Managers have the primary role responsibility to protect and promote the economic viability of their organizations. Utilizing a formula that demonstrates the inherently unstable nature of economic systems, I argue that managers are sometimes morally required to make adjustments that result in harming people who work for them in order to reestablish the equilibrium necessary to remain viable. The question of who is going to be harmed and how this harm is morally justified is the focal point of this paper. I argue that utilizing traditional methods associated with our common morality cannot solve the issue of who is going to be harmed, and that the traditional methods for reestablishing equilibrium promote a distribution of harm that cannot be justified from a rationally defensible moral point of view. Utilizing the constraint of impartiality and the concept of the health of the organization, I argue that an equal distribution of harm among everyone affected by the decision is the only one that is rationally defensible.

This paper carries forward the conceptual clarification of normative theories of business ethics ably begun by Hasnas in the January 1998 issue of BEQ. This paper proposes a normatively neutral framework for discussing and assessing such normative theories. Every normative theory needs to address these seven issues: it needs to specify a moral principle that identifies (1) recommended values and (2) the grounds for accepting those values. It also must specify (3) a decision principle that business people who accept the theory can use. It must determine (4) who the normative theory applies to and (5) whose interests need to be considered. It must also outline (6) in what contexts it applies, and (7) what legal and regulatory structures it assumes. Once clarified, this paper applies the framework to the normative versions of stockholder theory, stakeholder theory, and ISCT. It is concluded that ISCT is the most promising normative theory currently under discussion, but that there are some major issues that ISCT has not dealt with yet.

One so-called paradox of blackmail concerns the fact that “two legal whites together make a black.” That is, it is licit to threaten to reveal a person’s secret, and it is separately lawful to ask him for money; but when both are undertaken at once, together, this act is called blackmail and is prohibited. A second so-called paradox is that if the blackmailer initiates the act, this is seen by jurists as blackmail and illicit, while if the blackmailee (the person blackmailed) originates the contract, this is commonly interpreted as bribery and is not illicit.

But these are paradoxes only for legal theorists innocent of libertarian theory. The authors use that perspective to reject the claim that blackmail should be unlawful. If this act were legalized, then both paradoxes would disappear, precisely their contention.

Since the Enlightenment our attachment to the past has been greatly weakened, in some areas of social life it has almost ceased to exist. This characteristic of the modern mind is seen as an overreaction. The modern mind has lost the capacity to appreciate the positive contribution the maintenance of the past in the present achieves in social life, especially in the sphere of moral conduct.

In the field of organization theory, nowhere is the past as explicitly distrusted as in critical organization theory. The maintenance of the past in the present is seen as a potential carrier of oppressive and unjust social relationships. Perpetual critique is advocated as a means to uncover these oppressive and unjust relations and prevent any new undemocratic relations from becoming established.

I present an historical and cultural analysis of the modern attitude toward the past and develop a concept of moral tradition to analyze critical organization theory’s ethical assumptions and implications. In so doing, an effort is made to rectify the exaggerated confidence critical organization theory places in rationalism and individualism and to recognize the ineluctable role traditions play not only in organizational life, but also in the way we theorize about organizations.

In this paper I will help provide some suggestions for a “postmodern” business ethic. I will do this by criticizing some recent work done in the field, and then put forth some basic themes in postmodern thinking that might be applied to business ethics. I will here criticize both Green’s and Walton’s articles on the possibility of postmodern business ethics. I will criticize Green on the grounds that his characterization of the definitive elements of postmodern thought are not definitive of postmodern thought. I will criticize Walton on the grounds that his portrayal of postmodern philosophy as inherently nihilistic and relativistic is mistaken. Finally, I will try to provide a few minimal principles (or tendencies) of a postmodern business ethic. Ultimately, what postmodernism has to offer business is not rules, but questions that raise issues of responsibility.

We examine the writings of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman regarding their interpretation and use of the concept of self-interest. We argue that neither Smith nor Friedman considers self-interest to be synonymous with selfishness and thus devoid of ethical considerations. Rather, for both writers self-interest embodies an other-regarding aspect that requires individuals to moderate their actions when others are adversely affected. The overriding virtue for Smith in governing individual actions is justice; for Friedman it is non-coercion.

Role modeling is widely thought to be a principal vehicle for acquiring the virtues. Yet, little is known about role modeling as a process. This paper surveys the behavioral sciences for insights about how one person can find the actions of another person so inspirational that the person attempts to reproduce the behavior in question. In general, such inspiration occurs when an observer sees a model similar to herself, wrestling with a problem she is having, such that the model’s accomplishments are seen as attainable. When the behavior modeled is moral, additional complications arise, not the least of which is the contemporary skepticism about anyone held up as a hero. The paper concludes with some suggestions about how organizations can facilitate the development of the virtues through role modeling.

In this article I address the tension between evaluative surveillance and privacy against the backdrop of the current explosion of information technology. More specifically, and after a brief analysis of privacy rights, I argue that knowledge of the different kinds of surveillance used at any given company should be made explicit to the employees. Moreover, there will be certain kinds of evaluative monitoring that violate privacy rights and should not be used in most cases.

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.

This paper is a response to a recent colloquy among Professors David Messick, Donna Wold, and Edwin Harman. I defend Messick’s naturalist methodology, which suggests that people inherently categorize others and act altruistically toward certain people in a given person’s in-group. This paper suggests that an anthropological reason for this grouping tendency is a limited human neural ability to process large numbers of relationships. But because human beings also have the ability to modify, to some extent, their nature, corporate law can organize small mediating institutions within large corporations in order to take ethical advantage of this grouping tendency. Within a corporate law taking seriously a mediating institution’s formulation of business communities, a virtue ethics approach can be integrated with a naturalist approach in a way that fosters ethical business behavior while mitigating the dangers of ingrouping tendencies.

Professor Fort (1999) imagines a dispute over the moral importance of certain facts, with David Messick and himself on one side and Donna Wood and me on the other. He has identified an important issue—ethical naturalism—but that issue is not a point of disagreement between Messick and me.

Fort has some interesting ideas about how Messick’s views might help in creating organizations that are moral communities. Beyond noting that those ideas constitute the most important part of his essay and merit consideration, I shall not comment on them.

Moral philosophers who are naturalists—I am one—hold that there is no bright line between ought-statements and is-statements and that empirical facts have implications for moral facts. So, for example, that a certain practice helps a community survive is a strong sort of reason for claiming that it is a morally good practice, other things being equal. But most naturalists do not claim that any practice that has arisen by virtue of evolution is ipso facto a morally good practice even if it does serve some purpose. Nor does ethical naturalism have a characteristic view of the extent to which our evolutionary history, as opposed to our rational deliberation, determines what we do.