The aim of this paper is to create a framework which can serve as a guide to the understanding of organizational ethicality. This is done by linking ethical and organizational theory. Organizational ethicality is about “being” as well as “doing”: relevant ethical theory is therefore both substantive (agent-centred, concerned with the “good”) as well as procedural (act-centred, concerned with the “right” in the sense of the moral or just thing to do). The ethical theories of Alasdair MacIntyre and Jurgen Habermas, as representatives of these two traditions, are mapped onto a framework which characterises organizations as assemblages of practices supported by a climate embedded within an organizational culture. Organizational practice is articulated and given meaning within a discourse of “sensemaking” in which narrative creates space-time links between people and events. Within that same communicative climate practices are evaluated and decisions taken. This theoretical framework is specified in such a way as to highlight the parallels with the ethical theories of MacIntyre, who uses notions of practice, tradition and the narrative unity of moral experience to create an ethical theory of the “good,” and Habermas, who spells out the process of moral argumentation by which consensus on the “just” or “right” is reached. Some possibilities for further research are suggested at the end of the paper.

This paper examines recent communitarian writing about the market. Much of this work explains the loss of community in our times as a result of the expansion of the market and market values. As the market has invaded other domains, such as family and neighborhood, relationships there have become infected by the instability and transience that characterize market relations. Central to this critique of the market is the view that the market is unable to sustain lasting commitments. This paper tests this hypothesis by examining the fate of the family—the paradigmatic case of commitment—in three separate historical periods when market or commercial values were especially dominant. It then extends the analysis to two other component institutions of community—voluntary and charitable activities. Finally, it examines institutions where so-called market values should presumably hold unchallenged sway, namely in the work place and the marketplace. The paper finds that communitarian values appear to thrive in market society. Instead of being a juggernaut the market may be an endangered species.

Professor Ian Maitland advances a version of utilitarianism, constrained by Robert Nozick’s minimal state, that finds no connection between the pervasiveness of “market values,” which he gamely pursues, and the kind of problems that dominate our social scene. In his judgment, the prevailing tendency towards community or communitarian ends needlessly obstructs freedom, the overriding value of the libertarian-minimal state. When coupled with wrongheaded and perverse policies, communitarianism shackles the free market with crippling inefficiencies. This paper will interrogate Maitland’s characterization of communitarianism, challenge his view that traditional values can be instrumentalized without harming community, and paint a more plausible and complex picture of the communitarian tendency.

This article adds to the discussion of the legitimation of stakeholding, by studying the implications of investing financial assets, years of labor, community resources, or other such scarce goods in a corporation. It attempts to respond to those who argue that it is not possible for all stakeholders to be effectively represented in corporate governance and that if they were, this would undermine the well-being of the corporation.

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.

Are corporations morally defensible sorts of entities? How might we go about showing that they are? Thomas Donaldson offers us the most detailed contractarian justification for the moral defensibility of corporations. In this paper I show how we can significantly develop this sort of justification to yield a more compelling contractarian justification, though one that is importantly conditional. The primary points I take up in this paper are these:

1. The question Donaldson poses to generate his contract is not quite as simple as may appear. The sort of transformation we need to consider is more complex than the sort Donaldson describes.

2. Partly because of considerations that arise in discussing the first point, the contract we are considering is a more conditional agreement. The terms of the agreement will vary depending on the kind of state we are assuming prevails. The sort of contract we want to draw up is at least a three-way contract: between society, productive organizations and the state. The sort of agreement we reach will have the following form: society a agrees to allow productive organizations of type b to exist if we assume state c will do various things (d1 to dn), productive organizations will do various things (e1 to en) and members of society will do various things (f1 to fn). Importantly, if state c is not doing d1 to dn, productive organizations may not be morally defensible.

3. The terms of the contract that can be derived would benefit from the introduction of some of Rawls’s apparatus.

4. When we consider the right questions, with more of the background institutions filled in, and when we include some more social contract apparatus, we get a better contract which fills in for us not only the obligations of business but, importantly, many obligations for government as well.