Abstract
In this paper, I argue for the ethics of business based on the way that business activity may embody a vocation to partake in “the Good.” Following a Platonist framework for ethics and recent work on vocations by Robert M. Adams, I argue that understanding the ethics of vocations allows us to avoid the charges that business persons have to do something more for others—often couched in terms of social responsibility, sustainability, or consideration of stakeholders—in order to legitimize their careers ethically. Rather, I claim, the ethics of a business vocation, as in any vocation, rests first and foremost in the way that a person pursues projects that answer an invitation to partake in the good things of this world. Thus, the promotion of the well-being of others, while ethically admirable and constitutive of some vocations, is not fundamental for understanding the ethics of vocations themselves, even in business. There are important implications for the ethics of markets, and I also consider a recent challenge to my approach that claims that true business vocations demand a more direct promotion of the well-being of others.
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Notes
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2009, U.S. colleges and universities graduated 358,000 business students. See: http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37; retrieved 23 October, 2013.
I say this is to be expected for the same reason Alasdair MacIntyre ridiculed John Rawls and Robert Nozick at the end of After Virtue (1984/1981, pp. 244–53). MacIntyre claims that despite their incommensurable conclusions regarding justice, both Rawls and Nozick invariably ended up excluding the notion of desert from their accounts—a notion invaluable for justice. According to MacIntyre, the joke is on us: even brilliantly sophisticated modern analytic philosophers cannot seem to find a way to talk about ethics in a way that coheres with notions of justice that common sense appeals rely upon—appeals that derive from the ancient approaches of Aristotelian and Christian ethics. Putting aside the actual merits of MacIntyre’s critique, I find the deep-seated concern with the possibility of ethical business activity and the market system to rest on impulses regarding what ethics really is about. Ethics, first and foremost, is about the type of person one becomes. Whether this is a matter of human nature or simply human psychology is a question for another day. (See, for example, discussions of the attribution of intentionality to direct and indirect effects of actions by Knobe (2003). Knobe’s experiments reveal how important moral intentions are when we evaluate the ethical behavior of others.). The ancients, it appeared, understood something right—and we cannot seem to shake their insights.
“As every individual, therefore endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestick industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the publick interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestick to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it” (Smith 1981, p. 456).
A perfectly representative example of this approach is Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom (1968). It is not really the case that Friedman defends “selfishness.” Rather, he argues that capitalism secures the ends that moralists desire better than alternative economic approaches would.
Of course the varieties of consequentialism are endless, although none strictly (to my knowledge) value the intentions or motives of the agent as intrinsically good. That approach would have to be a hybrid, much like the virtue ethics cum consequentialist approach I discuss in Part II. I hesitate to call the above direct consequentialist approach a virtue ethics cum consequentialist approach, however, because despite a similar concern for character found in virtue ethics, to embrace virtue ethics would entail other commitments I am not willing to ascribe to this approach in general without an explicit acceptance of those commitments. So, in Part II, when I label the approach of some others as a virtue ethics cum consequentialist approach, it is because they explicitly endorse virtue ethics and value the indirect consequences produced by market activity.
This is not a heavy academic philosophical work—it is written instead for the educated layperson, specifically business persons—but it does make serious and noteworthy reference to many concepts that are operative in academic philosophical discussion.
Novak writes: “Markets, private property, and profit were already present in biblical times. Beginning in about 1750, a critical mass of institutions (some new, some old) began to coalesce in a new way. The reason that a new word such as capitalism was needed (it was first used about 1810) was to name a new thing—a new ingredient that transformed the ancient, sleepy marketplace into a dynamic search for new goods, services, methods, and processes. As Max Weber and many other historians of economics have noted, a new kind of system emerged during the late eighteenth century. Economists are still divided on what the new thing is. My own view, following Joseph Schumpeter, Friedrich Hayek, and Israel Kirzner, but in my own words, is as follows: Capitalism is an economic system, dependent on an appropriate political system and a supportive moral-cultural system, that unites a large variety of social institutions (some new, some old) in the support of human economic creativity. It is the system oriented to the human mind: caput (L. ‘head’), wit, invention, discovery, enterprise. It brings institutional support to the inalienable right to personal economic initiative” (1996, pp. 80-1). I thank an anonymous reviewer for the suggestion to clarify the fact that markets and business have existed not just in the era of modern capitalism but prior to it (and sometimes alongside it in non-capitalistic societies).
McCloskey contends that her approach in Bourgeois Dignity is different from even other well-known materialist and non-materialist explanations for modern economic growth: “I tell the story of modern economic growth, summarizing what we thought we knew from 1776 to the present about the nature and causes of the wealth of nations—how we got refrigerators and college degrees and secret ballots. The book tests the traditional stories against the actually happened, setting aside the stories that in light of the recent findings of scientific history don’t seem to work very well. A surprisingly large number of stories don’t. Not Marx and his classes. Not Max Weber and his Protestants. Not Fernand Braudel and his Mafia-style capitalists. Not Douglass North and his institutions…” (2010, p. xii).
They are not the only ones, of course. Paul Zak’s edited volume, Moral Markets (2008), draws upon philosophers, economists, and primatologists to discuss the values at the heart of market exchange, but from a very naturalistic and (sometimes) reductionist approach.
An exception in the business ethics literature is Maitland (1997). However, Maitland emphasizes virtues more broadly, citing Enlightenment thinkers primarily as being optimistic about the way that business activity in the market inculcates virtue.
For a very strong critique, see Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (1999). For a suggestive critique, see Moore (2002). Moore’s approach is provocative insofar as he thinks that an understanding of business as a practice—in the way that Alasdair MacIntyre understands a practice—and the adoption of that understanding by modern corporations would have important implications for our current capitalistic economy (ibid., pp. 30-1). I am not so sure, but it is a worthy thesis nonetheless.
There are certainly rights-based approaches that demand business persons do something more to legitimize business activity (see, for example, Werhane 1985; Hsieh 2004; Arnold 2010; Wettstein 2012), and I thank an anonymous reviewer for recommending that I address this gap in my presentation. However, since this paper is intended primarily to address those approaches that incorporate ancient, Greek-style virtue ethics in their understanding of business vocations in the capitalistic market system, and since other contenders discussing virtues and vocations tend to rely heavily on coupling Greek-style ethics with consequentialist ethics, I have put aside the rights-based approaches that claim business persons do something more. (Arnold 2013 is an example of a slight exception to this general claim, but only insofar as he adopts some insights from the hybrid Aristotelian-Marxism found in, for example, Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach; see Nussbaum 2000.) Still, my inclination is to view the aforementioned rights-based approaches with suspicion, especially when they embrace anything beyond basic negative rights. This is due, in part, to the usual litany of complaints against such approaches, including the problem of the incompossibility of positive and negative rights. Additionally, positive rights arguments slide into calls for additional state-based interference in the operations of business. That opens the possibility of furthering the distance between academic business ethics discourse and the day-to-day operations of moral agents within business. It also fails to attend to the “public choice-style” problems that such interference invites (cf. n14) and the knowledge-based problems that arise in the displacement of evolutionary common law by blunt, positive legislation. Addressing these issues with the careful attention they deserve, however, would take this paper too far afield.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for offering this example of physicians acting as business persons, as well as for the suggestion to clarify my distinction between business and other professions.
What that “well-being” entails is, of course, open to much debate, and we have public choice economics to thank for illuminating the real-world limitations of such a theoretical view. The best primer is a foundational text in the field by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (1962).
One may object that many relationships and roles in markets are based on promoting another’s interest, such as the agent-principal relationship, the fiduciary-beneficiary relationship, and so on. Of course, even these could be considered suspect: corporate social responsibility (CSR) questions whether acting in the interest of a shareholder’s profit is, in fact, morally preferable to acting in favor of some desired social outcome. Even self-identified advocates of free-market capitalism embrace some version of CSR. See: John Mackey and Raj Sisodia, Conscious Capitalism (2013). Mackey’s book is a development of his argument against Milton Friedman’s seminal essay, “The Social Responsibility Of Business Is To Increase Its Profits” (1970), which he articulated in a three-way “debate” featuring him, Milton Friedman, and T. J. Rodgers for Reason magazine, “Rethinking the Social Responsibility of Business” (2005).
Adams’s approach depends upon some twentieth century advances in the philosophy of language regarding natural kinds that allow us competently to hold onto concepts and then discover the nature of the thing in question (1999, pp. 15–16).
An anonymous reviewer helpfully points out that vocations, as they derive from the Latin word “to call” (vocare), raise the question of the source of the calling. Adams believes that his theistic account of ethics easily makes sense of a calling and its source: since a person might believe that some task is only recognizable as her own that task will not be “dependent on general ethical principles” (1999, p. 292). Rather, such a task has that person’s own name written on it. The one who writes that name, in Adams’s account, is God (ibid., p. 301). However, Adams also concedes that vocations are used in ordinary language without appeal to God and, though he favors an argument that God would call a person into some sort of life (and thus make such a call objectively good for a person), one might also have “a subjective but plausible sense of vocation” without appeal to God (ibid., p. 317). (The objectivity of the legitimacy of the vocation in question would then depend on whether or not it tracks an objective standard of excellence, with or without a God.) On this issue of where vocations come from, Novak (1996, pp. 36–39) agrees with Adams. He expressly states that vocations can be secular and tacit. He goes so far as to say that a nontheist might understand a calling as issuing, metaphorically, from an “impartial spectator” or from one’s own conscience (secular persons, he claims, “are likely to speak of knowing themselves, finding their own identity, seeking their own fulfillment, even ‘doing their own thing’…” (ibid., p. 39)). Novak believes that despite disagreements on the source of callings, the language of vocations or callings derives, at least in the West, from a shared religious heritage (ibid., p. 39). This is important because it helps delimit the scope of this paper: we can punt, for now, on the question of where vocations come from by acknowledging that the term is understood in ordinary language to include at least some of the same features by both religious and secular people in the Western world.
I have my own differences with Adams’s Platonist approach, including a disagreement over the genetic account of coming into appreciation for the Good. Addressing this is an aside for the purpose of this paper.
Indeed, Adams’s non-consequentialist understanding of vocations and the secondary role he gives to the notion of obligations for vocations, I am inclined to believe, are disarmingly intuitive. In particular, Adams claims the notion of obligation is a part of vocations, but that it is not just that, given the fact that vocations need not be commands but also invitations (1999, p. 303). And, he does claim that because we are “likely to do more good if we try to discern and follow a true vocation than if we directly aim at doing the most good,” there “could be an indirect consequentialist justification for deliberation in terms of vocation” (ibid., p. 300).
It is important that Adams’s use of “projects” includes pursuits that do not “aim at an ‘end product.’ Living a certain kind of life, being a certain kind of person, loving a particular person—likewise the flourishing of the other person—all can be projects in this sense” (1999, p. 303).
Still, we must recall that “obligation” can be too strong a word, misleading the reader on the characterization of ethics that I am proposing here: vocations, for Adams, do not involve pure obligations qua obligations, but obligations qua something prior—namely, a love for “the Good.” Otherwise, this approach would blend too easily into a duty-based, moralistic ethic where the right takes priority over the good.
On this, also see David Schmidtz’s critique of a totalizing utilitarianism in his critique of Peter Singer (2009). Among many other things, Schmditz claims that our separateness as persons, as well as the focus of our lives, has implications for the extent of how often and in what way we actively promote the good of others, as opposed simply to respecting it.
Can the well-being of others be one’s personal project, or vocation, as an expression of one’s love for the Good? Absolutely. But only, on this story, if the love for the Good comes first.
An anonymous reviewer rightfully alerts me to the concern that when some persons pursue some good (as in an “end”), they may mistake that good end as something ethically good. And thus some persons pursue what they take to be vocations, and that may involve many ethically good things, in ways that are not ethically admirable. This is problematic on an empirical level (i.e., identifying legitimate vocations, especially in the face of moral disagreement and the unintended but harmful results of our otherwise morally good or morally neutral actions), but it is not a problem on a conceptual level. We can still imagine the parameters of legitimate vocations that serve as the standards by which we judge actual attempts to live out vocations. However, this concern also points to the need for us to do the hard work, when looking toward those who believe they have legitimate vocations, of discerning which actions, attitudes, and beliefs are constitutive of the vocations and which actions, attitudes, and beliefs are simply the result of human fallibility, and thus not essential to their vocational activities. I thank the reviewer for asking for clarification on this point, especially because it speaks to some of the difficulties of virtue ethics-based approaches to moral reasoning. I do not think such difficulties are damning, but they should always be acknowledged because they remind us of the perpetual need to engage in the sort of dialog that can define a community’s moral commitments and to reveal a bigger, fuller sense of the Good. On the point of the way in which any persons might pursue a vocation that reflects their love for the Good, see Adams’s follow-up book, A Theory of Virtue: Excellence in Being for the Good (2006). There, Adams addresses what a theory of virtue would look like that defines the manner by which one could admirably love the Good.
Consider Mother Teresa, for example. Her admitted vocation was to heal the sick and feed the hungry in a way that totally eschewed her own material self-interest. One could argue she pursued such ventures in order to gain entry into a blissful afterlife, but given what we have learned in her personal letters after her death, it is clear that she felt a strong calling to help the poor despite her own dark and personal doubts about the presence of God in her own life. We may safely surmise that her calling was to help the poor without consideration of what it would bring her (2007).
See note 36.
The concern that business persons in modern capitalism seek money as its own end is expressed eloquently by Charles Handy in “What’s a Business For?” (2002). Handy’s critique is an old and pedigreed concern that predates modern capitalistic economies but which becomes even more pronounced with the dawn of modern capitalism, from both secular and religious sources. For example, Aristotle himself thought merchants were incapable of true virtue and that they were akin to slaves (a class of persons incapable of directing their own lives toward the good), so he had little use for business activity in lives of men of the polis (1941, Politics, 1328b37–1329a18). Though wealth was an important instrument in his eudaimonistic ethic, it was never the end itself in the pursuit of happiness understood as rational activity in accord with virtue. On this, Thomas Aquinas cites Aristotle approvingly, claiming that moderate profit is only acceptable insofar as it is sought for support of “one’s family or even to help the needy,” but the seeking of money for money, so supposedly characteristic of business activity, “absolutely speaking, is wicked” (2002, Summa Theologica II, Question 77, Fourth Article, p. 147). Furthermore, both Aquinas and Aristotle saw gaining interest on loans as unnatural (for Aristotle see 1941, Politics 1257a35–1257b7; for Aquinas approvingly citing Aristotle on the unnaturalness of the “acquisition of money by taking interest,” see Aquinas, ibid., p. 150). Dante Alighieri thought of usury as akin to unnatural homosexual activity, given the barrenness of money itself and of non-procreative sex. (See 2013, Dante’s Inferno, rings 6 and 7, but I borrow this insight from Noonan (2005, p. 212). Noonan outlines the history of the teaching on usury by Church officials and moralists—and the development of the teaching toward one that was less hostile to taking interest on loans—due primarily to the fact that interest on loans became quite economically useful (ibid., chaps. 18–19, passim).) Of course loaning money with interest does not exhaust the whole of capitalistic activity, but the banking and finance sectors of capitalist economies and their loaning practices surely account for a good deal of it. And the charging of interest, perhaps even more so than mere trade and the buying and selling of goods, seems to embody the notion of seeking money for its own sake. The suspicion of such a supposedly greedy motive is one that even post-Enlightenment, modern people cannot seem to shake. Again, see Noonan (ibid., p. 142) for a discussion of twentieth century concerns about usury from figures as diverse as Peter Maurin, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Pope John Paul II. These complaints have culminated recently in the United Nations’ Millennium Declaration, which included debt forgiveness for third-world nations suffering under massive interest-heavy loans as a sort of moral ideal. See the “United Nations Millennium Declaration” (Section III, no. 15).
See, in particular, Brooks (2008, chap. 5 passim). Brooks, in an interesting discussion of whether money buys happiness, claims that even business people ultimately seek meaning in their careers and they value monetary remuneration primarily because it signals to them and to others that they have created value and that they are successful at what they do. This suggests that the money itself is just a means to that end—not an end in itself.
Another close contender that mirrors McPherson’s approach in many ways can be found in a publication from the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, “The Vocation of the Business Leader.” There are many insights to appreciate in this document, but I cannot endorse it tout court. Though the document’s emphasis is on moral guidelines for business vocations, it relies on a series of questionable items, including a remarkable lack of empirical support for various statements regarding the effects of phenomena such as globalization (§18), generalized critiques of speculators in markets (§40), a rejection of the power of the Invisible Hand (though unnamed as such) to satisfy material needs (§4), and support for the morally dubious practice of fair trade (§41). Moreover, the document as a whole demonstrates a view of the economy that depends on direct causal chains between the actions of agents in market and effects felt by others. But, as Hayek taught us (1945) and as advocates of socialism now agree (Burczak 2006), economies are far more complicated than that; they do not consist of simple causal mechanisms for achieving desirable ends—otherwise we could direct them at will successfully. The document also vacillates between emphasizing that the primary aim of a business vocation (and work in general) is “the best use of [human] intelligence and freedom” (§47) and also, at the same time that the business vocation (and work in general) is intended first and foremost to create goods and services to satisfy genuine human material needs (§46). These are not mutually exclusive aims—but these two points of emphasis are reconcilable, theoretically, as the primary aim of business only if they are defined in terms of one another. That could be question-begging, at least on its face, but that is not my concern. Rather, the two combined, though in some ways a lovely vision, may not, in fact, be so easily realizable in practice, resulting in what could only be viewed as a series of tragic choices for those who cannot reconcile them well. In fairness, the document emphasizes the role that prudence plays in making wise judgments for “discerning the best courses of action” and actualizing realistic courses of action (§76–77), but I am still concerned the document demands too much of vocations. The document also warns against work that creates frivolous goods and services that do not satisfy human needs in an objectively good way (§42), but this is a categorization that cannot be made a priori. Entrepreneurial activity—which the document also praises for its use of human ingenuity (§5, §9, §40, §50)—is a reflection of the attempt by some to try to discover new and better things constantly. We simply do not know what those things are prior to human experience and for all times and all circumstances, especially in a dynamic world. Some of those things turn out to be superfluous and may lead to consumerism on the part of some persons (attacked in §42); some may turn out to be life-saving or life-improving for others. (Consider marijuana: for some, the use of it is simply a bad habit; for others, especially those who suffer from awful diseases, it may be the only thing that helps them stave off nausea so that they can eat and hope to get healthy. Those of us who have known people battling cancer or HIV are aware of this.) Trial and error teaches us the difference (which is often relative to the individual), but how does anyone know that difference well enough to strike that balance in the way the document presumably recommends? Additionally, a great deal of that creative entrepreneurial activity brings with it destructive gales as well (see Schumpeter 1942), gales that can have a real (and negative) impact on certain industries and workers. How is the business person to deal with that fact and weigh the possible consequences of acting entrepreneurially, especially since in the course of providing benefits to some, others may falter? It seems the promotion of the good of others, so vigorously defended in this document, ends up requiring that business persons engage in the near impossible “consequential” reasoning the document claims to reject (§11), which may be a far more difficult task than simply trying to follow one’s vocation in the way I have outlined (where the good of others is respected, but not always actively promoted). In any event, I thank the anonymous reviewer for calling this document to my attention.
An anonymous reviewer rightly points out that this is not the only understanding of the “common good.” Admittedly, other understandings of the common good may be more amenable to the account of vocations I defend in this paper. For current purposes, I utilize McPherson’s representation as my target, but for a sample of diverse treatments of the common good, especially from Catholic perspectives (which is dominant in the literature), see Novak (1989), Hollenbach (2002), Kennedy (2006), and Riordan (2008). For a non-Catholic perspective, see Epstein (1998).
McPherson realizes that this is not possible for all persons in all roles in business, but still asks that such persons still live out their callings to promote the good life for the stakeholders (2013, p. 293).
Here McPherson quotes Robert Bellah from Robert Bellah et al. (1996/1985), p. 66.
McPherson does not deny difficult dilemmas do exist, especially for employees of employers who charge them to act primarily in the interest of the business over the well-being of others, but his theoretical point, about what one’s good really entails, remains (McPherson 2013, p. 293).
I will not pursue this here in much detail, except to note that it is possible that the Platonist approach to vocations that I have defended here—wherein love for the Good could lead one down a path that does not promote the good of others actively—is perhaps compatible with a reading of Aristotle that ultimately sees the achievement of eudaimonia not in social/political activity, but in self-sufficient intellectual, contemplative activity. That reading, I believe, is the more accurate way to understand Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics. For a defense of that position, see Nagel (1972). For the opposite conclusion (which I do not find very convincing), see Ackrill (1980). McPherson, for his part, does acknowledge this debate (2013, n2), but lands on the side of Ackrill.
Consider Adams’s responses (2002) to criticism of Finite and Infinite Goods in a symposium dedicated to the book in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, including from persons such as Martha Nussbaum and Susan Wolf. Many criticisms centered on the concerns that Adams’s account of vocations could lead to lopsided lives of singular devotion to particular goods (while ignoring other goods that would round out a person’s life). Despite criticisms (many of them from an Aristotelian bent), Adams insists that one may have a vocation that would mean that one fails to promote other goods and that one’s life would appear somewhat disjointed. But this is precisely the point of vocations: the lives of persons who answer their calling need not be entirely understandable to others who have not received that calling. Thus, his account of vocations can make room for Wolf’s maligned “moral saints” (Wolf 1997, 2002) or Nussbaum’s maligned Gandhi-types (whose cultivation of some outstanding capabilities could result in moral shortcomings in other areas of life; Nussbaum 2002).
The possibility of legitimate vocations, such as desert asceticism, points to just one difference with a Weberian view of vocations in a capitalistic society (Weber 2002). The account I defend seeks to broaden vocations to include any type of life, work, or project that reflects a person’s individual call to participate in the Good. Weber’s emphasis, especially with regard to work in business, is to understand how to relate one’s spiritual commitments to worldly accomplishments. But a desert ascetic shows that one could have spiritual commitments that need not translate into worldly (financial) accomplishments—for example, non-profit work, volunteer work, homemaking, etc. I thank an anonymous reviewer for seeking clarification on the differences between the account I defend and Weber’s.
McPherson, in fact, does offer a dilemma wherein an employee finds that “his or her sense of general calling to pursue the good life for oneself and for others does not line up with the values of the company, e.g., when a company regards making a profit as its overriding concern and thus tends to disregard various stakeholders” (2013, p. 293). He continues, “One possible path that a person could take in such cases where one’s company has divergent values is to seek to live out one’s general calling in spite of the divergence….There are of course very difficult cases in which one’s social and economic condition makes it hard, if not impossible, to find a job that is supportive of one’s sense of calling….What matters most in such cases, I believe, is one’s intention and effort to live out his or her general calling as best as he or she can” (ibid., pp. 293-4). I agree with the last statement. In this particular case, if the employee in question does in fact have a calling to promote the good life for herself and for others, then McPherson’s suggestions for resolving the dilemma make perfect sense, and he acknowledges difficulties faced in living out that calling. But what of the person who does not have a vocation to promote, actively, the good life for others? Does my account rely on relativism? First, this particular example of a dilemma is biased in favor of directly promoting the well-being of stakeholders as part of one’s calling because it assumes the appropriateness of stakeholder theories of management. But favoring stakeholder theory, as opposed, for example, to some version of shareholder theory, is questionable. (See, for example, Boatright 1994; Macey 1999, 2001; Sollars 2002). My concern is to address dilemmas that provide the choice to forgo profits to promote the good of others. However, one is not always called to promote the good of others directly, although one is never called to harm others illicitly. McPherson’s dilemma, then, is only a dilemma because of the very way he defines vocations, and I believe he addresses it appropriately in his framework. Second, and related to the above, my account acknowledges that a person might not have a vocation to promote the well-being of stakeholders actively, but it does not condone unduly harming stakeholders or other goods. Within the rules of the game of the marketplace, however, one expects that decisions will be made that have “harmful” effects on others (e.g., one’s competitor offers better services than one’s own company, which eventually leads to one’s company going out of business). Still, such harms are not illicit attacks on other goods; those outcomes are understood as possibilities by people who consent to enter into competitive fields. Consequently, one could not have a legitimate vocation in that particular business if the actions taken are outside those bounds of acceptable activities that may, coincidentally, cause harm to others. (The latter point is, of course, contentious to those who would seek an economic order devoid of such “ruthless” competition, but until such an alternative conception is brought to life outside hypothetical musings, it would be outside the scope of this paper to try to address it fully.) Third, there is nothing relative about whether or not one ought to accept one’s vocation. What that vocation demands of an individual will, of course, be relative to the individual’s particular calling, but in this broad sense of ethics I have advocated in this paper, it would be objectively morally wrong to ignore one’s vocation.
I am almost certain others must have made these types of claims regarding the “creation mandate”; I do not claim originality with them.
I wish to emphasize that I want to make room for those business persons who wish to utilize business activity to improve the welfare of others. I think, for example, not just of those engaged in corporate philanthropy or sustainability efforts, but also the many people who engage in (or would like to engage in) social entrepreneurship. Such persons often seek to use their business acumen to address, actively, social problems by creating goods and services that relieve human suffering directly. Now, because the well-being of others is an intrinsically good thing within this framework defined by a love for the Good, even those who do not experience a call to promote the well-being of others should, in fact, appreciate such efforts by others. However, the question at hand is not whether such outcomes are valuable, but whether the activity that promotes such well-being is the only type of licit moral activity. On the account I have offered here, the answer is no. Business activity, even that activity that is regulated by the profit-motive, can also be morally good.
This is not limited to the literature focusing on virtue ethics or vocations, of course. Consider Nien-hê Hsieh’s attempt to appropriate a Rawlsian framework into business ethics: “…a thorough-going Rawlsian approach to the normative study of business organizations may call for putting capitalism, at least as we know it, out of business altogether” (2009, p. 111). The stakes, it would appear, are quite high for getting the right paradigm for understanding the ethics of business.
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Wolcott, G. The New (Old) Case for the Ethics of Business. J Bus Ethics 132, 127–146 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2314-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2314-5