‘The business of business is business’ is a well-known rhetorical formula. Business people should concern themselves with their business and nothing else, as this is also the best way of serving the public interest. The formula suggests that good business management is characterized purely and simply by a strict observance of the commercial criteria of success on the market. Richard De George calls this ‘the myth of amoral business’. According to this myth business people do not need to preoccupy themselves explicitly with ethical questions in regard to their activities, since these are amoral (i.e. free of morals and not immoral) matters which cannot be adequately judged from a moral point of view.

However, the formula does contain implicitly an idea of corporate ethics in regard to the socially correct function and the legitimacy of business activities. It states that the ‘business of business’ consists in selling goods and services of all kinds at a profit. Ultimately business is neither an aesthetic, charitable nor political affair, but simply business. The standard by which good business is measured is the achieved or achievable net profit, no more no less. Thus the maximization of profit seems to be the natural goal and the constitutive principle of ‘free entrepreneurship’. According to the myth of amoral business it is precisely the strict observance of the so-called profit principle by the entrepreneur which ensures that the private economy serves the general interests of society in the best possible way.