Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T23:55:54.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Moral Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and Organizational Ethics: A Response to Phillips and Margolis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Abstract:

Phillips and Margolis argue that moral philosophy is a poor basis for business ethics, but their narrow view of moral philosophy would exclude Aristotle, for one. They criticize me for assimilating states and organizations in using the Rawlsian device, but they put too much faith in Rawls’s distinction between states and voluntary organizations and pay too little attention to the continuities between them. Their plea for a conceptually autonomous ethics for organizations I interpret as reasonable and largely compatible with my own stated opinion.

Type
Response Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brink, David O. 1989. Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton. 1962. Capitalism and Freedom. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galston, William A. 1991. Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, Edwin M. 1996. Organizational Ethics and the Good Life. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartman, Edwin M. 2000. “Socratic Ethics and the Challenge of Globalization.” Business Ethics Quarterly 10: 211220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hausman, Daniel M., and McPherson, Michael S. 1993. Economic Analysis and Moral Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1969. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals. Ed by Wolff, Robert Paul. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1957. Perpetual Peace. Ed. by Beck, Lewis White. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Keeley, Michael. 2000. “A ‘Matter of Opinion, What Tends to the General Welfare’ : Governing the Workplace.” Business Ethics Quarterly 10: 243254.Google Scholar
Maclntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
McMahon, Christopher. 1994. Authority and Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Phillips, Robert A., and Margolis, Joshua D. 1999. “Toward an Ethics of Organizations.” Business Ethics Quarterly 9: 619638.Google Scholar
Quine, Willard V. O. 1961. Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1988. “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 17: 251276.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1993. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar