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Contractarian Business Ethics: Current Status and Next Steps

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Thomas W. Dunfee  and
Thomas Donaldson
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Abstract:

Social contract is rapidly becoming one of the significant alternatives for analyzing ethical issues in business. Contractarian approaches emphasizing consent as a means of justifying principles can provide needed context for rendering normative judgements concerning economic behaviors. Current research issues include developing tests of consent for both hypothetical and extant social contracts, and empirically testing the assumptions of the major contractarian approaches. Open questions include exploring the relationship between contractarian business ethics and other approaches, such as stakeholder management and virtue based ethics; and analysis of the intersection of contractarian approaches with the findings and assumptions of the field of moral psychology. Finally, the managerial utility of social contract based approaches needs to be explored with emphasis on identifying “translator” concepts.

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Articles
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Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 173 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1995

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