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Beyond Managerialism: After the Death of the Corporate Statesperson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2020

John Danley
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Extract

Ignited in this and other countries by the rapid rise of the modem corporation to a position of strategic importance, both nationally and internationally, an intense debate continues today unabated. At the heart of the debate is a fundamental question: What role should the modern corporation play in a free society? And, as corporations become increasingly multinational, the fundamental question might more accurately be stated as a question about the role the multinational corporation should play in a free society, indeed, in the world. This question, I believe, should provide the orientation for research inquiries in Business Ethics and Business and Society.

Within the business community in the U.S., two dominant responses to the fundamental question emerged quite early in the century, responses which have been characterized as the Classical and Managerial business ideologies. Approaching the 21st century, these remain the two major alternatives, reflecting not merely the competing ideological frameworks of the business community, but of the larger society in the U.S. as well. That these constitute the dominant alternatives is extremely regrettable, even dangerous, for, as I have argued elsewhere, both are seriously inadequate.

Type
Section I
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue S1: The Ruffin Series Special Issue No.1 , 1998 , pp. 21 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Business Ethics Quarterly 1998

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References

Endnotes

1 This sentence is a paraphrase of the opening sentence of Edward S. Herman's important Corporate Control, Corporate Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

2 Sutton, Francis S., et. al., The American Business Creed (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1956, 1962).Google Scholar

3 In my The Role of the Modern Corporation in a Free Society (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), I develop the case for the importance of the fundamental question more extensively and then devote the remainder of the book to an examination of these two responses.

4 The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), p. 140.

5 “Recent Work in Business Ethics: A survey and Critique,” American Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1987): 107-124.

6 (Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1977).

7 “The Apologetics of ‘Managerialism’,” Journal of Business 31 (1958): 1-11.

8 This is the legacy of Adolph A. Berle and Gardiner Mean's analysis in The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New York: Macmillan, 1932), although they claim that there is little original in the book.

9 In Corporate Control, Corporate Power, Edward Herman examines managerial discretion by considering a number of factors which constrain or influence corporate decisions and comes to the conclusion that except for what one might call the penchant for expense account padding, the strongest incentives constrain corporations to move toward profit maximization.

10 New York: Random House, 1990.

11 Ibid.

12 “Business Ethics, Ideology, and the Naturalistic Fallacy,” Journal of Business Ethics 4 (1985): 227-232.