ECONOMIC INTEGRITY, CORPORATIONS, AND BUSINESS ETHICS

Abstract

Like most other Western ethics, business ethics has been primarily concerned with two things: character and action. The character of business has covered various topics, from the virtues of managers to the status of workers, to the design of organizational relationships. Action has also had various dimensions, including the process of decision-making, the stakeholders who are affected by actions, and the norms or principles used to guide actions. All of this has been well and good. If we learned anything about business ethics from the financial crisis of 2008, however, it was that we have not paid enough attention to the real context in which businesses exist: the economy. In this paper, I want to reflect on the integrity of the economy, using the notion of integrity I developed in my book, Corporate Integrity (2005), to examine corporate performance in this economic context, to demonstrate the difference that a civic perspective would have on economic integrity, and then to develop a civic story in which business ethics might participate.