Foreword

Summary

Mollie Painter-Morland has written an important book. It charts a new direction for business ethics as a discipline along a number of dimensions. First of all the book introduces more of the continental and post-modern traditions to the largely Anglo-American conversation about business ethics. Second, this is accomplished by paying attention to the practical problems of ethics in modern organizational life. Third, by merging theory and practice, Painter-Morland offers us real wisdom about how to think about ethics in corporate life.

Professor Painter-Morland begins by arguing that most of our thinking about ethics has become disconnected with the practical problems that we face in our lives. And nowhere is this clearer than in business, where the scandal of the day seems to drive the analysis of most philosophers, who simply conclude that people need to be more ethical. Typically they mean by this phrase, “become more in tune with the tenets of Anglo-American ethical theory.” She rightly claims that “business ethics is supposed to be as much about business as ethics,” but shows us how the kinds of narratives that are present in the current business ethics conversation can never really be about business. And she eschews the idea that ethics can be built into business practice through the traditional means of ethics officers and codes of principles and behaviors.

What Painter-Morland offers in the place of this tradition is a view of business ethics that does not make the theory–practice distinction, but rather is grounded in practice.