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Virtue Ethics and Contractarianism: Towards a Reconciliation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Janet McCracken  and
Bill Shaw
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Abstract:

The notion of rationality underlying contemporary business and business ethics, or the “rational actor” model of moral decision-making in business, links a roughly utilitarian notion of the good to a contractarian notion of human agency. The “C-U model” provides inadequate means for explaining how business people do or ought to behave or think about their behavior, because the notion of rationality upon which it relies is far too narrow a picture of business people’s character. An alternative to these assumptions and to the Contractarian-Utilitarian model, is offered in an ethics of virtue. Despite the traditional apparent conflict between these divergent models, the C-U model, if founded in a notion of rationality consistent with Aristotelian ethics, is recognized as a useful instrument in business ethics and business decision-making. Hence, a reconciliation is effected between the C-U model and virtue ethics.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 297 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1995

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References

Notes

1. See Tom Donaldson, The Ethics of International Business (1986); Amitai Etzioni, The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics; David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (1986); John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971); Graham T. Allison, “Conceptual Models and the Urban Missile Crisis” The American Political Science Review 689–690 (Sept. 1969); Tom Donaldson and Tom Dunfee, “Towards a Unified Conception of Business Ethics: Integrative Social Contract Theory,” Academy of Management Review 19 (2) (forthcoming 1994); Tom Donaldson and Tom Dunfee, “Integrative Social Contract Theory,” Economics and Philosophy (forthcoming 1994); Manuel Velasquez, “International Business, Morality, and the Common Good,” 2 Business Ethics Quarterly 27–39 (1992); Michael B. Metzger and Charles R. Schwenk, “Decision-Making Models, Devil’s Advocacy, and the Control of Corporate Crime,” 28 American Business Law Journal, vol. 28, 337–63 (1990).

2. David Gauthier, Morals By Agreement (1986); see also his “Thomas Hobbes: Moral Theorist,” The Journal of Philosophy 547–59 (1979) where he takes the phrase from Rawls (cf. above). Rawls uses the phrase more sparingly than Gauthier.

3. See Robert C. Solomon, Ethics and Excellence (1992) for a seminal discussion of a business ethics of virtue.

4. For instance, David Gauthier, supra note 2; Manuel Velasquez, “International Business, Morality, and the Common Good,” 2 Business Ethics Quarterly 27–39 (1992).

5. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971).

6. This is one of Kant’s own examples of non-dutiful intention. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 10 (James Ellington trans., 1981).

7. Republic 351d-e

8. Amitai Etzioni, The Moral Dimension: Towards a New Economics (1989); Norman Bowie, “Challenging the Egoist Paradigm,” 1 Business Ethics Quarterly 1–23 (1990).

9. Michael Lewis, Liar’s Poker (1989).

10. See Nicomachean Ethics, 1097b1-7; 1097b21-1099a30; 1101b10-1102a4; and 1112b12-15.

11. “[I]t is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.” Nicomachean Ethics, 1094b11-30.

12. See, e.g., Freeman, “Reason and Agreement in Social Contract Views,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 19, #2, Spring 1990. Freeman distinguishes “interest based” contract views, among which are Hobbes’ and Gauthier’s, from “right-based” views which include Rawls’. The first kind is obviously utilitarian; the second is more covertly so in that people are attributed moral and political desires which they simply maximize in the contract.

13. See John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, (George Sher ed. 1979), Ch. II, pp. 7–8, where Mill describes and responds to what is commonly called the “doctrine of swine objection” to Utilitarianism. The move Mill makes here—the invention of the quality distinction—differs little from Rawls’ distinction between “basic goods” and utilitarianism. In all these cases, a “noble,” i.e., more intuitively appealing, set of goods is proposed to “trump” pure hedonistic preferences.

14. See Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” from part III, ch. 6 of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, translated by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills in their From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946).

15. See, e.g., John Tsalikis and Osita Wachukwu, “A Comparison of Nigerian to American Views of Bribery and Extortion in International Commerce” Journal of Business Ethics 10: 85–98, (1991).

16. In fairness to social contract scholars, problems of great complexity have been, and are being, confronted. Whether the proposed resolution of these problems is a satisfactory one is not a matter that this paper will evaluate. See, e.g., Tom Dunfee, “Business Ethics and Extant Social Contracts,” 1 Business Ethics Quarterly 23–52 (1991); Tom Donaldson and Tom Dunfee, “Towards a Unified Conception of Business Ethics: Integrative Social Contract Theory” (1992). Working Paper Series Ref. # 92-8-167, Department of Legal Studies, University of Pennsylvania.

17. Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Ch. 5 & 6, 1105b 20-1107a 25

18. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue 98 (2nd ed. 1984).

19. See supra n. 3.

20. Id.

21. See supra n. 10 at Book VI, Ch. 5, 1140a 25-1140b 30.

22. See supra n. 10 at Book X, Ch. 6, 1176b 28–32.

23. See supra n. 10 at Book I, Ch. 7, 1097a 15-1098a 20.