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On Getting to the Future First

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Joanne B. Ciulla
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Abstract:

This paper will discuss the uncertainty of job tenure, inequality of wages in American business, and the challenges for a creating a new social and moral compact between employer and employee. I begin by arguing that business ethics scholars missed some of the disturbing trends in management thinking because they often focused on current problems in business rather than questioning some of the basic assumptions about the way businesses are managed. As Rochefoucauld observed (albeit in a different context) we were overtaken by the evils of the present and I would argue, this was because we didn’t pay attention to the past. Business ethics research, like management research, is often ahistorical and hence tells only part of the story. If we don’t know how we got to a certain problem, it’s really difficult to see where the present problem and our solutions to it might lead us.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2000 , pp. 53 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000

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References

1 Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits,” New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970, pp. 32–33.

2 See “Business Ethics and Work: Questions for the Twenty-First Century,” In The Companion to Business Ethics, ed. W. Frederick and E. Petry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999).

3 One exception to this was the work of R. Edward Freeman and Bill Evens and later Freedman and Dan Gilbert on stakeholder theory. The ideas and language of their theory entered the business lexicon. Like all good theories it was simple, elegant, and it helped businesspeople sort out their responsibilities to others.

4 New York Times Special Report: Downsizing in America (New York: Times Books, 1996), pp. 19–21.

5 Michael Hammer and James Champy, Beyond Reengineering (New York: Harper Business, 1993), p. 114.

6 Albert J. Dunlap, Mean Business (New York: Times Business Books, 1996), p. ix.

7 Ibid., p. 177.

8 Adam Bryant, “Flying High on the Option Express,” The New York Times Business Section, April 5, 1998, p. 1.

9 “Overworked and Overpaid: the American Manager,” The Economist, January 30, 1999, p. 55.

10 Bryant, “Flying High on the Option Express, p. 1.

11 Graef Crystal, In Search of Excess: The Overcompensation of American Executives (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1991).

12 See James K. Galbraith, Created Unequal (New York: Free Press, 1998).

13 David Gordon, Fat and Mean (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 20.

14 Galbraith, Created Unequal.

15 Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society (New York: The Free Press, 1996).

16 Robert C. Solomon, “Ethical Leadership, Emotions and Trust: Beyond Charisma,” in Ethics, The Heart of Leadership, ed. Joanne B. Ciulla (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998), p. 8.

17 Ibid., p. 5.

18 Downsizing in America, p. 45.

19 Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), p. 31.

20 Immanuel Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie From Altruistic Motives,” in Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, trans. Lewis White Beck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).