In Adam Smith’s Own Words: The Role of Virtues in the Relationship Between Free Market Economies and Societal Flourishing, A Semantic Network Data-Mining Approach

Abstract

Among business ethicists, Adam Smith is widely viewed as the defender of an amoral if not anti-moral economics in which individuals’ pursuit of their private self-interest is converted by an ‘invisible hand’ into shared economic prosperity. This is often justified by reference to a select few quotations from The Wealth of Nations. We use new empirical methods to investigate what Smith actually had to say, firstly about the relationship between free market institutions and individuals’ moral virtues, and secondly about the further relationship between virtues and societal flourishing. We show with more quantitative precision than traditional scholarship that the invisible hand reading dramatically misrepresents both the nuance and the sum of Smith’s analysis. Smith paid a great deal of attention to a flourishing society’s dependence on virtues, including the non-self-regarding virtues of justice and benevolence, and he worried also about their fragility in the face of the changed incentives and social conditions of commercial society.

Dataset Modelling of the Financial Risk Management of Social Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies

“…Thirdly, in contrast to existing publications in the field of market economics (Graafland and Wells 2021;Shao et al 2021;Wut et al 2021), this article argues that despite the difference in goals (commercial/non-commercial) and funding factors, both commercial and social entrepreneurship face high financial risks and need financial risk management. This conclusion requires a revision of the existing approach to social entrepreneurship management in favour of greater attention to financial risk management.…”

“…According to the accumulated scientific knowledge in the sphere of market economies, given in the works (Graafland and Wells 2021;Shao et al 2021;Wut et al 2021), we also offer Hypothesis 3: Hypothesis 3 (H3). Despite its non-commercial nature, social entrepreneurship faces large financial risks and largely depends on their overcoming-that's why social entrepreneurship would demonstrate significant progress with minimal financial risks.…”

Rethinking corporate social responsibility under contemporary capitalism: Five ways to reinvent CSR

“…Yet, in recent decades, pushed by the ideas of Milton Friedman, who controversially wrote that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game” (1970), and the movie Wall Street , which popularized the phrase “Greed is good,” social responsibility has often become dissociated from business, or positioned as an enabler of profit‐making rather than a goal in itself. This has produced a “moral deficit” and an amoral if not anti‐moral “greed is good” utilitarian school of economics (Collier, 2018; Graafland & Wells, 2021). The effect of this regime on CSR is that ethics often loses out to greed, and CSR tends to serve profitability.…”

What’s Love Got to Do with It? Religion and the Multiple Logic Tensions of Social Enterprise

“…Unrestrained commercial activity in the market-based, capitalist economic system advocated by liberal economic thought has unquestionably produced adverse social and environmental consequences, as faith-based and secular social entrepreneurs would readily acknowledge. However, religious faith and worldview provide a contextual influence that constrains private self-interest in the operation of markets by emphasising other-regarding values of justice and benevolence (Graafland and Wells 2021). In particular, the moral and ethical teachings of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) on social responsibility provide a context for entrepreneurship that challenges, on the one hand, the view that a free market is the best way to create social benefit and, on the other, the argument that capitalism is inherently and irredeemably evil (Leo XIII 1891).…”