Title

Business Ethics: Two Moral Provisos

Department/School

Ethics and Business Law

Date of this version

10-2010

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Moral provisos, stockholders, stakeholders, common good, business ethics

Abstract

This short article challenges the conventional wisdom that stakeholder thinking is the ethical solution to narrower stockholder thinking. Recalling the famous “open question argument” of G.E. Moore in the early twentieth century, the suggestion is that stakeholder thinking must also be understood as provisional since stakeholder satisfaction is not the same as moral responsibility. What is needed is more comprehensive moral thought in business ethics.

Published in

Business Ethics Quarterly

Citation/Other Information

Business Ethics Quarterly, 20 (4), 740-742

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