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A Critique of Business Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Richard L. Lippke
Richard L. Lippke*
Affiliation:
James Madison University
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Abstract

The dominant approach to the analysis of issues in business ethics consists in the articulation and use of a set of mid-level moral principles. This approach is geared to business practitioners who are not interested in the difficult problems of moral and political theory. I argue that this “practitioner model” is philosophically suspect. I show how the theoretical frameworks prominent business ethicists employ are insufficiently developed. I also show how many of their analyses presuppose substantive views about issues of social justice which they rarely defend or acknowledge. Since no neutral position on these issues is available, I argue that the only alternative is to address the problems such issues raise for the analysis of institutions and the conduct of persons acting under those institutions. I offer suggestions about how we can develop a more philosophically defensible approach to business ethics.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 367 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1991

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References

Notes

I am grateful to Michael Davis and Sharon O'Hare for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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3 Some themes similar to those in my essay are developed by Robbin, Derry and Ronald, M. Green in their “Ethical Theory in Business Ethics: A Critical Assessment,” Journal of Business Ethics 8 (1989): 521–533.Google Scholar They do not emphasize the problems competing theories of justice raise for the analysis of issues in business ethics.

4 Bayles, Michael D., “Moral Theory and Application,” Social Theory and Practice 10 (Spring 1984): 97–120.Google Scholar

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7 Bayles, “Moral Theory and Application,” p. 112.

8 Ibid., p. 115.

9 Of course, questions about justice need not be couched in terms of rights and duties. We could just as easily talk about the distribution of social goods and social burdens.

10 It is worth noting that even those who agree as to what fundamental rights and responsibilities persons have might lisagree about the sorts of institutions and practices most likely to realize the favored distribi tional scheme.

11 Consider, for instance, tie natural duty against coercion. It seems likely that proponents of different theories of justic: e will disagree over which actions and practices are coercive. Socialists view many market transactions as marked by coercion, whereas defenders of captialism regard such transactions as paradigms of free exchange.

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13 Ibid., see pp. 69–75.

14 Donaldson, Thomas, Corporations and Morality (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1982), pp. 45–52.Google Scholar

15 Ibid. p. 41. In his subsequent book, Donaldson further clarifies how he views the social contract. See The Ethics of International Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 47–53.Google Scholar

16 It is worth noting that Donaldson provides no explicit argument as to the type of productive organization rational contractors would permit. The undesirable features of the state of individual production do not dictate which form social production must take. This is a matter over which theori sts of social justice are deeply divided.

17 Donaldson, Corporations and Morality, p. 52.

18 Ibid., p. 53.

19 Ibid., p. 137.

20 Goldman, Alan, The Moral Foundations of Professional Ethics (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980), p. 27Google Scholar

21 Ibid., p. 28.

22 Ibid., p. 29. On the following page, Goldman expresses doubts about our ability to state interesting general and absolute priorities among types of rights.

23 Donaldson, The Ethics of International Business, p. 48.

24 Ibid., p. 75.

25 Ibid, see p. 81 for Donaldson's list.

26 Werhane, Patricia, Persons, Rights, and Corporations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985), p. 7.Google Scholar

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28 Ibid., see pp. 2–3.

29 Ibid., p. 21.

30 There also seems to be a deep inconsistency in Werhane's overall position. She endorses modified free enterprise, where employee rights hitherto unacknowledged will be recognized and respected. She is reluctant to urge institutionalized protection for such rights. Yet, private property rights are given abundant legal protection and Werhane nowhere disputes the need for this. It is not clear how she can endorse protection for what is, on her view, a non-basic right while foregoing protection for what are basic rights on her view.

31 DeGeorge, Richard T., Business Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 111–112.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 130.

33 Ibid., p. 130.

34 Ibid., p. 131.

35 Ibid., p. 312.

36 Ibid., p. 334.

37 Ibid., p. 84.

38 On foundationalist versus coherentist approaches, see Timmons, Mark, “Foundationalism and the Structure of Ethical Justification,” Ethics 97 (April 1987): 595–609.Google Scholar

39 Bayles, “Moral Theory and Application,” p. 98.

40 See Bayles, “Moral Theory and Application,” pp. 98–99.