Skip to main content
Log in

Professionalism: Foundation for business ethics

  • Published:
Journal of Business Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Professionalism includes the essential contents of other key notions within the field of business ethics. As a term involving the notion of ‘vocation’ it may be understood as containing a religious content, since ‘vocation’ refers to a man's most intimate personal decisions, ‘destiny’ and ‘providence’. Professionalism also connotes respect for law and so includes a reference to commercial law as a guide to right conduct. Professionalsim thus lifts the requirements of law to the level of personal commitment.

Like an ‘honest act’, professionalism may not be easy to define, but you will know it when you see it. As for professionalism's practitioners, like the practitioners of honesty, their art is learned not by seeking definitions of what they do, but by practicing professionalism. Only if this practice becomes an ‘obsession’ with the ‘Business Aristocracy’ can we expect professionalism to seize the soul of ‘lesser’ businessmen and suffuse the entire business community.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Authors

Additional information

Thomas E. Schaefer, Ph. D., is Professor of Business Administration at the University of Texas, Permian Basin. He was formerly Head of the Department of Business Administration, University of Alaska, and Dean of Business Administration, Sacred Heart University, Puerto Rico. He has received a Private Sector Award of Pres. Reagan for Extraordinary Contributions to Small Business. His most important publications are: The Process of Management: What Supervisors Do (O.C. Press, 1982); ‘Leadership Through Followership’, Business Horizons (September/October, 1982) and many others.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Schaefer, T.E. Professionalism: Foundation for business ethics. J Bus Ethics 3, 269–277 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00381747

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00381747

Keywords

Navigation