Abstract
The paper discusses the role that ethics theory might play in business ethics teaching. It is noted that little attention is devoted to the explanation and application of ethics theory in business ethics textbooks, which suggests that ethics theory is held in low esteem by business ethics educators. This relative disregard has been justified by some critics on the basis of the limited usefulness of ethics theory to business ethics pedagogy. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the paper argues that ethics theory can play an important role in business ethics teaching which conforms to a speculative agenda. A speculative agenda is described, and a contribution that ethics theory can make to it is explained. This constitutes a form of immanent critique, which enables putative statements of business ethicality to be subjected to critique against the cultural values upon which their credibility rests. Ethics theory is offered as a mediating resource to facilitate such critique. Some criteria that the presentation of ethics theory needs to meet if it is to fulfill this speculative agenda are also outlined.
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Notes
A normative impasse of this nature has been theorized in a broader philosophical context in various ways. For instance, Habermas (1974/1963, 1987/1968) has referred to the apparent unfeasibility of a critical-emancipatory social theory in an intellectual climate in which positivist and hermeneutic forms of knowledge seem to occupy all the available space. Meanwhile, MacIntyre (1985/1981) refers to as the “Failure of the Enlightenment Project” to secure apodictic ethical truth, and a consequent belief that a relativistic “emotivism” offers the only way to think about ethics. Whilst emphasizing the significance of the normative impasses, though, these philosophers also offer responses to it. For both Habermas and MacIntyre’s, the appropriate response lies in a form of immanent critique. Habermas (1984/1981, 1987/1981, 1990/1983) thus envisages a processual model of normative legitimization, in which discourse amongst communicatively motivated actors permits the ethical commitments that circulate within a shared “lifeworld” to be interrogated and negotiated. Meanwhile, part of MacIntyre’s (1985/1981; 1988) resolution to the normative impasse involves teasing out, through processes of imaginative engagement, shared values that infuse a particular tradition.
It has even been suggested (Singer 1995) that utilitarians have no grounds for restricting evaluation to humans and that animals should also be included in a utilitarian’s constituency of ethical relevance.
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Fryer, M. A Role for Ethics Theory in Speculative Business Ethics Teaching. J Bus Ethics 138, 79–90 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2592-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2592-6