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Business Ethics and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Joseph Betz
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Abstract:

What is the relation of business ethics to politics? My answer has two parts. First, business ethics exists quite apart from politics in matters of simple, basic ethical norms like those prohibiting lying, wanton injury, sexual harrassment. One would be foolish to unsettle this settled ethics as A. Z. Carr does in this article, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?” For the business community thus loses the public’s trust and invites a government regulation of business smothering to business and burdensome to government.

Second, there are issues in business ethics which do not represent a settled and shared and common ethics because they represent a choice between competing, almost equally attractive, values. These problems in business ethics can only have a political solution. Politics here represents the commitment to different basic values and will represent liberal and conservative extremes or some compromise in-between. The solution acceptable for these problems will change with the political climate and will be unstable. We should strive to keep the basic, simple, settled, ethical issues in business out of politics, and we should strive to be frank about our political differences as we needfully politicize the solutions to the more complex unsettled problems in business ethics.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , October 1998 , pp. 693 - 702
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1998

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References

Notes

1 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959), p. 24.

2 Aristotle, Politics, Chapter I, Book I.

3 Albert Z. Carr, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?” Harvard Business Review (Jan.-Feb. 1968). This article is widely reprinted in business ethics anthologies. For instance, pp. 46–52 in Thomas Donaldson and Patricia H. Werhane, eds., Ethical Issues in Business: A Philosophical Approach (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979), and pp. 21–28 in Joseph R. DesJardins and John J. McCall, eds., Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics, 2d ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1990). My subsequent references to the pages of Carr’s essay are to its reprinting in DesJardins and McCall and I give these in my text.

4 Albert Z. Carr, Business As a Game (New York: Mentor, New American Library, 1968).

5 Timothy B. Blodgett, “Showdown on Business Bluffing,” Harvard Business Review (May-June, 1968). This editor’s summary of objections to Carr’s article is reprinted on pages 53–59 of Donaldson and Werhane’s anthology.

6 To see that these are indeed the unsettled ethical issues examined in anthologies used in business and morality courses, please see, for example, the Donaldson and Werhane or DesJardins and McCall texts referred to in note 3. Another example might be Tom F. Beauchamp and Norman Bowie, eds., Ethical Theory and Business, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1985).

7 That such differences in basic moral values distinguish liberals and conservatives can be verified by comparing two books. The Catholic bishops of the United States studied the American economy in Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U. S. Economy (Washington, D.C.: National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1986). The subcommittee of bishops writing the letter, led by Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, made it a document pleasing to political liberals. This raised the ire of conservative Catholic lay persons who countered by writing their own opposing document. It is Toward the Future: Catholic Social Thought and the U. S. Economy: A Lay Letter (New York: Lay Commission on Catholic Social Teaching and the U. S. Economy, 1984). The leaders of the Catholic conservatives were William E. Simon and Michael Novak.

8 Donaldson and Werhane, Ethical Issues in Business, pp. 303–4.

9 Cf. Donaldson and Werhane, Ethical Issues in Business, pp. 315–8, and DesJardins and McCall, Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics, pp. 220–l.