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Is Business Ethics Getting Better? A Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Joanne B. Ciulla
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Abstract:

This address uses the question “Is business ethics getting better?” as a heuristic for discussing the importance of history in understanding business and ethics. The paper uses a number of examples to illustrate how the same ethical problems in business have been around for a long time. It describes early attempts at the Harvard Business School to use business history as a means of teaching students about moral and social values. In the end, the author suggests that history may be another way to teach ethics, enrich business ethics courses, and develop the perspective and vision in future business leaders.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , April 2011 , pp. 335 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2011

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References

Notes

1. Raymond C. Baumhart, “How Ethical Are Businessmen?,” Harvard Business Review (July–August 1961): 7–10, 12, 16, 19, 156–76.

2. Steven N. Brenner and Earl A. Molander, “Is the Ethics of Business Changing?,” Harvard Business Review, January–February 1977: 57–71.

3. Ian Maitland, “A Theory of the Ethical Business Cycle,” Business Ethics Quarterly 20(4) (2010): 749–50.

4. Polybius, The Histories, trans. Robin Waterfield, ed. Brian McGing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 410.

5. Charles de Montesquieu, The Sprit of the Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent (New York: The Free Press, 1970), 316.

6. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009).

7. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (New York: Penguin Books, 1970).

8. Jeffrey Wattles, The Golden Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

9. The translator Miriam Lichtheim argues that while Ptah-hotep lived between 2450 BCE and 2300 BCE, the actual papyrus was not produced until 2300–2150 BCE.

10. Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, Volume 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 63.

11. Ibid., 65.

12. Ibid., 62.

13. Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, in The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, trans. W. D. Ross, ed. J. Barnes, vol. 2 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1996.

14. Ibid., 1997.

15. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis, trans. Harry G. Edinger (Indianapolis: The Library of Living Arts, 1974), 120.

16. Ibid., 58.

17. Ibid., 118.

18. Henk J. L. van Luijk, “Rights and Interests in a Participatory Market Society,” Business Ethics Quarterly 4(1) (1994): 79–96.

19. Jean Jacques Rousseau, “A Discourse on a Subject Proposed by the Academy of Dijon: What Is the Origin of Inequality among Men, and Is It Authorized by Natural Law?” The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G. D. H. Cole (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1950).

20. Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992), 22.

21. Robert Frank and Phillip J. Cook, Winner-Take-All Society (New York: Penguin, 1996).

22. Rahesh Khurana, Searching for the Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002).

23. Ana Pavord, The Tulip: The Story of a Flower that Has Made Men Mad (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1999).

24. Charles McKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2002), 5.

25. Note that the Wharton School is the oldest business school in the U.S. It was established in 1881.

26. Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, A Delicate Experiment: The Harvard Business School from 1908–1945 (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1987), 155.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., 168.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. See Harvard Business School Institutional Memory, 1958 and 1988: http://institutionalmemory.hbs.edu/topic/curriculum_and_courses.html.

32. Sean Silverthrone, “The Lessons of Business History: A Handbook,” Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge, March 17, 2008, http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5849.html. In this interview Jones offers an eloquent explanation of the ways in which business history contributes to our understanding of business. Jones, a historian at HBS, also discusses the reasons why many business schools ignore business history. For an excellent source on business history, see his book: Geoffrey G. Jones and Jonathan Zeitlin, Oxford Handbook of Business History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

33. Silverthrone, “The Lessons of Business History.”

34. Chester I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive: 30th Anniversary Edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 239.

35. Carl F. Taeusch, Professional and Business Ethics (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1926), 3.