Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-hxdxx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-13T21:06:25.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contractarian Business Ethics: Current Status and Next Steps

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Thomas W. Dunfee  and
Thomas Donaldson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Social contract is rapidly becoming one of the significant alternatives for analyzing ethical issues in business. Contractarian approaches emphasizing consent as a means of justifying principles can provide needed context for rendering normative judgements concerning economic behaviors. Current research issues include developing tests of consent for both hypothetical and extant social contracts, and empirically testing the assumptions of the major contractarian approaches. Open questions include exploring the relationship between contractarian business ethics and other approaches, such as stakeholder management and virtue based ethics; and analysis of the intersection of contractarian approaches with the findings and assumptions of the field of moral psychology. Finally, the managerial utility of social contract based approaches needs to be explored with emphasis on identifying “translator” concepts.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 173 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aoki, M. 1984. The Co-operative Game Theory of the Firm. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Aupperle, K. E., Carroll, A. B., & Hatfield, J. D. 1985. “An Empirical Examination of the Relationship Between Corporate Social Responsibility and Profitability.” Academy of Management Journal, 28(2): 446–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Lawrence C., 1992. “Places for Pluralism.” Ethics 102: 707–719.Google Scholar
Bowie, Norman E. 1982. Business Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Bowie, Norman E. 1988. “The Moral Obligations of Multinational Corporations.” in Problems in International Justice, edited by Steven Luper-Foy, Boulder, London: Westview Press, pp. 97–114.Google Scholar
Brummer, James J., Corporate Responsibility and Legitimacy, An Interdisciplinary Analysis. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Carroll, A. B. 1989. Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management. Cincinnati: South-Western Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Cavanaugh, Gerald E., Moberg, Dennis J., and Velasquez, Manuel, 1981. “The Ethics of Organizational Politics.” Academy of Management Review, 6(3): 363–374.Google Scholar
DeGeorge, Richard T., 1993. Competing With Integrity in International Business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DesJardins, Joseph & McCall, John, 1985. “A Defense of Employee Rights.” Journal of Business Ethics, 4:367–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dill, William R., 1958. “Environment As An Influence On Managerial Autonomy.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 2: 409–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, T. 1982. Corporations and Morality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. 1988. “Fact, Fiction, and the Social Contract: A Reply to Kultgen.” Business and Professional Ethics Journal, 4: 31–49. Also in Ethics and Risk Management in Engineering, 1987, 1: 40–47.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. 1989. The Ethics of International Business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. 1990. “Social Contracts and Corporations: A Reply to Hodapp.” Journal of Business Ethics, 9: 133–139.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T., & Dunfee, T. W., 1995. “Integrative Social Contracts Theory: A Communitarian Conception of Economic Ethics.” Economics and Philosophy, (forthcoming) 11(1): 85–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donaldson, T., & Dunfee, T. W., 1994. “Toward A Unified Conception of Business Ethics: Integrative Social Contracts Theory.” Academy of Management Review, 19:2, 252–284.Google Scholar
Donaldson, T. and Preston, Lee E., 1995. “The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, Implications.” Academy of Management Review, 20(1): 65–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunfee, Thomas W. and Maurer, Virginia C., 1992. “Corporate Attorney Whistle-Blowing: Devising a Proper Standard.” Business and Professional Ethics Journal 11(3&4):3–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dunfee, Thomas W, 1991. “Business Ethics and Extant Social Contracts,” Business Ethics Quarterly, 1:23–51.Google Scholar
Evan, W. M., & Freeman, R. E. 1988, rpt. 1993. “A Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation: Kantian Capitalism.” In Beauchamp, T. & Bowie, N. (Eds.), Ethical Theory and Business, 75–93. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Frank, Robert H. 1993. “A New Contractarian View of Tax and Regulatory Policy in the Emerging Market Economies.” Social Philosophy and Policy, 258–281.Google Scholar
Freeman, R. E., & Reed, D. L. 1983. “Stockholders and Stakeholders: A New Perspective On Corporate Governance.” California Management Review, 25(3): 88–106.Google Scholar
Freeman, R. E. 1984. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Boston: Pitman.Google Scholar
Freeman, R. E., & Gilbert, D. R. Jr. 1987. “Managing Stakeholder Relationships.” In Sethi, S. P. & Falbe, C. M. (Eds.), Business and Society: 397–423. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Freeman, R. E., & Evan, W. M. 1990. “Corporate Governance: A Stakeholder Interpretation.” The Journal of Behavioral Economics, 19(4): 337–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, R. E. (Ed.). 1991. Business Ethics: The State of the Art. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits.” From New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970.Google Scholar
Gauthier, David. 1986. Morals By Agreement. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Goodpaster, K. E. 1991. “Business Ethics and Stakeholder Analysis.” Business Ethics Quarterly, 1(1): 53–73.Google Scholar
Green, Ronald M. 1991. “When is ‘Everyone’s Doing It’ a Moral Justification?” Business Ethics Quarterly, 1(1): 75–94.Google Scholar
Hall, William D., 1993. Making the Right Decision. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Hodapp, Paul E., 1990. “Can There Be a Social Contract With Business?” Journal of Business Ethics, 9:127–131.Google Scholar
Hosseini, J.C., & Brenner, S.N. 1992. “The Stakeholder Theory of the Firm: A Methodology to Generate Value Matrix Weights.” Business Ethics Quarterly, 2:99–119.Google Scholar
Jones, Thomas. 1991. “Ethical Decision Making by Individuals in Organizations: An Issue-Contingent Model.” Academy of Management Review, 16:2, 366–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeley, Michael. A Social Contract Theory of Organizations. Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988.Google Scholar
Kohlberg, Lawrence. Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics. New York: Karger, 1983.Google Scholar
Kuhn, J. W., & Shriver, D. W. Jr. 1991. Beyond Success: Corporations and Their Critics in the 1990s. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kultgen, John, 1986. “Comments on Donaldson’s Corporations and Morality.” Business and Professional Ethics Journal, 5:28–39.Google Scholar
Levitt, Leon, 1986. “Donaldson’s Social Contract for Business.” Business and Professional Ethics Journal, 5:47–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair C.After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.Google Scholar
McGuire, J. B., Sundgren, A., & Schneeweis, T. 1988. “Corporate Social Responsibility and Firm Financial Performance.” Academy of Management Journal, 31(4): 354–372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nash, Laura L., 1981. “Ethics Without the Sermon.” Harvard Business Review, (Nov.-Dec.): 78–90.Google Scholar
Orts, Eric W., 1992. “Beyond Shareholders: Interpreting Corporate Constituency Statutes,” The George Washington Law Review, 61(1): 14–135.Google Scholar
Pastin, Mark and Hooker, Michael, 1980. “Ethics and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.” Business Horizons (Dec.): 43–47.Google Scholar
Plato. 1968. The Republic. Tran., Allan, Bloom. New York: Basic Books. Book I.Google Scholar
Preston, L. E., & Sapienza, H. J., 1990. “Stakeholder Management and Corporate Performance.” The Journal of Behavioral Economics, 19(4): 361–375.Google Scholar
Preston, L. E., Sapienza, H. J., & Miller, R. D., 1991. “Stakeholders, Shareholders, Managers: Who Gains What From Corporate Performance?” In Etzioni, A. & Lawrence, P. R. (Eds.), Socio-economics: Toward a New Synthesis: 149–65. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheppele, Kim Lane 1993. “‘It’s Just Not Right’: The Ethics of Insider Trading.” Law and Contemporary Problems, 56(3), 123–173Google Scholar
Smiley, Marion, Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community: Power and Accountability from a Pragmatic Point of View. University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 257.Google Scholar
Swinyard, W. R., Rinne, H., and Kau, A. Keng, 1990. “The Morality of Software Piracy: A Cross-Cultural Analysis.” Journal of Business Ethics, 9:655–664.Google Scholar
Werhane, Patricia. 1991. Rights, Persons, and Corporations. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Werhane, Patricia, 1984. “Individual Rights in Business.” in Regan, Tom (ed), Just Business: New Introductory Essays in Business Ethics. New York: Random House.Google Scholar