Skip to main content

Business Ethics Without Metaphysics

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics
  • 37 Accesses

Synonyms

Cosmopolitan business ethics; Generic business ethics; Nonideological business ethics; Nonreligious business ethics; Secular business ethics

Introduction

Business ethics without metaphysics is essentially the attempt to provide normative rules for business practice and behavior which require few if any explicit metaphysical commitments about ultimate reality. Business is essentially the buying and selling of goods and services. Ethics typically are rules or guidelines for proper behavior, usually thought of in terms of principles, character traits, or goals for what should or ought to be done or achieved. Business ethics is then the study of what we ought to do when buying or selling goods and services – what kind of behaviors are acceptable, what principles should be followed, what sorts of actions are acceptable or commendable.

Metaphysicsis the study of what is (or exists) – sometimes referred to as “ultimate reality” – and concepts typically studied in the field of...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References and Additional Reading

  • Audi R (2005) The good in the right: a theory of intuition and intrinsic value. Princeton University Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Dancy J (2004) Ethics without principles. Clarendon Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gautier D (1986) Morals by agreement. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gustafson A (2000) Making sense of postmodern business ethics. Bus Ethics Q 10(3):645–658

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gustafson A (2010) Rorty, Caputo and business ethics without metaphysics: ethical theories as normative narratives. J Bus Ethics 19(2):140–153

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gustafson A (2019) How utilitarianism can inform decent managers in plural and culturally diverse contexts. In: Springer handbook of philosophy of management. Springer. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-48352-8_11-1.pdf

  • Heath J (2014) Morality, competition and the firm: the market failures approach to business ethics. Oxford University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Peperzak A (1996) Emmanuel Levinas: basic philosophical writings. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

    Google Scholar 

  • Rawls (1971) A theory of justice. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Rorty R (2006) Is philosophy relevant to applied ethics? Invited address to the society of business ethics annual meeting, August 2005. Bus Ethics Q 16(3):369–380

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrew B. Gustafson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Section Editor information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Gustafson, A.B. (2021). Business Ethics Without Metaphysics. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1221-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23514-1_1221-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23514-1

  • eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics