How to Tell the History of Business Ethics

Abstract

The history of U.S. business ethics and CSR exhibits some key normative continuities and stability. I argue that these normative continuities and stability are underlain by moral background discontinuities and variation. The former I call "first-order" stability and the latter I call "second-order" variation. The second-order or moral background level is where the action is-at least, the action that sheds most light on our understanding of society, morality, and the moral foundations of capitalist societies. Next, I consider one facet of the moral background that might be of special interest to business ethics and CSR scholars: the demarcation of morality. How are boundaries between moral and non-moral things drawn? How are they institutionalized and policed? How do they vary across time and place? However, I also show why these empirical questions are conceptually trickier than they may appear at first sight.

A Defense of Biblical Ethics in Business

“…Ethical formation of some kind, however, continues to be a critical question in business (Abend, 2015). The negative impact caused by prominent business ethical failures of the late 20th century and early 21st century have contributed to the present social expectation that companies should be held to some ethical standard (Leone, 2015).…”

“…Business scandals in the recent past have also occasioned the expansion of law in order to promote ethical operations in business (Abend, 2015). For example, the ethical failures of Enron and WorldCom acted as the catalyst for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (De George, 2015).…”