Hume’s Humanity: A Nexus for Global Management

Abstract

Utilitarian thinking has a historical grip on international business management yet current global debt, labor exploitation, environmental degradation and social change indicate problems needing humanistic responses (Pirson et al. 2009; Pirson 2013; Polanyi 1977). Common practices in international business, including outsourcing, seeking new markets and exploiting lax regulatory environments have precedents and antecedents in moral relativism. As business is questioned on moral grounds, the clash of cultures internationally causes uncertainty about shared moral values in any given time and place. Classical approaches to business ethics have not served practical purposes well. Reliance on a utilitarian approach, for example, can lead to ethical dilemmas that affect the real or perceived individual rights of stakeholders, and a rights-based model can sometimes appear to compromise the greater good (Acevedo 2013; Grassl & Habisch 2011). Due to prevalent economic thinking, there has been a tendency for some managers to prioritize profit and defer to codes of ethics and laws for guidance about what ought to be an ethical or moral approach. The profit motive and the predominance of corporate self-interest appear as dual factors driving economic development under capitalism (Ross, Ross & Creed 2013). The problem here is that neither law nor a code is sufficient for morality and moral practice (Backhaus 1994; Buchanan 2010; Hladik 2006; Reilly 2010; Sommerville 2006; Steiner, Alston & Goodman 2007).