This article explores the relational and motivational leadership behaviors that may promote stewardship in organizations. I conceptualize stewardship as an outcome of leadership behaviors that promote a sense of personal responsibility in followers for the long-term wellbeing of the organization and society. Building upon the themes presented in the stewardship literature, such as identification and intrinsic motivation, and drawing from other research streams to include factors such as interpersonal and institutional trust and moral courage, I posit that leaders foster stewardship (...) in their followers through various relational, motivational, and contextually supportive leadership behaviors. (shrink)

The notion that the firm, and economic activity in general, is inherently amoral is a central feature of positive economics that is also widely accepted in business ethics. Theories as disparate as stockholder and stakeholder theory both leave this central assumption unchallenged. Each theory argues for a different set of external ethical restrictions, but neither adequately provides an internal connection between business and the ethical rules business people are obliged to follow. This paper attempts to make this connection by arguing (...) that the purpose of business is to produce a good or service for trade. Trade involves both a respect for individual autonomy and property rights and squarely places moral norms internal to the practice of business. Trade is not a contingent activity of business, it is a practice rule which also provides the common sense boundary between business and charity on the one hand, and crime on the other. Business and those who engage in it are, from the internal point of view, bound by the purpose of trade and not just the laws of the land. (shrink)

The field of business ethics has been active for several decades, but it has yet to develop a generally agreed upon applied ethical perspective for the discipline. Academics in business disciplines have developed useful science-based models explaining why business people behave ethically but without a generally accepted definition of ethical behavior. Academics in moral philosophy have attempted to formulate what they believe ethical behavior is, but many seem to ignore or reject the basic mission of business. The purpose of this (...) article is to offer one view of ethics in business that accommodates the mission of business. This purpose is achieved by reviewing the mission of ethics in applied disciplines like business and melding it into the mission of business in capitalistic societies. (shrink)

The core of business ethics literature is based upon the stakeholder theory of the firm. The normative function of this theory is to internalise the concept of social responsibility into the definition of the firm (the firm as a social contract) and into the managerial practice (participative management, social and ethical audit). But why should we introduce this business ethics approach into the field of the non-profit sector, which by its origin and mission has already a strong social dimension? Is (...) there a genuine dilemma of social responsibility in non-profjt institutions? The first part of the paper will give a more theoretical answer to this question. The second part will illustrate the relevance of the business ethics approach by presenting an empirical application of the stakeholer theory in the Belgian-Flemish non-profit sector. (shrink)

This article develops a sociological theory of ambivalence to explain several puzzling and contradictory ethical attitudes of business people: (1) a simultaneous disposition to comparatively more self-interested and more charitable behavior than many other occupational groups and (2) a moderate level of receptiveness to inculcation of moral principles through social channels such as higher education. We test the theory by comparing the way that business students rate the ethical acceptability of various ethically challenging scenarios with the way that criminal justice (...) students rate these same scenarios. We also explore the malleability of ethical views by measuring differences between the responses of sophomores and seniors. The data generally support hypotheses based on a theory of ambivalence. At the same time, however, we also report on findings that suggest alternative explanations to ambivalence. (shrink)