The corporate scandals of the past few years have brought renewed attention to the problem of curtailing dishonest and fraudulent business practices, a problem on which strategic, ethical, and law enforcement interests should be aligned. Unfortunately, several features of federal criminal law and federal law enforcement policy have driven a wedge into this alignment, forcing managers to choose between their ethical obligations and their obligation to obey the law or aid law enforcement. In this article, I examine the nature and (...) implications of the growing divergence between managers’ ethical and legal obligations. After describing the traditional approach to business ethics analysis, I identify the features of federal criminal law and law enforcement policy that are responsible for the divergence and show how they are undermining the efficacy of the traditional approach. I illustrate this effect with the issue of workplace confidentiality. I then argue that the traditional approach must be reformed to give explicit recognition to the legal dimension of normative analysis, and demonstrate how such a reformed approach would function by applying it to three illustrative issues—organizational justice, privacy, and ethical auditing—and supplying a case study—KPMG’s allegedly abusive tax shelters. (shrink)

The three leading normative theories of business ethics are the stockholder theory, the stakeholder theory, and the social contracttheory. Currently, the stockholder theory is somewhat out of favor with many members of the business ethics community. Thestakeholder theory, in contrast, is widely accepted, and the social contract theory appears to be gaining increasing adherents. In thisarticle, I undertake a critical review of the supporting arguments for each of the theories, and argue that the stockholder theory is neitheras outdated nor as (...) flawed as it is sometimes made to seem and that there are significant problems with the grounding of both thestakeholder and social contract theory. I conclude by suggesting that a truly adequate normative theory of business ethics must ultimately be grounded in individual consent. (shrink)

The three leading normative theories of business ethics are the stockholder theory, the stakeholder theory, and the social contracttheory. Currently, the stockholder theory is somewhat out of favor with many members of the business ethics community. Thestakeholder theory, in contrast, is widely accepted, and the social contract theory appears to be gaining increasing adherents. In thisarticle, I undertake a critical review of the supporting arguments for each of the theories, and argue that the stockholder theory is neitheras outdated nor as (...) flawed as it is sometimes made to seem and that there are significant problems with the grounding of both thestakeholder and social contract theory. I conclude by suggesting that a truly adequate normative theory of business ethics must ultimately be grounded in individual consent. (shrink)

The corporate scandals of the past few years have brought renewed attention to the problem of curtailing dishonest and fraudulent business practices, a problem on which strategic, ethical, and law enforcement interests should be aligned. Unfortunately, several features of federal criminal law and federal law enforcement policy have driven a wedge into this alignment, forcing managers to choose between their ethical obligations and their obligation to obey the law or aid law enforcement. In this article, I examine the nature and (...) implications of the growing divergence between managers’ ethical and legal obligations. After describing the traditional approach to business ethics analysis, I identify the features of federal criminal law and law enforcement policy that are responsible for the divergence and show how they are undermining the efficacy of the traditional approach. I illustrate this effect with the issue of workplace confidentiality. I then argue that the traditional approach must be reformed to give explicit recognition to the legal dimension of normative analysis, and demonstrate how such a reformed approach would function by applying it to three illustrative issues—organizational justice, privacy, and ethical auditing—and supplying a case study—KPMG’s allegedly abusive tax shelters. (shrink)

The nature of stakeholder theory and its fundamental normative prescriptions are the subject of much confusion and academic debate. This article attempts to provide an account of both the fundamental normative implications of stakeholder theory and the theory’s range of application that both stakeholder advocates and critics can agree upon. Using exclusively the language of leading stakeholder theorists, the article identifies the essential prescriptions of the theory and the type of organizations to which stakeholder theory applies in the hope of (...) facilitating effective discussion and evaluation of the normative dimension of stakeholder theory. (shrink)

In his 2007 Ethics article, “Responsibility Incorporated,” Philip Pettit argued that corporations qualify as morally responsible agents because they possess autonomy, normative judgment, and the capacity for self-control. Although there is ongoing debate over whether corporations have these capacities, both proponents and opponents of corporate moral agency appear to agree that Pettit correctly identified the requirements for moral agency. In this article, I do not take issue with either the claim that autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are the requirements for (...) moral agency or the claim that corporations possess them. I claim that if both of these claims are correct, then corporate moral agency entails that, in a liberal democracy, corporations should have the right to vote. I show that under the conception of democracy supported by most liberal political theorists, all parties subject to the law are entitled to the right to vote, and all parties that possess autonomy, normative judgment, and self-control are subject to the law. Therefore, if the proponents of corporate moral agency are correct, then corporations satisfy the requirements for the right to vote. I then consider potential objections to this argument. I show that the strongest objection to the corporate right to vote is undermined by Pettit’s own argument for corporate autonomy. I then show that objections derived from other arguments for limiting the rights of corporations are equally unavailing. I conclude with some observations about the implications of my argument for the question of corporate speech rights. (shrink)

The academic debate over the propriety of attributing moral responsibility to corporations is decades old and ongoing. The conventional approach to this debate is to identify the sufficient conditions for moral agency and then attempt to determine whether corporations possess them. This article recommends abandoning the conventional approach in favor of an examination of the practical consequences of corporate moral responsibility. The article’s thesis is that such an examination reveals that attributing moral responsibility to corporations is ethically acceptable only if (...) it does not authorize the punishment of corporations as collective entities, and further, that this renders the debate over corporate moral responsibility virtually pointless. (shrink)

Business ethics is usually taught either from a philosophical perspective that derives guiding normative principles from abstract theories of philosophical ethics or from an atheoretical perspective that has students analyze cases that present difficult ethical issues and propose solutions on a casuistic basis. This article proposes a third approach—the Principles Approach—that derives guiding normative principles teleologically from the nature of market activity itself. The articledemonstrates how the Principles Approach can meet the four main challenges facing those who teach ethics in (...) business schools—the challenges of definition, abstract, cultural relativism, and integration. (shrink)

Natural rights theorists such as John Locke and Robert Nozick provide arguments for limited government that are grounded on the individual's possession of natural rights to life, liberty, and property. Resting on natural rights, such arguments can be no more persuasive than the underlying arguments for the existence of such rights, which are notoriously weak. In this article, John Hasnas offers an alternative conception of natural rights, “empirical natural rights,” that are not beset by the objections typically (...) raised against traditional natural rights. Empirical natural rights are rights that evolve in the state of nature rather than those that individuals are antecedently endowed with in that state. Professor Hasnas argues that empirical natural rights are true natural rights, that is, pre-political rights with natural grounds that can be possessed in the state of nature, and that, when taken together, they form a close approximation of the Lockean rights to life, liberty, and property. He furthers argues that empirical natural rights are normatively well-grounded because respecting them is productive of social peace, which possesses instrumental moral value regardless of one's conception inherent value. Professor Hasnas thus offers his conception of rights as solved problems as an alternative and potentially more secure footing for the traditional natural rights arguments for limited government associated with Locke and Nozick. Footnotesa I wish to thank my fellow contributors to this volume, Ellen Frankel Paul, and Ann C. Tunstall of SciLucent, LLC, for their exceedingly helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay, and Annette Hasnas for the keen insight she provided into how human beings behave in the state of nature. (shrink)

Business ethics is usually taught either from a philosophical perspective that derives guiding normative principles from abstract theories of philosophical ethics or from an atheoretical perspective that has students analyze cases that present difficult ethical issues and propose solutions on a casuistic basis. This article proposes a third approach—the Principles Approach—that derives guiding normative principles teleologically from the nature of market activity itself. The articledemonstrates how the Principles Approach can meet the four main challenges facing those who teach ethics in (...) business schools—the challenges of definition, abstract, cultural relativism, and integration. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Legal scholars and business ethicists are interested in many of the same core issues regarding human and firm behavior. The vast amount of legal research being generated by nearly 10,000 law school and business law scholars will inevitably influence business ethics research. This paper describes some of the recent trends in legal scholarship and explores its implications for three significant aspects of business ethics research—methodology, theory, and policy.

The corporate scandals of the past few years have brought renewed attention to the problem of curtailing dishonest and fraudulent business practices, a problem on which strategic, ethical, and law enforcement interests should be aligned. Unfortunately, several features of federal criminal law and federal law enforcement policy have driven a wedge into this alignment, forcing managers to choose between their ethical obligations and their obligation to obey the law or aid law enforcement. In this article, I examine the nature and (...) implications of the growing divergence between managers’ ethical and legal obligations. After describing the traditional approach to business ethics analysis, I identify the features of federal criminal law and law enforcement policy that are responsible for the divergence and show how they are undermining the efficacy of the traditional approach. I illustrate this effect with the issue of workplace confidentiality. I then argue that the traditional approach must be reformed to give explicit recognition to the legal dimension of normative analysis, and demonstrate how such a reformed approach would function by applying it to three illustrative issues—organizational justice, privacy, and ethical auditing—and supplying a case study—KPMG’s allegedly abusive tax shelters. (shrink)

Much of the focus on business ethics literature is on complex questions of corporate social responsibility. Yet, the heart of business ethics consists in a set of fundamental moral principles that are inherent in the activity of doing business in a market. These principles transcend differences in nationality, culture, and religion and supply the building blocks on which the more complex analyses can be based. This set of principles, which constitute the core of business ethics, provides business people with a (...) code of conduct that is the analog of attorneys’ Canon of Ethics and physicians’ Code of Medical Ethics. (shrink)

The over-exploitation of commonly-held resources is typically analyzed as an instance of market failure that calls for legislation to internalize the social costs that private activities impose on the environment. In this article, I argue that to the extent that this analysis ignores the regulatory effect of the common law, it is unsound. In The Tragedy of the Commons, Garret Hardin points out that there are two solutions to the tragedy: privatize the resource or restrict access to it. Environmental legislation (...) is a means restricting access to the commons. The evolutionary development of common law is a means of privatizing the commons. These represent alternative methods of environmental regulation. Proper public policy analysis requires a comparative assessment of the efficacy of these methods for resolving any particular environmental problem. In many, if not most cases, such an assessment will show common law regulation to be superior to environmental legislation. (shrink)

This article challenges the traditional argument for the state that holds that because the market is unable to supply the rule-making, adjudicative, and enforcement services that are essential to life in society, the state must, and hence is morally justified. The author argues that the market's inability to supply these basic services proves only that the state must ensure that they are supplied, not that it must supply them itself. This implies that the traditional concept of the minimal state as (...) one that supplies only these basic services is flawed. The `remedial state' (one that regulates the private provision of these services) is actually the minimal state. Key Words: anarchy • libertarianism • minimal state • political obligation • protective agency • public goods. (shrink)

In his thoughtful Commentary on my article, “Should Corporations Have the Right to Vote? A Paradox in the Theory of Corporate Moral Agency,” Kenneth Silver incorrectly asserts that I endorse Robert Dahl’s Principle of Affected Interests and social contract theory. To the extent that Silver’s criticism of my argument is based on the claim that I appeal to either theory as the ground for my claim that corporate moral agency entails a corporate right to vote, it is misguided. I rely (...) only on the Rawlsian equal participation principle that invests those subject to the law with the right to vote. To the extent Silver’s criticism is directed to that assertion, it is on point. (shrink)

The fundamental requirement of Anglo-American criminal law is that crime must consist of the concurrence of a guilty mind—a mens rea—with a guilty act—an actus reus. And yet, the criminal law is shot through with discordant lumps of strict liability—crimes for which no mens rea is required. Ignoring the conventional normative objections to this aberration, I distinguish two different types of strict criminal liability: the type that arose at common law and the type associated with the public welfare offenses that (...) are the product of twentieth and twenty-first century legislation. Using famous cases as exemplars, I analyze the two types of strict liability, and then examine the purposes served and incentives created by subjecting individuals to strict liability. I conclude that common law strict liability is rational in that it advances the purposes of the criminal law, while the public welfare offenses are at best pointless and at worst counterproductive. I suggest that in this respect the common law contains more wisdom than the results of the legislative process. (shrink)

Advocates of the privatization of law often assume that unless law springs from some act of agreement, some express or implicit social contract by which individuals consent to be bound, it is nothing more than force. In this Article, I argue that this is a false dilemma. Although law is rarely grounded in consent, this does not imply that law necessarily gives some individuals command over others. Law can arise through a process of evolution. When this is the case, those (...) subject to law are indeed bound, but not by the will of any particular human beings. Although this depoliticized law is inherently coercive, it is not inherently a vehicle for domination. This Article argues that such a system of depoliticized law is consistent with the ideal of the rule of law, and, in fact, is free market law, when that phrase is properly understood. (shrink)

This essay argues that there can be a duty to obey the law when it is produced by the evolutionary forces at work in the customary and common law. Human beings' inherent epistemic limitations mean that they must rely on the trial and error learning built into the common law process to discover rules that facilitate peaceful social interaction. Hence, a duty to obey the law produced by the common law process can arise from individuals' natural duty to promote social (...) peace. This argument cannot be extended to ground political obligation. It does not give rise to a duty to obey the state. (shrink)

Here I synthesize certain ideas presented in two different articles that appeared in the same issue of Business Ethics Quarterly. One article (Hasnas) invokes the stockholder model as a valid normative theory of business ethics, the other article (Dunfee) invokes a marketplace of morality. Both articles imply that the accepted financial-economic view of the firm is a view that can accommodateethics. I offer empirical support for this view. I also identify the ethic of the stockholder model as a variant (...) on might-makes-right andconsider the social acceptance of this ethic as a postmodern phenomenon. (shrink)

This paper carries forward the conceptual clarification of normative theories of business ethics ably begun by Hasnas in the January 1998 issue of BEQ. This paper proposes a normatively neutral framework for discussing and assessing such normative theories. Every normative theory needs to address these seven issues: it needs to specify a moral principle that identifies (1) recommended values and (2) the grounds for accepting those values. It also must specify (3) a decision principle that business people who accept (...) the theory can use. It must determine (4) who the normative theory applies to and (5) whose interests need to be considered. It must also outline (6) in what contexts it applies, and (7) what legal and regulatory structures it assumes. Once clarified, this paper applies the framework to the normative versions of stockholder theory, stakeholder theory, and ISCT. It is concluded that ISCT is the most promising normative theory currently under discussion, but that there are some major issues that ISCT has not dealt with yet. (shrink)

This essay responds to Hasnas’s recent article “The Normative Theories of Business Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed” in Business Ethics Quarterly. Hasnas claims that the stockholder theory is more plausible than commonly supposed and that the stakeholder theory is prone to significant difficulties. I argue that Hasnas’s reasons for favoring the stockholder over the stakeholder theory are not asstrong as he suggests. Following Hasnas, I examine both theories in light of two sets of normative considerations: (...) utilitarian anddeontological. First, I show that utilitarian considerations clearly favor the stakeholder theory. I then argue that though Hasnas rightly accents the basic deontological constraint at the core of the stockholder theory, he is wrong to think that acknowledging such a constraint necessarily counts against the stakeholder theory. Here, I develop Ross’s notion of prima facie obligations to show how a viable stakeholder theory might be developed within a deontological framework. (shrink)

In his preface Mr Wilson writes 'I feel that a great many adults … would do better to spend less time in simply accepting the concepts of others uncritically, and more time in learning how to analyse concepts in general'. Mr Wilson starts by describing the techniques of conceptual analysis. He then gives examples of them in action by composing answers to specific questions and by criticism of quoted passages of argument. Chapter 3 sums up the importance of this kind (...) of mental activity. Chapter 4 presents selections for the reader to analyse, followed by questions of university entrance/scholarship type. This is a book to be worked through, in a sense a text-book. (shrink)

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and (...) the Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

Developing countries face difficulties of exploitation, dehumanisation and lack of ethical professionalism, to an extent that developed countries do not encounter. Poverty‐related difficulties include lack of infrastructure, unreasonable dominance of defence‐related expenses in the budget, lack of a sufficient number of health care providers, absence of accountability for serious medical malpractice, as well as exploitation of patients in pharmaceutical trials. This country report presents the case of Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world and therefore a good example (...) for the deplorable condition of the health sector in developing countries. (shrink)

Foreword I. Critical rationalism is a genuinely new philosophical perspective. It is not, however, one systematic view. The development of it by Popper and ...

I argue that incomprehensibility (what the ancient skeptics called acatalepsia) plays a central role in the skepticism of both Bayle and Hume. I challenge a commonly held view (recently argued by Todd Ryan) that Hume, unlike Bayle, does not present oppositions of reason--what Kant called antimonies.

Everyone loves something or somebody, and most people are concerned with loving another person like themselves, all equal. This book is based on the belief that getting clear about the concept and meaning of love between equals is essential for success in our practical lives. For how can we love properly unless we have a fairly clear idea of what love is? The book is written in ordinary language and for the ordinary person, without jargon or philosophical technicalities. It aims (...) to show that love between equals involves a single basic disposition, though that disposition expresses itself in various ways. Thus, after an introduction explaining the need for analysis and clarification, the author then deals in order with love as desire or need; with intrinsic friendship and sharing the self; with basic difficulties concerning power, dependence, altruism and paranoia; with sex and erotic love; and finally with the value in human life of love between equals. The work as a whole gives clear, coherent and practical guidance for all who wish to grasp what such love is really like. (shrink)

Ed. Daniel Greenberger, 750pp May 1995 164.95.

John Webster provides a major scholarly analysis, the first in any language, of the final sections of the Church Dogmatics. He focuses on the theme of human agency in Barth's late ethics and doctrine of baptism, placing the discussion in the context of an interpretation of the Dogmatics as an intrinsically ethical dogmatics. The first two chapters survey the themes of agency, covenant and human reality in the Dogmatics as a whole; later chapters give a thorough analysis of Church (...) Dogmatics IV/4 and the posthumously published text The Christian Life. A final chapter examines the significance of Barth's work for contemporary accounts of moral selfhood. The book is important not only for a detailed analysis of a neglected part of Barth's oeuvre, but also because it casts into question much of what has hitherto been written about Barth's ethical dogmatics. (shrink)