The Reconciliation of Finance and Ethics

Abstract

"This paper advocates that recent troubles in the finance industry are only symptoms of a deeper crisis: As we’ve moved deep into the modern age, the value-sphere of science – the exterior dimension of reality – took over the value-spheres of aesthetics and morals – the interior dimension. This article supports that today’s challenge is not merely to promote ethics in finance, but to integrate these interior and exterior dimensions of reality in our discourse. It then discusses developmental psychology as a methodology for investigating an individual’s inner development. It also introduces the practices of action inquiry and triple-loop learning as ways of cultivating reflection in the midst of action, thereby creating space for an ethical concern and behaviour to emerge moment by moment. Finally, the socially responsible investing movement illustrates how we can weave ethics and finance, the interior and the exterior, at an organisational level and beyond."(pg 31)