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The History of the Philosophy of Management and Corporations

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Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics

Abstract

In this chapter, the history of philosophy of management is discussed with a focus on the search for legitimacy in the Judeo-Christian tradition. This is the basis for evaluating modern concepts of the economics of the philosophy of management and corporations. The chapter also presents the neoliberal paradigm of the philosophy of management and the attempt to search for another economy beyond rational individual utility maximization. Here we move toward business ethics, CSR, and corporate citizenship.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    According to the predominant interpretation of Adam Smith’s liberalism, Smith takes over Mandeville’s idea that private vices lead to public benefits. A famous remark by Adam Smith from the Wealth of Nations has been interpreted in this light: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages” as Smith says in the Wealth of Nations. However, it is important to think carefully about what self-interest really means in this context. It does not mean that Smith wants to base his whole philosophy on egoistic self-interest and private vices. Rather, these self-interests do not have to be selfish, but they can also be said to serve community in the sense that individual work is good for everybody. In this sense, the liberal concepts of utility maximization, individualism, and the market as moral regulator do not capture the concepts of sympathy and justice and equality of treatment that also play a role in Smith’s philosophy. Patricia Werhane’s reading examines the Wealth of Nations in the light of Smith’s moral psychology developed in Theory of Moral Sentiments. This reading emphasizes the importance of concepts such as sympathy, justice, and equality, as well as the impartial spectator and the importance of legal institutions in Smith’s moral and political philosophy in contrast to an emphasis of the atomism and egoism in Smith’s economic theory. This reading is very important although there remains a great tension between individual and community and that liberal theories do not really avoid this tension. Still, it opens the way toward conceiving the good life as a part of Smith’s moral theory.

  2. 2.

    For more about the concept of metaphor as reflective model, one can refer to Paul Ricœur’s discussion of the relation between models and metaphors in relation to the sciences. This relation also applies to the relation between economic models and managerial models that also can be considers as metaphors. The cognitive function of metaphor as “seeing as” is profoundly important.

  3. 3.

    Samuelson defines economics as “the study of how men and society choose, with or without the use of money, to employ scarce productive resources to produce various commodities over time and distribute them for consumption, now and in the future, among various people and groups in society.”

  4. 4.

    Richard A. Posner has become very famous for his economic reading of the law and for his combination of pragmatism, legal theory, and economics.

  5. 5.

    The critical reader may insist that Lévinas cannot be used in such a way to argue for the primacy of ethics over economics. Such an approach would state that the phenomenology of the other implies a negative reaction to the instrumentalism of economic exchange and an ethics of situational demand on the individual that goes beyond economic exchange. I agree with that, but this is indeed also a good argument for the primacy of ethics in the reciprocal relation of social exchange between human beings. Accordingly, ethical responsibility is a primary constitutive element of human existence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies, Roskilde University, Po Box 260, 4000, Roskilde, Denmark

    Prof. Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

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  1. Prof. Jacob Dahl Rendtorff
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Correspondence to Jacob Dahl Rendtorff .

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  1. Peter Löscher-Stiftungslehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsethik, Technische Universität München, München, Germany

    Christoph Luetge

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Rendtorff, J.D. (2013). The History of the Philosophy of Management and Corporations. In: Luetge, C. (eds) Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1494-6_64

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1494-6_64

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-1493-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-1494-6

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