Religious business ethics and political liberalism: An integrative approach
Journal of Business Ethics 17 (15):1633-1652 (1998)
| Abstract | Increasingly many business practitioners and academics are turning to religious sources as a way of approaching and answering difficult questions related to business ethics. There now exists a relatively large literature which attempts to integrate business decisions and religious values. The integration, however, is not without difficulties. For many, religious ethics provides the basis and the ultimate authority for a morally meaningful life. Yet, at the same time, in certain contexts, it is often inappropriate to rely and to publicly justify action on the basis of these ethics. With this difficulty in mind, the main goal of this paper is to answer the following specific question: Is a religiously grounded business ethics consistent with the idea of political liberalism? While this question is fundamental and straight-forward, to date it has received little, if any, careful attention. The characterization of business corporations as quasi-public, discussed in the body of the paper, implies that political liberalism may dictate that there exist situations in which invoking religious business ethics is inappropriate. The point is that once one removes the assumption of business as a purely private matter, the justification of a religiously grounded ethics in the context of a politically liberal democracy becomes problematic. On the other hand, such an assumption should not be taken to imply that all religiously grounded business ethics are always inappropriate. As this paper demonstrates, it is far from obvious that even government officials need observe a complete separation between religion and state in formulating, justifying, or expressing public policies, even policies leading to so-called coercive results. If so, it follows that managers of quasi-public institutions may, under appropriate and limited circumstances, invoke and rely upon a religious, albeit private, world-view. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesGopalkrishnan R. Iyer (2001). International Exchanges as the Basis for Conceptualizing Ethics in International Business. Journal of Business Ethics 31 (1):3 - 24.
Joseph Betz (1998). Business Ethics and Politics. Business Ethics Quarterly 8 (4):693-702.
Ronald Jeurissen (2000). The Social Function of Business Ethics. Business Ethics Quarterly 10 (4):821-843.
Gerard Magill (1992). Theology in Business Ethics: Appealing to the Religious Imagination. Journal of Business Ethics 11 (2):129 - 135.
William I. Sauser (2005). Ethics in Business: Answering the Call. Journal of Business Ethics 58 (4):345 - 357.
Martin S. J. Calkins (2000). Recovering Religion's Prophetic Voice for Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 23 (4):339 - 352.
Richard T. George (1986). Theological Ethics and Business Ethics. Journal of Business Ethics 5 (6):421 - 432.
Timothy L. Fort (1997). Religion and Business Ethics: The Lessons From Political Morality. Journal of Business Ethics 16 (3):263-273.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads3 ( #201,781 of 549,037 )Recent downloads (6 months)0How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
