Abstract

In some developed nations, corporations are today legally regarded as “people”. But if that were literally true of the Weyland‐Yutani Corporation in the Alien franchise, the least it would deserve is a swift left‐hook to the jaw from Ripley and the few unfortunate persons who survive with her in each of the movies. The question of what constitutes good business practices is what business ethics is all about. In Alien, Carter Burke is the quintessential corporate weasel, and in many ways it's almost as if Gordon Gekko was transported into science fiction. The problem of deferring accountability is unavoidable in any large company, and Weyland‐Yutani is no exception. There are two major approaches to ethics that can help us to understand the extent to which cost‐benefit reasoning is ethical. The first, defended and popularized by Immanuel Kant, is deontology. The second major approach to ethics is utilitarianism, whose most famous early proponent was John Stuart Mill.