Abstract
The work of Donaldson and Dunfee (Ties That Bind: A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics, 1999) offers an example of how normative and descriptive approaches to business ethics can be integrated. We suggest that to be truly integrative, however, the theory should explore the processes by which such integration happens. We, therefore, sketch some preliminary thoughts that extend Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) by beginning to consider the process by which microsocial contracts are connected to hypernorms.
Originally published in: J Bus Ethics, 88, 685–692 © Springer, 2009
Reprint by Springer, DOI 10.1007/s10551-009-0333-4
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Notes
- 1.
Though this essay is in honor of Tom Dunfee, Tom Donaldson is one of our important conversational partners as well, and we thank him for his helpful feedback on an earlier draft.
- 2.
The challenge of connecting microsocial contracts with hypernorms bears some similarity to the issue of resolving moral disagreement among actors that lack common normative ground – a common problem. Although discourse ethics (e.g., Habermas 1990) approaches this challenge mainly as a problem of moral justification, others (e.g., Painter-Moreland 2008; Stansbury 2009) have begun to focus on the application of discourse ethics to organizational contexts.
- 3.
See Donaldson and Preston (1995) for a fuller discussion of these distinctions.
- 4.
If Donaldson and Dunfee had simply left out “economic” and made sense of microsocial contracts in terms of “communities”, then we would see “business” as a normal part of “community”. The problem is that there would not appear to be a special role of “economic ethics” here. That doesn’t seem to be a problem unless one is worried about keeping a special role for “business ethics” within either philosophical or management theory.
- 5.
Language shapes how we see the world. Words shape our actions. Philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Dewey, Quine, Putnam, Davidson, and Rorty have outlined a view of language that relies on understanding the multiple tasks of language, rather than searching for a particular meaning or set of meanings. Wittgenstein’s ([1952]2001) idea of “don’t ask for the meaning, ask for the use” reminds us that language shapes what we do, how we interact with each other, and how we create meaning for each other. Quine’s (1960) view of the indeterminacy of translation illustrates how interpretation and conversation are always an issue. If part of the normative task of scholars is to show us how to live better, then the Duhem metaphor of rebuilding the ship while it remains afloat shows the connection between the micro real world (the ship) and making it better (the rebuilding). Putnam (2002) asks us to see such an entanglement of facts and values (and for Dewey ([1927]1954), means and ends) as a normal part of the way that language works, even in science (Kuhn 1962). Rorty (1981) reminds us that the whole edifice of the “meaning” of the words simply takes the Greek ocular metaphor far past where it is useful. Our “web of belief” (c.f. Quine 1951) is always revisable, and Davidson (2001) reminds us of language’s constitutive role in the making of meaning.
- 6.
This highlights a related problem: what to make of inconsistency of actions? Merck is a saint for donating Mectizan (in perhaps the most famous case in business ethics), but then they are proclaimed sinners for their behavior in the Vioxx case. The recognition of both organizational complexity and the connection between microsocial norms and generalized hypernorms might be useful in making sense of these kinds of actions.
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Freeman, R.E., Harris, J.D. (2023). Creating Ties That Bind. In: Dmytriyev, S.D., Freeman, R.E. (eds) R. Edward Freeman’s Selected Works on Stakeholder Theory and Business Ethics. Issues in Business Ethics(), vol 53. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04564-6_34
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