An Institutional Approach to Business Ethics

Abstract

Whoever inquires about the ethics of a business, actually inquires about the ethics of an organisation. Technically speaking, the issue at stake is the moral characteristics of a governance structure for the performance of economic transactions. This statement leads to the possibly surprising consequence that the moral concepts and actions of an entrepreneur, his management team, and his employees cannot be the only or primary object of Business Ethics. The moral values guiding an entrepreneur, management and performance may even in this case still be important elements of Business Ethics. Virtues are important to start and continue Business Ethics in an organisation, but they do not constitute the entity of Business Ethics as such. They represent personal virtues attributed to agents but not to the normativeness of organisations. With respect to their normativeness, organisations are a system of institutionalised constraints.¹ In other words, Business Ethics cannot be developed from a concept of action, rather from a concept of institution. Business Ethics constitutes no ‘virtue’ ethics, rather ‘institutions’ ethics.