The Breakaway of Business Ethics from Classical Ethics

Abstract

Business Ethics is a branch of applied ethics. Major concepts of classical ethics are applied in Business Ethics. The most dominant are Aristotelian virtue ethics, Kantian deontological ethics, and utilitarianism. However, the nature of the evolvement of Business Ethics (looked at from the American cultural perspective) bespeaks a different type of ethics from those that are enthusiatically applied to it. In the following three sections we will analyse the extent to which Aristotelian virtue ethics, Kantian deontological ethics, and utilitarianism are applicable to Business Ethics.