Abstract
How is ethical theory used in contemporary teaching in business ethics? To answer this question, we undertook a survey of twenty-five of the leading business ethics texts. Our purpose was to examine the ways in which normative moral theory is introduced and applied to cases and issues. We focused especially on the authors' views of the conflicts and tensions posed by basic theoretical debates. How can these theories be made useful if fundamental tensions are acknowledged? Our analysis resulted in a typology, presented here, of the ways in which normative theory, and the difficulties within it, are handled in business ethics texts. We conclude that there is a serious lack of clarity about how to apply the theories to cases and a persistent unwillingness to grapple with tensions between theories of ethical reasoning. These deficiencies hamper teaching and ethical decision-making.
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Ronald M. Green is the John Phillips Professor of Religion in the Department of Religion, Dartmouth College. He also serves as Adjunct Professor of Business Ethics at Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, where he is responsible for courses on business ethics. Professor Green has written many articles in theoretical and applied ethics. He is the author of three books, Population Growth and Justice (Scholars Press, 1975), Religious Reason (Oxford University Press, 1978), and Religion and Moral Reason (Oxford University Press, 1988).
Robbin Derry is a Rockefeller Fellow at The Institute for the Study of Applied and Professional Ethics at Dartmouth College and an MBA and PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interests include field studies of ethical conflicts in organizations and moral reasoning among managers. She has authored several articles on managerial ethical decision-making.
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Derry, R., Green, R.M. Ethical theory in business ethics: A critical assessment. J Bus Ethics 8, 521–533 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00382928
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00382928