Abstract
Business ethics education has focused primarily on moral formation of individual leaders and managers in the context of ethical codes, organizational culture, and legal compliance. Important as this approach is, it fails to generate a sufficient level of business responsibility to satisfy legitimate social concerns regarding the use of natural resources, environmental sustainability, reasonable limitation of systemic risk in capital markets, and fair allocation of goods and services.
In this chapter, I describe the ordinary moral hazards of the workplace that call for external accountability in addition to internal moral values and conscience, then review the current approaches to moral education in business ethics and propose adding the pragmatic pursuit of the good. Thirdly, I provide the rationale and direction for this expanded approach to business ethics education: (a) establishing business responsibility for the social good as a matter of justice; (b) distinguishing public accountability on matters of justice from personal moral accountability to one’s conscience; and (c) preparing business leaders to engage in public deliberation to determine the legitimacy, priority, and just resolution of social claims.
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Schweigert, F.J. (2016). Business Strategy as Social Responsibility and as a Matter of Justice. In: Business Ethics Education and the Pragmatic Pursuit of the Good. Advances in Business Ethics Research, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33402-8_5
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