Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective

Abstract

It is more important than ever that a business must be both ethical and profitable. In this thoroughly revised and updated second edition, Norman E. Bowie shows that by applying Kant's three formulations of the categorical imperative, and by doing the right thing for the right reason, a business can achieve success in both of these fields. Bowie uses examples such as building trust, transparency through open book management, and respecting employees by providing a living wage and meaningful work. This new edition, for graduates and academic researchers in the field of business ethics, has been heavily revised to include the newest scholarship on Kantian ethics, with a new emphasis on Kant's later moral and political theory, a workable account of Kantian capitalism, and additional accounts on corporate social responsibility, Kantianism and human rights, corporate moral agency, and the Kantian theory of meaningful work.

The Responsibilities and Role of Business in Relation to Society: Back to Basics?

“…Other alternatives include corporate citizenship (e.g., Logdson and Wood 2002;Scherer and Palazzo 2008;Néron andNorman 2008a, 2008b;Post 2002) and the creation of shared value (Porter and Kramer 2011). There also are alternatives that draw explicitly on traditions in moral and political philosophy, such as Kantian theory (e.g., Bowie 1999;Dubbink and van de Ven 2012;Arnold and Harris 2012), virtue ethics (e.g., Hartman 1996Hartman , 2013Koehn 1995;Solomon 1992), social contract theory (e.g., Donaldson 1982;Donaldson andDunfee 1995, 1999;Dunfee 2006;Wempe 2008Wempe , 2009aWempe , 2009b, Confucianism (e.g., Strudler 2012, Kim 2014), and deliberative democracy (e.g., Scherer and Palazzo 2007). 3 In addition, theories of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the idea of a social license to operate reflect the idea that business enterprises have responsibilities to society independently of what is required by law.…”

Strategy and virtue: Developing strategy-as-practice through virtue ethics

“…In behavioral ethics, utilitarian frameworks have been usefully adopted (Bazerman and Gino, 2012;Tenbrunsel and Smith-Crowe, 2008;Trevino et al, 2014), and in business ethics a deontological approach (inspired by Kantian philosophy) as well a Habermasian perspective have generated insights (Bowie, 1999;Scherer and Palazzo, 2007). While we have made an argument for virtue ethics here, other perspectives in moral philosophy must be tried and their implications for strategic management considered (Hosmer, 1994;Gilbert, 2001;Singer, 2010;Robertson and Crittenden, 2003).…”

The Management Nexus of Imperfect Duty: Kantian Views of Virtuous Relations, Reasoned Discourse, and Due Diligence

“…Jeffrey Smith's (2012) and Norman Bowie's (1999) Kantian perspective is that firms are more than a nexus of contracts; they do have duties of beneficence within which corporate social responsibility (CSR) is grounded. Smith's and Bowie's observations concerning the CSR obligations of business, however, do not substantially generate a broader theory of the firm, nor a theory of managerial development, nor a fuller nexus-ofduty view, as provided here.…”