Profiles and Shadows in Business Ethics
Moral Saints and Moral Exemplars
ISBN: 978-1-78350-074-1, eISBN: 978-1-78350-075-8
Publication date: 16 August 2014
Abstract
Purpose
While scholars discuss the theory of “Business Ethics,” students grapple with applying those theories to hypothetical case studies and business people struggle to live business ethics in practice. Many fail, casting large and ominous shadows. We are inundated with their stories. We need to hear more often stories of those who have succeeded and why their examples are important to the field of Business Ethics.
Design/methodology/approach
This chapter, after providing a brief overview of the differing uses of the term, Business Ethics, expands upon the metaphor of “ethical space” as the eye of a moral hurricane, provides diagrams illustrating the formation of ethical space in a business behavioral context, applies those diagrams to the examples of Andersen and Feuerstein as moral exemplars, discusses ways to mitigate the shadows that eclipsed their example, and suggests ways to enlarge corporate ethical space.
Findings
Ethics is a habit learned through mentoring and developed through practice. In a world of conflicting influences, we each carve out our own ethical space that can serve as an example to others as they face their own individual ethical challenges, but at the corporate level, a moral exemplar will inform the larger corporate ethical space only when the leadership of the corporation consciously adopts and constantly reinforces the example of its moral exemplar.
Originality/value
This chapter uses the visual metaphor of the eye of a hurricane to discuss the formation and importance of ethical space to moral exemplars in a world of conflicting influences and moral pressures.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations for their helpful comments of an earlier draft. The original version of this chapter was presented at the 13th Annual Vincentian Conference Promoting Business Ethics, Niagara, New York, October 2006. Portions were incorporated into a panel discussion on “Good Work/Bad Work” in the final session of the “Working Well” series at Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois, sponsored by the Dominican University Core Curriculum/LAS Seminar Program, April 2008. Similar sections dealing with the history of business ethics, Andersen and Feuerstein were included in another article by the author, “Entrepreneurship, Law and the Art of Business Ethics,” which was published in Volume 8(5) of the Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 2011.
Citation
Miller, R.A. (2014), "Profiles and Shadows in Business Ethics", Moral Saints and Moral Exemplars (Research in Ethical Issues in Organizations, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 97-115. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1529-2096(2013)0000010009
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2013 Emerald Group Publishing Limited