Radical business ethics: a critical and postmetaphysical manifesto

Abstract

Business ethics, as it is understood and practised generally, lacks a component of radicality. As part of the contemporary ‘return to ethics’ it displays an undesirable conservatism and blocks off possibilities for systemic alterity. I argue that a normal and ‘apologetic’ business ethics should therefore be supplemented with a radical or utopian business ethics. Put differently, business ethics should not only contribute to more responsible business practices, more morally sensitive business managers and more ethical organisational cultures, but should also facilitate social hope via hermeneutic strategies aimed at changing the way we think about ourselves, our economies and the roles and responsibilities of business as such.

Envisioning the Aesthetic Firm

“…: Google, YouTube), and Facebook Inc. These social media behemoths, and indeed the entire social media phenomena, has come under increasing scrutiny from both ethicists and regulators (Dyck and Weber, 2006;Engelbrecht, 2012). Here we drill down beneath the usual terrain of this debate to look at the essential ontic imprint of these firms-as-phenomena.…”

“…Here we drill down beneath the usual terrain of this debate to look at the essential ontic imprint of these firms-as-phenomena. To this end, we draw on specific works by two philosophers: The Question Concerning Technology ([ ] 2013) by Martin Heidegger; and Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (2001) by Alain Badiou. Neither of these authors directly address business organizations in their writings, however their work has since been applied by others to the nature and purpose of business organizations (Helms and Dobson, 2016;Engelbrecht, 2012;Hallward, 2001).…”

A Nietzschean re‐evaluation of values as a way of re‐imagining business ethics

“…But what if ethics itself is in a crisis, what if business ethics suffers an “ontological crisis” and we have found out that its foundation is “rubble” (Curtis, Harney, & Jones, , pp. 65, 67) to such an extent that we need to ask whether it is a “saviour or co‐conspirator” (Engelbrecht, , p. 339), and what if codes of ethics have been undermined in ways such that they have become detached from their foundations and from that which gave them meaning? This is the belief underlying the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche, who argues that the death of God heralds the death of absolutes and hence the death of the possibility of ethics as a “moral compass” through which everyday life in general as well as organisational life is given direction.…”

“…From this perspective, much of business ethics is just another form of rummaging through the ruins of ethics and “the ubiquity of the discourse on ethics within corporations are symptomatic of a lack of actual ethics” (Barthold, , p. 401) and our “inability to name and strive for the Good that characterises today’s ethics, should … be interpreted as nihilism” (Engelbrecht, , p. 342). For example, the talk of ethics in organisations is often reduced to practices of compliance (Schwartz, ; Wulf, ), or the way in which ethics is dealt with in business schools is by introducing students to a smorgasbord of ethical approaches: deontological, teleological, virtue ethics, and so on (Buchholz, ; Fawson, Simmons, & Yonk, ), as if there are different ethical systems which can simply be placed side by side with each other, and right or wrong depends on what criteria are used, in a way that there is no foundation for grounding talk of ethics.…”

“…The importance of this is that instead of assuming that we know what ethics means and that all we need to do is to discover our own particular ethics, Nietzsche reveals that to address the crisis of ethics, the challenge is one of understanding what we mean by ethics in the first place. Such an understanding is important because contemporary business ethics is confused and nihilistic (Couch & Spencer, ; Lennerfors, ) and unfortunately, business ethics research today “displays an undesirable conservatism” and “lacks a component of radicality” (Engelbrecht, : p. 339) necessary whether business ethics is to arise from the ruins of ethics (Curtis et al, ; Engelbrecht, ) or be made as a new practice. (Curtis et al, , p. 66).…”