduces a (...) new concept of transparency in respect of tax lobbying. ‘Deliberative transparency’ requires multinationals and their leaders not only to be open about their reasons for tax lobbying, but also to deliberate with stakeholders and, maybe even more importantly, to provide evidence supporting their lobbying positions. Finally, based on these new understandings, additional government interventions against aggressive tax lobbying are suggested, for example mandatory stakeholder consultation, reporting on stakeholder attitudes and perception, and evidence-based lobbying requirements. (shrink)

For Aristotle, virtues are neither transcendent nor universal, but socially interdependent; they need to be understood chronologically and with respect to character and context. This paper uses an Aristotelian lens to analyse an especially interesting context in which to study virtue—the state’s response when social order breaks down. During such periods, questions relating to right action by citizens, the state, and state agents are pronounced. To study this, we analyse data from interviews, observation, and documents gathered during a 3-year study (...) of riot policing in the U.K. In doing so, we contribute by joining a number of other conversations within JBE, suggesting detailed empirical examination of this context is useful in opening up considerations relevant to ‘virtue’ elsewhere. This extreme context helps us raise interesting and empirically informed questions that can encourage future theoretical and empirical contributions to virtue in business ethics. One such question is on the role of habituation in virtue, which is not just the inculcation of a reflex or automaticity, but can also refer to a trained and developed tendency to behave in the right way, for the right reasons, at the right time. Whilst we stop short of a simplistic alignment of habituation and virtue, we show ways in which it can inform understanding of both courage and phronēsis. (shrink)

The philosophical nature of ethical reasoning generates different definitions of moral subjectivity. Thus any talk of leadership ethics requires not only that we confront biases regarding human nature and the purpose of leadership and business conduct, but also differing ethical approaches which may be rooted in specific cultural and religious backgrounds. Building a conceptual framework for leadership ethics which overcomes these obstacles of bias and cultural embeddedness therefore requires another approach. It can be found in the concept of the Global (...) Ethos values. Using Kohlberg’s model of moral development, the Global Ethos values appear as a protoethical system of values with a level-six effect, a universally explicable deontological canon of ethical values below the sixth level, i.e. in the realm of hands-on management and leadership. As non-judgmental and regulative guiding principles, these values are the normative guidelines for selecting a situationally appropriate form of leadership style before and beyond any philosophical explication and rationale. (shrink)

L’entreprenariat social nous engage dans deux formes de responsabilité, l’une obligataire, qui ressortit au registre juridique et moral, l’autre mondaine ou cosmologique, qui ressortit au registre de l’action et de la création. La pratique entrepreneuriale en tant que telle honore prioritairement la responsabilité cosmologique, tandis que la dimension sociale de cette pratique réfère, quant à elle, au caractère obligataire. Dans cet article, nous proposons de revenir sur la généalogie de ces deux acceptions fondamentales de la responsabilité, qui ont trouvé dans (...) le kantisme à la fois leur lieu de formulation philosophique et leur point de bifurcation, mais aussi de dégager la portée et les limites de leur dialectisation dans l’activité sociale-entrepreneuriale aujourd’hui. Nous montrons que la première convoque en son sein plusieurs traditions de philosophie morale impliquant différentes extensions du concept, ce qui oblige à nous interroger sur sa propre opérabilité. La seconde, que nous aurons à cœur d’illustrer en rapportant certains discours d’entrepreneurs, a été davantage honorée à l’époque contemporaine par les approches phénoménologiques et de philosophie de l’action de tendance analytique. Nous terminons en envisageant la possibilité pour l’entrepreneur social de s’extraire de cet atermoiement entre deux formes de responsabilité dans le contexte actuel, naguère anticipé par Hans Jonas et dont témoignent aujourd’hui le succès des thèmes de l’écologie politique et du développement durable, opérant ainsi un renversement du rapport de l’action humaine à la peur de l’avenir – peur à laquelle s’est substituée au fil du temps la projection raisonnée d’un futur malheureux, toutes choses égales ailleurs. Classification JEL : M13, M14. (shrink)