Abstract
The paper is a response to Richard De George's essay, ‘Theological Ethics and Business Ethics’. It defends the possibility of theologically oriented approaches to business ethics by pointing out certain deficiencies in business ethics narrowly based on the premisses of analytic moral philosophy. In particular it argues, in a manner consistent with Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981), that such a program of business ethics is insufficiently critical of its own roots in the “social fiction” of bureaucratic rationality. After showing how this ideology governs De George's negative judgments on theological approaches to business ethics, the author outlines a program of critical reflection that would draw from the intellectual traditions of both theology and philosophy in order to facilitate a dialogue in business ethics that no longer is captive in the “Iron Cage” of bureaucratic rationality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
De George, Richard T.: 1982, Business Ethics (Macmillan, New York).
De George, Richard T.: 1986, ‘Theological Ethics and Business Ethics’, this issue, pp. 421–432.
Fuchs, Josef: 1965, Natural Law: A Theological Investigation (Sheed and Ward, New York).
Habermas, Jürgen: 1979, Communication and the Evolution of Society (Beacon Press, Boston).
McCann, Dennis P.: 1981a, Christian Realism and Liberation Theology (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY).
McCann, Dennis P.: 1981b, ‘Habermas and the Theologians’, in Religious Studies Review 7 (January), 14–21.
McCann, Dennis P.: 1984, ‘The Ethics of Public Discourse’, Unpublished paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics.
McCarthy, Thomas: 1978, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA).
MacIntyre, Alasdair: 1981, After Virtue (The University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN).
Novak, Michael: 1964, The Open Church (Macmillan, New York).
Outka, Gene: 1972, Agape: An Ethical Analysis (Yale University Press, New Haven).
Searle, John: 1969, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge University Press, New York).
Troeltsch, Ernst: 1960, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches (Harper and Row, New York).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Dennis P. McCann is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at De Paul University. He has served on the faculties of Reed College and Lewis and Clark College. He is the author of Christian Realism and Liberation Theology (1981) and a co-author of Polity and Praxis: A Program for American Practical Theology (1985).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
McCann, D.P. Umpire and batsman: Is it cricket to be both?. Journal of Business Ethics 5, 445–451 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00380750
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00380750