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