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Rights and Interests in a Participatory Market Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Henk van Luijk
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Abstract:

In this paper I try to enlarge the scope of the questions commonly treated in business ethics. I first argue that not motives but action structures should form the basis of our analytical endeavours. I then distinguish three basic structures in human action: self-directed, other-including and other-directed actions. These structures, when linked with the concepts of interests and legitimate claims or rights, lead to a taxonomy of moral behaviour in business that I describe as, respectively, transactional, recognitional and participatory ethics, three distinct realms of moral behaviour, each characterized by a specific set of moral principles and a special relation between moral agents. My contention is that, up to now, analysis in business ethics has largely been focused on issues in the field of recognitional ethics. The discipline itself as well as ethical practices in business may greatly profit by paying explicit attention to market morality and transactional ethics as well as to the non-enforceable we-alliances of a participatory ethics, increasingly possible and needed in present-day civil society.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , January 1994 , pp. 79 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1994

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References

Notes

1 I have presented earlier versions of (parts of) this paper at the ler Symposium International Éthique, Économie et Entreprise, Paris 1989; at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Business Ethics, Washington D.C. 1989; at the Second Annual Conference of EBEN, the European Business Ethics Network, Barcelona 1989; at the Forschungsinstitut für Philosophie, Hannover 1991; at the Fourth Annual Conference of EBEN, London 1991, and at INSEAD, Fontainebleau 1992. I have written the penultimate version during a stay as Visiting Scholar at the Center for Business Ethics, Bentley College, Waltham MA and at the Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, Medford MA during the Fall semester of 1991, and presented it in a public lecture at Bentley College as well as at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA. Discussions on all those occasions have helped me greatly in clarifying the argument. The penultimate version also has been thoroughly discussed with the participants in the Research Programma ‘Emancipation and Rationality’ at the University of Groningen and with the members of the EBEN Executive Committee, Brussels. All those people, as well as Tom Donaldson, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. deserve my sincere gratitude for their very valuable comments.

2 See Stephen Holmes: The Secret History of Self-Interest, in Jane Mansbridge, Beyond Self-Interest, 267–286.

3 Albert O. Hirschman: The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1977). See also his: Rival Views of Market Society and Other Recent Essays, 1986, New York, Viking.

4 Stephen Holmes: The Secret History of Self-Interest, 275–276, commenting upon Hirschman’s thesis.

5 Hirschman 1986, 107.

6 Hirschman 1986, 109.

7 Stephen Holmes, I.e. 283.

8 See Jane Mansbridge: “The Rise and Fall of Self-Interest in the Explanation of Political Life,” in: Beyond Self-Interest, 3–22, esp. 17.

9 For brevity’s sake, I shall speak only of an ‘action’ in the singular, acknowledging that, to get hold of a single action, we frequently need the detour via the action pattern of which it is part.

10 The thesis that “in the long run it shows,” negatively when the actor is simulating altruism, positively when he is not, is pivotal in Robert Frank: Passions Within Reason, New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1988.

11 Jane Mansbridge uses a wider definition: “By unselfish or altruistic behavior, I mean (…) behavior promoting another’s welfare that is undertaken for a reason independent of its effects on one’s own welfare. That reason can include both duty and love, both commitment to a moral principle regardless of its effects on the welfare of others, and moral or empathetic concern with the welfare of others,” Beyond Self-Interest, 142. I can imagine unselfish behavior to be described so broadly. But I have difficulty in denoting behavior as altruistic in cases in which not the slightest mentioning seems to be made of others as recipients of the behavior.

12 In his book Morals by Agreement (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1986) David Gauthier has presented a first elaboration of the principles of a market morality and the conditions under which such a morality might arise.

Recently, Norman Bowie has treated the concept of market morality in: “New Directions in Corporate Social Responsibility,” Business Horizons, Vol. 34, Number 4, July-August 1991, 56–65.

13 The material I summarize here has been provided to me by Wim de Ridder, director of the Society and Enterprise Foundation (Stichting Maatschappij en Onderneming SMO), The Hague, The Netherlands.

14 See Jane Mansbridge: Beyond Adversary Democracy (New York, Basic Books 1980) Benjamin Barber speaks of ‘strong democracy’ as ‘politics in the participatory mode,’ in his book: Strong Democracy. Participatory Politics for a New Age (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1984), 150 seq.

15 See LaRue Tone Hosmer: “Tropical Plywood Imports, Inc.,” Awarded Case in International Business Ethics, Alling foundation, Ethics in Business, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University.

16 In his recent book The Ethics of International Business (Oxford University Press 1989) Thomas Donaldson presents a list of ten fundamental international rights, together with a ‘fairness-affordability condition,’ as minimum moral requirements for corporations operating within international relations. And in his much-used book Business Ethics. Concepts and Cases (Prentice Hall 1988) (2d edition), p. 116–18 Manuel Velasquez tentatively offers some rules-of-thumb for prioritizing between rights, justice and interests.

17 In: Ethics, 2d edition (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1973), p. 47.

18 In: “According to Local Circumstances. Teaching Business Ethics on Both Sides of the Atlantic,” Moral Education Forum, Vol. 16, Nr. 4, Winter 1991, p. 29 sq. I have commented the six sub-principles here presented.

19 The story appears in Robert Frank: Passions Within Reason (see note 10), 44–45.

20 See Beyond Adversary Democracy.

21 See Strong Democracy. Participatory Politics in a New Age.

22 Strong Democracy, p. 151.

23 Strong Democracy, pp. 151–52.

24 Quoted in Alan Wolfe: Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1989), p. 15.

25 Whose Keeper?, pp. 19; 14–19.