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Pledging Integrity: Oaths as Forms of Business Ethics Management

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Abstract

The global financial crisis has led to a surprising interest in professional oaths in business. Examples are the MBA Oath (Harvard Business School), the Economist’s Oath (George DeMartino) and the Dutch Banker’s Oath, which senior executives in the financial services industry in the Netherlands have been obliged to swear since 2010. This paper is among the first to consider oaths from the perspective of business ethics. A framework is presented for analysing oaths in terms of their form, their content and the specific contribution they make to business ethics management: oaths may foster professionalism, facilitate moral deliberation and enhance compliance. This framework is used to analyse and evaluate the MBA Oath, the Economist’s Oath and the Banker’s Oath as well as various other similar initiatives.

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Acknowledgments

This paper was inspired by discussions with the participants of a conference on Oaths and Codes in Economics and Business that took place at the University of Groningen in May 2012. Special thanks are due to the keynote speakers, John Boatright and George DeMartino. Selected papers of this conference were published in a special issue of Review of Social Economy (de Bruin and Dolfsma 2013). I have learned a lot from discussions with Wouter van Aggelen, Wilfred Dolfsma and Henk-Jan Nanninga, as well as with the participants of the Duty of Care in Finance project at Balliol College (Oxford). I have also greatly benefited from the constructive comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper received from anonymous referees and from Muel Kaptein, the responsible section editor.

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  1. Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Groningen, Nettelbosje 2, 9747 AE, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Boudewijn de Bruin

  2. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, Oude Boteringestraat 52, 9712 GL, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Boudewijn de Bruin

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Correspondence to Boudewijn de Bruin.

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de Bruin, B. Pledging Integrity: Oaths as Forms of Business Ethics Management. J Bus Ethics 136, 23–42 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-014-2504-1

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