A Global Ethic for Globalized Business

Abstract

The multiple crises with which humankind is faced at the dawn of the 21st century — the deleterious effects of climate change, consumption of scare natural resources at rates incommensurable with environmental and intergenerational sustainability, growing social and economic inequality, declining faith in public institutions to right the wrongs of previous generations and a waning public trust in business and managerial capabilities — share a common denominator: an economic system with only marginal regard for human values and virtues. The patent disregard for moral norms in business is, we argue, less an outcome and much more a cause of the present disruptions and system failures. Having removed a concern for the weal and woe of human life from the center of economic thinking and having thus ostracized ethical considerations to the margins of business practice, past management education has been part and parcel of the social and ecological problems to which present management generations must now find solutions.