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Defending the Stockholder Model: A Comment on Hasnas, and on Dunfee’s Mom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

John Dobson
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Abstract:

Here I synthesize certain ideas presented in two different articles that appeared in the same issue of Business Ethics Quarterly. One article (Hasnas) invokes the stockholder model as a valid normative theory of business ethics, the other article (Dunfee) invokes a marketplace of morality. Both articles imply that the accepted financial-economic view of the firm is a view that can accommodate ethics. I offer empirical support for this view. I also identify the ethic of the stockholder model as a variant on might-makes-right and consider the social acceptance of this ethic as a postmodern phenomenon.

Type
Response Article
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1999 , pp. 337 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1999

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