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Business Ethics Education and the Pragmatic Pursuit of the Good pp 37–55Cite as

Contemporary Foundations for Business Ethics Education

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Part of the book series: Advances in Business Ethics Research ((ABER,volume 6))

Abstract

Business ethics education was founded on conflicting assumptions regarding the role of business in society. On one hand, business was presumed to play a positive role morally and socially in generating societal wealth and distributing that wealth broadly, with particular reward to individuals according to the merit of their own good work in a situation of fair opportunity. On the other hand, business was seen to have a negative effect morally and socially by encouraging narrow self-interest and allowing wealthy industrialists too large a role in bending government to their will and benefit. These conflicting philosophical and social foundations of business ethics education paralleled conflicting traditions and assumptions in Western moral philosophy regarding the moral value of self-interested economic activity, whether it tended toward ultimate social benefit or contradicted the traditions of socially beneficial virtues and individual impartiality in doing the right and good in accord with duty. In this chapter, I propose a reorientation of business ethics education to align with self-interest rightly understood in a competitive free market economy. This proposal rests on historical and philosophical evidence that the moral obligations of business are grounded in self-interest with a social purpose.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This section is excerpted and adapted from this author’s “The Pragmatic Pursuit of the Good,” previously published in Democracy & Education: Collected Perspectives, Viktoria Byczkiewicz (Ed.), pp. 35–82. Los Angeles, CA: Trébol Press, 2014. Used with permission of the publisher.

  2. 2.

    This section is adapted, with significant revisionos, from this author’s essay, “Social Responsibility as a Matter of Justice: A Proposal to Expand Business Ethics Education,” in M. C. Coutinho de Arruda and R. Rok (Eds.), Understanding Ethics and Responsibilities in a Globalizing World, pp. 229–246 (Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2016).

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  1. Metropolitan State University, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA

    Francis J. Schweigert

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Schweigert, F.J. (2016). Contemporary Foundations for Business Ethics Education. In: Business Ethics Education and the Pragmatic Pursuit of the Good. Advances in Business Ethics Research, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33402-8_3

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