This section aims to summarize and conclude Part I in the form of a taxonomy of legitimate and illegitimate corporate moral responsibility attributions. I believe we can categorise four types of corporate moral responsibility attributions two of which are legitimate and two which are illegitimate with regard to our concept of moral agency and our moral intuition of fairness.

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

This article discusses the transition that business ethics has undergone since its start essentially as a philosophical sub-discipline of applied ethics. Today, business ethics—as demonstrated by four examples of gatekeepers—is a well-established field in general management, and increasingly business scholars without a “formal” background in philosophy are entering the scene. I take this transition to examine an updated positioning of business ethics and offer a proposal to redefine what makes a business ethicist. I suggest taking critical thinking as the common (...) denominator of all business ethics activities beyond the academic silos of various disciplines. In conclusion, by borrowing from the post-colonial theorist Edward Said, this article offers a definition of what makes a business ethicist in the broadest possible sense. Implications are discussed, including the consequences suggesting that if critical thinking is the common denominator, business ethics-as-business-case logic is not considered a part of business ethics publications, but should be addressed within more instrumental publication outlets of business. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a business paradigm that allows and enables the integration of environmental ethics into business decisions while creating a competitive advantage through the use of an ethical framework based on classical American pragmatism. Environmental ethics could be useful as an alternative paradigm for business ethics by offering new perspectives and methodologies to grant consideration of the natural environment. An approach based on classical American pragmatism provides a superior framework for businesses by focusing on experimentation and innovation, (...) driving a long-term focus, and providing actionable clarity. Under a pragmatic approach to ethics, the choice for sustainability becomes self-evident for business performance and moral reasons. (shrink)

This paper argues that the MBA, probably the most successful academic program of the last 50 years, negatively affects the theory and practice of management with regard to ethics through its pedagogy, structure, and its underlying epistemic assumptions. In particular I seek to demonstrate how the syllabus, the pedagogy and the epistemological assumptions of MBA programs together make managers/leaders unable and unwilling to deal with ethics. I also argue that while the what and the how play a very important role, (...) it was only the emergence of a radical philosophical underpinning that has put management education on a negative trajectory. The paper thus examines MBA education from a meta-level perspective, connecting the pedagogical model with epistemological beliefs. (shrink)

This paper argues that economics, over the past 200 years, has become steadily more anti-philosophical and that there are three stages in the development of economic thought. Adam Smith intended economics to be a descriptive social science, rooted in an understanding of the moral and psychological processes of an individual’s decision-making and its connection to society in general. Yet, immediately after Smith’s death, economists made a clean cut and invented a totally new discipline: they switched towards a physicalist understanding of (...) human nature. Humans, like atoms, follow a natural law: they are driven by an emotion (defined as a non-emotion, rationality), namely selfishness. Thus economics became a ‘natural’ science. In the 20th century, the second reinterpretation removed all traces of humanity from the study of economics and declared economics to be a formal science like mathematics and logics. The actor in Phase 3 economics is homo economicus syntheticus, a postulate whose only connection to real humanity is the word homo. The paper asks what the results of this dramatic relocation are and why Phase 3 economics still claims descent from Smithian economics, despite the massive differences. (shrink)

The Giving Voice to Values pedagogy and curriculum is described as an example of a powerful leverage point in the integration of business ethics and values-driven leadership across the business curriculum. GVV is post-decision-making in that it identifies an ethical course of action and asks practitioners to identify who are the parties involved and what’s at stake for them; what are the main arguments to be countered; and what levers that can be used to influence those who are in disagreement. (...) The internalization of GVV’s constructs allows faculty to comfortably raise and endorse ethics as part of the natural order of business decision-making because the stakes of doing so have been normalized. Methods for introducing and using GVV in undergraduate through MBA courses are given. An illustration is given for economics courses. (shrink)

An economic man, i.e., the leading role in economic ethics, has been deeply investigated in our study considering a human being’s economic behavior and the hypotheses for an economic man in traditional economics based on M. Weber’s and S. N. Bulgakov’s Christian economic man. Among various channels to study business ethics and economic ethics, we chose the definition of an economic man given by Weber and Bulgakov to review a hypothesis about a rational economic man in economics and discussed L. (...) von Mises’s and A. Sen’s contentions for an economic man’s substantive freedom and innermost being. The issue deserved to be further investigated by scholars who concern business ethics and economic ethics consists in reconciling egotism and altruism commonly embedded in an economic man’s heart and boosting more altruistic economic men. (shrink)

This article pursues the question whether and inasmuch theories of corporate responsibility are dependent on conceptions of managerial freedom. I argue that neglect of the idea of freedom in economic theory has led to an inadequate conceptualization of the ethical responsibilities of corporations within management theory. In a critical review of the history of economic ideas, I investigate why and how the idea of freedom was gradually removed from the canon of economics. This reconstruction aims at a deconstruction of certain (...) axioms of neoclassical economics that hamper contemporary efforts in integrating ethics firmly into management education. I intend to show by these deconstructive endeavors that a constructive use of the idea of responsible freedom could correct and complement the current quantitative focus in business theory through qualitative orientations. I argue that with the help of qualitative success criteria, the strategic integration of the tenets of both business ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility into business practice can be advanced by further research. (shrink)

Presently it is en vogue to search and research business models heedful to concerns of social, moral, and ecological sustainability. On the view here defended, however, we ought not to strive for piecemeal corrections but for a thoroughgoing paradigm change of the predominant economic theories and practices in favor of a genuinely ‘humanistic management.’ This very call for humanistic management serves as an introduction into this paper. The article then lays out a concept of humanistic management in three methodologically distinct (...) steps, description – ascription – prescription, before addressing potential challenges to the approach of humanistic management and, finally, pointing out some of its practical implications. The article hence proceeds as follows: From a critique of the reductionist description of economic agency given in conventional economics, the paper moves on to the ascription of freedom and responsibility by and through human actors, which appears essential for any attempt at re-integrating moral prescriptions into economics and, by extension, management theory. The resultant, dignity-centered humanistic management conception is then defended against challenges from postmodern authors and defendants of ‘deep ecology’. Afterward, the article presents some normative postulates for management practice ; last, the main findings of the paper are summarized. (shrink)

Resting as it does on the principle of freedom, today’s global economic system is in need of a global economic ethos of responsibility so as to assure its social and ecological sustainability. Not all ideas of freedom, however, are equally amenable to conceptions of cosmopolitan responsibilities. This article examines how quantitative versus qualitative notions of freedom respectively respond to this challenge. Simply put, quantitative models hinder the integration of responsibility into models of economic rationality whereas qualitative conceptions advance it. As (...) a consequence, efforts to promote a humanistic paradigm of economics and management fare better when oriented at a qualitative idea of freedom. Cast along the lines of a qualitative conception of freedom, corporate responsibility more readily takes on a cosmopolitan dimension apt to meet the needs of the current age of globality. (shrink)