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Taming the Corporate Monster: An Aristotelian Approach to Corporate Virtue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Karl Schudt
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Abstract:

Corporations are often considered as moral agents. Traditional ethical systems are directed toward human beings—how could human rules be expected to apply to corporations? In this paper an alternative system of ethics is proposed, tailored specifically for the corporate entity. I use the method of Aristotle, in which the character traits (virtues) that are conducive to the goal of human activity, happiness, are derived. For corporations, the goal is taken to be the traditional capitalist one of sustainable profit, and corresponding corporate virtues are derived. I argue that corporate virtues such as Efficient Production, Resource Management, Correct Pricing, and Right Relationship will be beneficial to human beings. It is profitable to consider the interests of human beings, because the corporation will avoid a costly war of offense and retaliation. A corporate ethics is developed that protects humans and has motivating force not based on human nature, but rather profit.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 2000 , pp. 711 - 723
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000

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References

Notes

1 Among those who argue thus are Thomas Donaldson, Corporations and Morality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1982); Peter A. French, Corporate Ethics (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1995).

2 Albert Z. Carr, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?” Harvard Business Review, January-February 1968, pp. 143–50.

3 John Ladd, “Morality and the Ideal of Rationality,” in Business Ethics, ed. Milton Snoeyenbos, Robert Almeder, and James Humber (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1992), p. 54.

4 Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics,” in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Johnathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 1106a22–23.

5 Ibid., 1106b35–1107a3.

6 Ibid., 1103b24–25.

7 French, Corporate Ethics, p. 15.

8 William M. Evan and R. Edward Freeman, “A Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation: Kantian Capitalism,” in Ethical Theory and Business, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp and Norman Bowie (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988).

9 Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics,” IV.1, III.10, IV.8.

10 Manuel Velasquez, “Why Ethics Matters: A Defense of Ethics in Business Organizations,” Business Ethics Quarterly 6 (1996): 206.

11 Aristotle, “Nichomachean Ethics,” 1105b5–7.

12 Daryl Koehn, “A Role for Virtue Ethics in the Analysis of Business Practice,” Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 533–39; Steven M. Mintz, “Aristotelian Virtue and Business Ethics Education,” Journal of Business Ethics 15 (1996): 827–38; Robert C. Solomon, “Corporate Roles, Personal Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 2 (1992): 317–39; Mary Catherine Sommers, “Useful Friendships: A Foundation for Business Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics 16 (1997): 1453–58.

13 Robert C. Solomon, Ethics and Excellence: Cooperation and Integrity in Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 188.

14 French, Corporate Ethics, p. 35.

15 William K. Frankena, Ethics, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 10.

16 Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).

17 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, III.3.1.

18 French, Corporate Ethics, pp. 72–77. See also the cited works of Donaldson, and Evan and Freeman.

19 Immanuel Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” trans. and ed. James W. Ellington, in Kant’s Ethical Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), Ak 223.

20 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, in Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 5, n4.

21 Kant, “The Metaphysics of Morals,” Ak 226.

22 Ibid., Ak 221.

23 Immanuel Kant, “Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals,” trans. and ed. James W. Ellington, in Kant’s Ethical Philosophy (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), Ak 459.

24 Donaldson, Corporations and Morality, p. 36.

25 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, I.13.

26 I am indebted to Dr. Kevin Gibson and an anonymous reviewer for many helpful suggestions.