Abstract
Is good morality the natural outcome of profitable business practices? The thesis explored here is one version of the recent literature on corporate culture, typified by the bestselling In Search of Excellence — that the corporation that creates a strong culture, one that best serves the customer, the product, and the employee, must also be profitable. The thesis turns out to have an historical parallel in Plato's Republic (subtitled, I suppose, “In Search of Justice”). Parallel “virtues” can be worked out for state and corporation. In the end, profitability turns out not to be a necessary consequence of excellence, just as Plato's “Ideal” state turned out to be mortal.
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Lisa H. Newton is Director of Program in Applied Ethics at Fairfield University and a Professor of Philosophy. She has published numerous articles in professional texts and journals.
An earlier version of this paper was read at the Fifth National Conference on Business Ethics (October 1983) at Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts.
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Newton, L.H. The internal morality of the corporation. J Bus Ethics 5, 249–258 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383633
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00383633