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An Aristotelian Approach to Business Ethics Corporate Roles, Personal Virtues: An Aristotelean Approach to Business Ethics Author(s): Robert C. Solomon Source: Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jul., 1992), pp. 317-339 Published by: Philosophy Documentation Center Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3857536 . Accessed: 10/01/2015 14:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Philosophy Documentation Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Business Ethics Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.62.12.156 on Sat, 10 Jan 2015 14:57:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CORPORATEROLES, PERSONAL VIRTUES: AN ARISTOTELEANAPPROACH TO BUSINESSETHICS RobertC. Solomon Eachof us is ultimatelylonely, In the end,it's up to eachof us andeach of us alone to figureout who we areand who we arenot, andto act moreor less consistentlyon thoseconclusions. TomPetets, "The Ethical Debate" Ethics Digest Dec 1989,p. 2. 5,5 tE are gratefullypast thatembarrassing period when the very title of t t a lectureon "businessethics" invited- no, required-those malapert responses,"sounds like an oxymoron"or "mustbe a very short lecture." Today,business ethics is well-establishednot only in the standardcurricu- lum in philosophyin most departmentsbut, moreimpressively, it is recom- mended or requiredin most of the leading business schools in North America,and it is even catchingon in Europe(one of the too rareinstances of intellectualcommerce in thatdirection). Studies in businessethics have now reachedwhat Tom Donaldson has called '4thethird wave," beyond the hurried-togetherand overly-philosophicalintroductory textbooks and col- lectionsof too-obviousconcrete case studies,too seriousengagement in the businessworld. Conferencesfilled half-and-halfwith businessexecutives andacademics are common, and in-depth studies based on immersionin the corporateworld, e.g. RobertJackall's powerful Moral Mazes, havereplaced more simple-mindedand detachedglosses on "capitalism"and "socialre- sponsibility."Business ethics has moved beyond vulgar "business as poker" argumentsto an arenawhere serious ethical theory is no longerout-of-place but seriouslysought out andmuch in demand. The problemwith businessethics now is not vulgarignorance but a far more sophisticatedconfusion concerning exactly what the subjectis sup- posed to do and how (to employa much overworkedcontrast) the theory appliesto the practiceof business.Indeed, a largepart of the problemis that it is by no meansclear what a theoryin businessethics is supposedto look like or whetherthere is, as such,any suchtheoretical enterprise. It has been standardpractice in many businessethics coursesand whethercause or effect most standardtextbooks, to begin with a surveyof ethicaltheory. This means,inevitably, a briefsummary of Kantand deontological ethics, a brief surveyof utilitarianismwith a note or two aboutJohn Stuart Mill and a distinctionor two betweenact and rule, pleasureversus preference utili- tarianismand some replayof the much-rehearsedcontest between the two g31992.Business Ethics Quarterly,Volume 2, Issue 3. ISSN 1052-150X. 0317-0339. This content downloaded from 129.62.12.156 on Sat, 10 Jan 2015 14:57:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions QUARTERLY 318 BUSINESSETHICS the businesscontext, libertarianism or some formof sortsof theories Given natural is often includedas a thirdcontender. "Justice'9 is a contractualism rightsis an appro- introductorysection, and John Locke on naturalproperty But is this the theoryof businessethics? Not only is the priateinclusion too. mes- concretebusiness situations in question-and then the applicationto are a utilitar- studentsis too often an unabashedrelativism (*'if you sageto but it is not even you'll do this, if you're a Kantiansyou'll do that') - ian, about business ethics. there iS7 then, anythingdistinctive clearwhether be. Indeed, just ethics, or ratherethical theory, whatever that may Thereis advice of Robert oneis almosttempted to retreatto the tongue in cheek of Avis andauthor of Up the Organization,that if a Townsend,former CEO Com- corporatecode of ethics, it shouldtack up the Ten companyneeds a being, And so with its success assured,at least for the time mandments. challenge,that businessethics faces both a crisis of theoryand a pragmatic theoryapplies is to countas a theoryin businessethics and how that is,what reallife ethically- andcan be usedby flesh-and-bloodmanagers in concreteX chargedsituations. is thatthe theoryof businessethics is reallythe Onepossibility? of course7 phi- of economics thatiss economicsas ethics, social-political philosophy the theoreticalques- losophywlth an emphasison economicjustice. Thus are those raisedby John Rawls in his Theoryof tionsof business ethics and and by his colleagueRobert Nozick in Anarchy,State Justicein 1971 repeatedly in 1974.The questionsof businessethics arethose posed Utopia and articlesand in a byAmartya Sen andJon Elsterin theirvarious books by John KennethGalbraith and LesterThurow in the moreinformal way terri- New YorkReview.This, of course,is rich andpromising pagesof the may take Kant, The theories are well developedand, though they tory. that are particular Locke,and Mill as theirprecursors, they raise concerns andask, with regardto the systemas a whole as well toeconomic concerns a just and practiceswithin it, whetherthe free-marketis indeed asparticular inegalitarianworld. fairmechanism for the distributionof goodsin a grossly well-developedand impressivelyformalized- in the Thetheories here are all of techniquesof game theory,social choice theory and sophisticated theory, in other other ac&outrementsthat make theories look like those professionaljournals words,adequate for publicationin the most serious andcondu&ive to a positivetenure decision. however,utterly inaccessible to the people for whom Suchtheorizing is cor- businessethics, our studentsand the executivesand we supposedlydo problem we talk to andwrite for. Here,especially, the pragmatic porations of propertyrights and comesback to hauntus; how do these grandtheories these visionarypronouncements on the current distributionmechanisms, thatthis is applyto peopleon thejob? Of course,one couldargue economy either.The hardpart the case in any science, and not just in the sciences teachingis takingvery sophisticatedtheoretical material of any academic making it '*wateringit down"for the hoi poloi, or more modestlyX and But quite apartfrom accessiblein not overly over-simplifiedterminology. This content downloaded from 129.62.12.156 on Sat, 10 Jan 2015 14:57:20 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CORPORATEROLES, PERSONAL VIRTUES 319 the offensivepatronizing presumed by this view especiallyin the so-called liberalarts, it is inadequatefor a moretheoretical reason as well. The grand theoriesof the philosophyof economics,however intriguing they maybe in their own right, are not adequatefor businessethics, and for manyof the same reasonsthat the classic theoriesof Kant,Locke and Mill are inade- quate. The theoriesthemselves are incomplete,oblivious to the concrete businesscontext and indifferent to the veryparticular roles thatpeople play in business.Their inaccessibility and/or inapplicability to the ordinaryman- agerin the office or on the shopfloor is not just a pragmaticproblem but a failureof theoryas well. At anyrate, that is whatI wouldlike to arguehere. Business ethicists (like some countryfolk singers)have been looking for theoryin the wrong place and, consequently,they have been finding and developingthe wrongtheories. TheAristotelean Approach to Business Ethics Economistsand economic theorists naturally tend to look at systemsand theoriesabout systems, while ethiciststend to look at individualbehavior, its motives and consequences.Neither of these approachesis suitablefor businessethics. One of the problemsin businessethics, accordingly,is the scope andfocus of the disciplinesand the properunit of studyand discourse. Muchof the work in businessethics coursesand seminarscenters around "casestudies," which almost always involve one or severalparticular people withinthe realmof a particularcorporation in a particularindustry facing some particularcrisis or dilemma.Individual ethical values are, of course, relevanthere, but they are rarely the focus of attention.Economics, of course,is essentialto the discussion since the realmof the corporationis, after all, a business,but the desire to show a profit is virtuallytaken for grantedwhile our attentionis drawnto other values. Insofaras business ethics theoriestend to be drawnfrom eitherindividualistic ethics or eco- nomicsthey remainremote from the case studymethod which often seems so inadequatewith regardto moregeneral implications and conclusionsin businessand why businessethics theorylags so far behindtheory in both ethics and economics. In this paper,I want to begin to develop a more appropriatefocus for businessethics theory, one thatcenters on the individ- ual withinthe corporation.Por reasonsthat shouldbe evidentto anyone who has hadthe standardPhilosophy 102 History
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