A Kantian Approach to Business Ethics

Bowie, Norman E.

doi:10.1002/9780470998397.ch1

Cited by 39 publications

(38 citation statements)

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“…Notes 1 Typical is Bowie (2002) who, after laying out the core principles underlying Kant's categorical imperative, proceeds to apply the moral formula on his own to contemporary topics insisting, for example, that treating employees as persons with dignity and respect entails a stakeholder theory of the firm. Nowhere are Kant's (trans.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seek the Good Life, not Money: The Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics

Bragues

2006

J Bus Ethics

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Nothing is more common in moral debates than to invoke the names of great thinkers from the past. Business ethics is no exception. Yet insofar as business ethicists have tended to simply mine abstract formulas from the past, they have missed out on the potential intellectual gains in meticulously exploring the philosophic tradition. This paper seeks to rectify this shortcoming by advocating a close reading of the so-called â€œgreat books,â€\x9D beginning the process by focusing on Aristotle. The Nichomachean Ethics and The Politics points to Aristotle’s emphasis on tying business morality to a universal conception of the good life. This conception defines personal happiness to chiefly consist in practicing the virtues, a life in which both desire and the pursuit of wealth is kept under check. According to Aristotle, virtue reaches its height with the exercise of the intellectual virtues of prudence and wisdom – the first manifest in the leadership of organizations, and the second in the philosophic search for truth. From an Aristotelian point of view, therefore, the greatest ethical imperative for business is to give individuals opportunities to thoughtfully participate in the management of company affairs and to contemplate the ultimate meaning of things. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006Aristotle, virtue, happiness, good life, wealth, leadership, wisdom,

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seek the Good Life, not Money: The Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics

Bragues

2006

J Bus Ethics

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“…While we cannot be certain that the non-contextually dependent responses are values-driven, these responses are certainly more congruent with a values-driven ethical stance. We also acknowledge that there are those who identify ethics with values-driven deontological ethics and do not recognise or see a place for any consequentialist or relativist approach and so would not recognise a contextually dependent response as being ethical (Fried 1978;Davis 2013;Bowie 2008). We do not hold this latter position, but we recognise its existence.…”

Section: Ethicsmentioning

confidence: 88%

Teaching Ethics to Undergraduate Business Students in Australia: Comparison of Integrated and Stand-alone Approaches

2014

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There are questions about how ethics is best taught to undergraduate business students. There has been a proliferation in the number of stand-alone ethics courses for undergraduate students but research on the effectiveness of integrated versus stand-alone mode of delivery is inconclusive. Christensen et al. (J Bus Ethics 73(4):347-368, 2007), in a comprehensive review of ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability education, investigated how ethics education has changed over the last 20 years, including the issue of integration of these topics into the core course offerings. We use Brenner and Molander's (Harv Bus Rev 55(1):57-71, 1977) situational ethics survey instrument to examine the effect of the mode of delivery of business ethics education on undergraduate student responses. We found a significant difference on mode of delivery. Studies have also found interesting results in respect of the effect of cultural differences and gender on the effectiveness of business ethics instruction. While not the primary focus of this study, we also looked at the influence of gender and culture on students' responses. Our results indicate significant differences in respect of mode of delivery and culture. In contrast to other studies, we found that gender was not significant. We did test for any interactive effects of gender, culture and mode of delivery. However, no significant differences were found.

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“…In short, corruption has detrimental consequences and is hence deemed unethical from a consequentialist perspective. Bowie (1999Bowie ( , 2002 provides a corresponding treatment of corruption from a Kantian perspective. He argues that corruption violates the first formulation (of three) of the categorical imperative: 'Act only on maxims which you can will to be universal laws of nature'.…”

Section: Corruption As An Ethical Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corruption as violation of distributed ethical obligations

Kolstad

2012

Journal of Global Ethics

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The ethics of corruption cannot be analysed without simultaneously addressing the legitimacy of public office or entrusted power. This paper introduces a concept of core unethical corruption, defined as violations of distributed ethical obligations for private gain. In other words, it is suggested that what is ethically wrong with corruption is that it entails the violation of certain obligations attributed to agents. By explicitly relating corruption to obligations, this approach helps make ethical sense of the concepts of public office or entrusted power, attending to the question of their legitimacy. Since distributed obligations are implied by a wide range of ethical theories, the concept of core unethical corruption also reflects a (partial) overlapping consensus on the ethics of corruption.

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A Kantian Approach to Business Ethics

Cited by 39 publications

References 1 publication

Seek the Good Life, not Money: The Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics

Seek the Good Life, not Money: The Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics

Teaching Ethics to Undergraduate Business Students in Australia: Comparison of Integrated and Stand-alone Approaches

Corruption as violation of distributed ethical obligations

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