On the Origin, Content, and Relevance of the Market Failures Approach

Moriarty, Jeffrey

doi:10.1007/s10551-019-04106-x

Cited by 33 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Critics such as Jeffrey Moriarty ( 2019 ; see also Steinberg, 2017 ) have recognised the problem which the second best presents for the MFA, and Heath has responded: Medical students, while being trained to diagnose illness, are often reminded that “common things are common”, and that “when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras”. This is because, having memorized the symptoms of various exotic diseases, they have a tendency to overdiagnose them, forgetting that almost every patient who presents with flu symptoms has the flu, most people with headaches just have headaches, and so on.…”

Section: The Persistence Of Discretion In the Mfamentioning

confidence: 99%

Managerial Discretion, Market Failure and Democracy

Bennett

2022

J Bus Ethics

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Managers often have discretion in interpreting their ethical requirements, and they should seek democratic guidance in doing so. The undemocratic nature of managerial ethical discretion is shown to be a recurring problem in business ethics. Joseph Heath’s market failures approach (MFA) is introduced as a theory better positioned to deal with this problem than other views. However, due to epistemic uncertainty and conceptual indeterminacy, the MFA is shown to allow a much wider range of managerial discretion than initially appears. The paper explores how this range can be narrowed down with democratic input, comparing models based on formal state institutions and on the informal public sphere. A case study from the pharmaceutical industry illustrates the merits of the informal public sphere approach.

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Section: The Persistence Of Discretion In the Mfamentioning

confidence: 99%

Managerial Discretion, Market Failure and Democracy

Bennett

2022

J Bus Ethics

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“…14.It has been acknowledged by a number of scholars, Heath included, that the Market Failures Approach relies on an idealized conception of perfect competition that is not trivially applied to nonideal situations (Heath 2014; Kriegstein 2016; McMahon 1981; Moriarty 2019; Steinberg 2017). What is important for our purposes is to recognize that the implicit morality of the market imposes obligations that, even if not fully aligned with what the Market Failures Approach proclaims, still go beyond the minimal obligations defended by minimal shareholder theorists (cf.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weeding Out Flawed Versions of Shareholder Primacy: A Reflection on the Moral Obligations That Carry Over from Principals to Agents

Mejía

2019

Bus. Ethics Q.

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ABSTRACT:The distinction between what I call nonelective obligations and discretionary obligations, a distinction that focuses on one particular thread of the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties, helps us to identify the obligations that carry over from principals to agents. Clarity on this issue is necessary to identify the moral obligations within “shareholder primacy” (i.e., “shareholder theory”), which conceives of managers as agents of shareholders. My main claim is that the principal-agent relation requires agents to fulfill nonelective obligations, but it does not always require (and sometimes actually prohibits) discharging discretionary obligations. I show that the requirement to fulfill nonelective obligations is more far-reaching than has been acknowledged by most defenders and critics of shareholder primacy. But I also show that managers are not bound by certain discretionary obligations like charity, showing that their moral obligations are more circumscribed than the obligations that apply to human beings in general.

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“…Secondly, I will cover a recent criticism of the MFA. Heath's view has been challenged in the literature because he seems to slide between two conceptions of efficiency when developing the MFA: Pareto efficiency and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency (Moriarty 2020). I will clarify exactly what kind of efficiency is at work in the MFA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Between Market Failures and Justice Failures: Trade-Offs Between Efficiency and Equality in Business Ethics

Blunden

2021

J Bus Ethics

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The Market Failures Approach (MFA) is one of the leading theories in contemporary business ethics. It generates a list of ethical obligations for the managers of private firms that states that they should not create or exploit market failures because doing so reduces the efficiency of the economy. Recently the MFA has been criticised by Abraham Singer on the basis that it unjustifiably does not assign private managers obligations based on egalitarian values. Singer proposes an extension to the MFA, the Justice Failures Approach (JFA), in which managers have duties to alleviate political, social, and distributive inequalities in addition to having obligations to not exploit market failures. In this paper I describe the MFA and JFA and situate them relative to each other. I then highlight a threefold distinction between different types of obligations that can be given to private managers in order to argue that a hybrid theory of business ethics, which I call the MFA + , can be generated by arguing that managers have obligations based on efficiency and duties based on equality to the extent that these latter obligations do not lead to efficiency losses. This argument suggests a novel theoretical option in business ethics, elucidates the issues that are at stake between the MFA and the JFA, and clarifies the costs and benefits of each theory.

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On the Origin, Content, and Relevance of the Market Failures Approach

Cited by 33 publications

References 18 publications

Managerial Discretion, Market Failure and Democracy

Managerial Discretion, Market Failure and Democracy

Weeding Out Flawed Versions of Shareholder Primacy: A Reflection on the Moral Obligations That Carry Over from Principals to Agents

Between Market Failures and Justice Failures: Trade-Offs Between Efficiency and Equality in Business Ethics

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