Philosophers have constituted business ethics as a field by providing a systematic overview that interrelates its problems and concepts and that supplies the basis for building on attained results. Is there a properly theological task in business ethics? The religious/theological literature on business ethics falls into four classes: (1) the application of religious morality to business practices; (2) the use of encyclical teachings about capitalism; (3) the interpretation of business relations in agapa-istic terms; and (4) the critique of business from (...) a liberation theological point of view. Theologians have not adequately addressed the questions of whether there are particular theological tasks in the field as they define it, and whether, if they define it, the theological definition is different from the philosophical. (shrink)

Business ethics, which grew out of religion's interest in ethics in business and management education's concern with social issues, has become an interdisciplinary academic field. Thus far it has centered on teaching undergraduates. The easy work has now been done and the field has reached a plateau. To develop further it requires development on the MBA level, high quality research on new questions, positive models, better interdisciplinary integration, and attention to international business. Ultimately the field will stand or fall on (...) the quality of research those in it produce. (shrink)

Only by distinguishing corporate, moral, social and legal responsibility can GM know how to weigh and respond to its various responsibilities. Corporate responsibility stems from the ends for which the corporation is formed. In addition the corporation is responsible for meeting the moral demands that come from the moral law. The corporation is responsible for meeting legitimate social demands proposed by society. If society uses the law to express its demands, the demands yield legal responsibilities. Those demands that are social (...) but neither moral nor legal may not be legitimate demands that GM must respond to at all. (shrink)

The model of free enterprise that has developed in the United States presupposes a value system. The central value is freedom. Next come goods and the means of acquiring them, viz., money and profit. Competition is central. But fairness of transactions is presupposed, and this implies honesty, truthfulness, and general respect for persons. Optimism and faith in the future have been ingredients from the start. Each of these values can be abused, and such abuses characterize the seamy side of capitalism. (...) The Myth of Amoral Business helps undermine the values. Yet the changes American society is demanding of business can be seen as reaffirming the values the system presupposes. The imperative is for business to live up to its own best traditions — a social demand that business can and should meet if it wishes to continue as a system of free enterprise. (shrink)

This is a series of connected essays by an eminent French Jesuit theologian. The English translation is very readable; but in style and feeling the book remains thoroughly French. Daniélou confronts the attitude of despair of many contemporary French thinkers with faith in the worthwhileness of human existence and in the truth of Christianity. The essays are often suggestive and illuminating; sometimes ‘tantamount to dogmatism’. Daniélou traces the crisis of truth to an over-wrought confidence in science, to the largely justified (...) mistrust of men’s word, to the substitution of the subjective viewpoint of sincerity for the objective one of truth, and to a concern for effectiveness and action rather than for truth. He then affirms that truth ‘must consist in the mind’s acknowledging God’s sovereign reality’. Against Merleau-Ponty he holds that phenomenology is neutral and does not necessarily imply or lead to atheism; against Malraux and Camus he denies the myth of unhappiness and contends that happiness is man’s heroic vocation; and against Rimbaud he challenges the mystification of poetry and claims there is no mysticism save that of God. To the Christian he underlines the responsibility to assert his faith in the presence of non-believers and says that in rejecting such atheistic humanisms as Marxism he is defending not only God but also man, for ‘man without God is maimed in the essential part of himself’. The solution to the tragedy of division among Christians, according to Daniélou, can be found only in truth; and reform is necessary before unity. Furthermore in a technological society Christianity must invent, for its permanent message, forms of expression which correspond to man’s technical advances; the Christian must consecrate earthly reality and so make the things which turn us away from God the means which lead us to Him. (shrink)