Arguments Against Business

Ethics
(Objections, Problems of …)
Businesses should pursue financial interests
Business Ethics side-tracks businesses from
pursuing financial interests
 Relationship?

Business Ethics
 The Pursuit for profit is sufficient (invisible Hand argument)

• It will ensure that the society is served in the

most beneficial way
• To be profitable business will produce only
what the society want, in the most efficient
means possible
• Therefore managers should focus on a single-
minded pursuit for profit
 Problems of the invisible hand argument
• Markets are not perfectly competitive
• Where there is no competition (monopoly), businesses may
maximise business despite their inefficiency
• Not all steps carried out for profit making are socially
beneficial (e.g. deceptive advertising, bribery, tax evasion,
price-fixing)
• Assumes equality that does not exist: the poor are often left
out, they cannot participate fully in the marketplace
(Business ethicists consider the poor)
• This is itself a prescription of a particular moral standard:
Managers should devote themselves to profit
 Managers are only duty bound to serve the
interest of shareholders (Loyal Agent ‘s
Argument)
• The control of the action of management is
not with the government but with
stockholders (Hayek (1967: 306)
• By expecting directors and other employees to
carry out any responsibility other than the
‘core organizational responsibility’ is “to cheat,
steal and betray their employers” (Sternberg
E. 2009: 08).
Problems of the ‘Loyal Agent’s’ argument

• Can be used to justify unethical or illegal

conduct of managers
• Assumes no limits to manager’s duties in
serving the employer
• Agreements to serve other people do not
automatically justify doing wrong on their
behalf
 It is enough for business people to keep the
law (Law argument)
• (In business, keeping the law is being ethical)
BUT
• Law and ethics do not automatically coincide
 Other related Objections
• ‘Business ethics’ is an Oxymoron – It is contradiction in
terms (Duska 2007: 51)
Business – about self-interest (egoism), therefore,
essentially unethical
• The definitive goal of business is profit-making not ethics
(Blowfield M. and Murray A. 2011: 27, Sweeney L. 2009: 36-
37)
• Business is amoral (not explicitly concerned with ethics)
“Business is Business” (De George 1995: 05)
• Business is driven by ‘self-interest’ (egoism?), has nothing to
do with ethics