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Donaldsonian Themes: A Commentary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2016

Thomas Donaldson
Thomas Donaldson*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Abstract:

The articles in the special issue of Business Ethics Quarterly (2015), “Normative Business Ethics in a Global Economy: New Directions on Donaldsonian Themes,” were written by a set of outstanding scholars: Margaret M. Blair, Joseph P. Gaspar, Nien-hê Hsieh, Peter L. Jennings, Marietta Peytcheva, Andreas Georg Scherer, Amy J. Sepinwall, Andrew Stark, Danielle E. Warren, and Manuel Velasquez. In this commentary I reply to my colleagues, arranging my reply around the following themes: 1) the corporate moral agent; 2) the idea of a social contract for business; 3) managing ethics within corporations; and 4) values in business. I discuss each in turn. However, I reflect first on my idiosyncratic approach to business ethics.

Keywords

social contractpersonhoodmoral agencythought experimentbusiness ethicshypernorm
Type
Commentary
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 2017 , pp. 125 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2016 

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