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Are Business Managers “Professionals”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Thomas Donaldson
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Abstract:

This paper examines two issues about professionalism and business that appear at first blush to be entirely separate. The first is the question of who counts as a “professional,” and whether, in particular, business people are “professionals.” The second issue is how acknowledged professionals that regularly interact with business, such as accountants, lawyers, and physicians, can find the moral free space necessary to maintain professional integrity in the face of financial pressures. Conflicts of interest for professionals working in corporations recur with disturbing regularity, and often have serious consequences. In the end I will show how both issues share a common solution. The solution involves understanding the normative function of the manager in the modern corporation, a function, I will argue, made more conspicuous by work over the last two decades done in the areas of stakeholder theory, corporate social performance (CSP), and social contract theory. The remainder of the paper is devoted to articulating these two problems and clarifying their common solution.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 83 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000

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