The Morality of Management Studies

Abstract

Hegel’s sittliche corporation is a non-self-interested altruistic corporation that has virtually no interest beyond ethical life. In order to achieve this, corporate management would need to recognise this while management studies simultaneously would need to refocus attention on researching and teaching it because this is what defines corporations, corporate management, and management studies itself. In other words, corporations are dedicated to Sittlichkeit when they engage in socio-economic activities. This means that management studies would need to teach the role of corporations not merely as businesses but predominantly as moral institutions. A very different picture of corporations emerges once examined from the standpoint of Hegelian ethics. Hegel’s ethical-normative picture of moral corporations (thesis) represents a truly Hegelian contradiction to what is perceived to be the norm for business corporations (anti-thesis). This is the non-conceptualised moral problem of management ethics, management studies, corporate governance, and, above all, Managerialism. Such contradictions are not even visualised in the standard academic literature of management studies and never taught in the prime institution that trains managers who then manage corporations: the business school.¹⁹⁴