Drawing from Michel Foucault’s reading of Immanuel Kant’s essay “What is Enlightenment?,” and specifically his definition of ascesis, we associate maturity with a capacity for, and interest in, forming the self. On the basis of an empirical study of making vinyl records following the successful commercialization of digital media, we identify micro-disciplinary techniques of self-forming that emerge as enthusiasts steadily learn the craft of vinyl record manufacturing. It is, we argue, through technology, rather than against it, that organizational immaturity can be resisted. Craftwork involves testing and transforming, rather than just acquiring, traditional skills. Maturity involves an ongoing struggle of selectively and reflectively engaging with technologies via attempts to be the subject of one’s own subjection. The former contributes to the latter.

“Business Ethics and Postmodernism: A Response” considers the contribution of Ronald Green, David Schmidt, Clarence Walton, Ron Duska, and Richard Neilsen to a special issue of Business Ethics Quarterly entitled “Business Ethics and Postmodernism.” This essay poses a fundamental question: to what extent can a position which characterizes itself as postmodern be ethical? The paper argues on philosophical grounds that the debate between modernity and postmodernity is a debate over the very possibility of an ethic. The paper concludes that although Jacque Derrida has made the most convincing argument for an ethic within postmodernity, it remains skeptical because such an argument simply presupposes assumptions which owe their origin to modernity.

The debate about the differing philosophies of human-nature relationship is ongoing. Several studies discuss the need to develop and adopt a new environmental paradigm to replace the neoclassical economic paradigm predominant in Western societies. This issue has been discussed mainly at a societal level. Society or societies are, however, entities that consist of smaller particles. If a phenomenon is supposed to exist in an entity, signs of the phenomenon should also be found in its particles, business enterprises among others. This paper examines a shift of a managerial paradigm in a business organization, since not only the actions of individuals and governments but also those of business enterprises account for the preservation of the natural environment. It studies empirically how a managerial paradigm can shift from “traditional managerial thinking” to “environment-related management.” Two frameworks will be developed for this purpose.

This special issue of Business Ethics Quarterly was organized for two reasons. First, the academic fields of business ethics and accounting ethics have developed without close theoretical or empirical connections. This is the case even though the profession of accounting is an important component of the organizational world. For this reason, it is important to foster attempts to build a bridge between the two fields, so that research in accounting ethics is more closely related to business ethics. Second, the recent deluge of business scandals (primarily, but not only, in the United States) in which financial reporting and auditing were central elements suggests that a special issue on accounting ethics is timely.

The original hope was that the special issue would contain a balance of papers from researchers in “accounting ethics” and those in “business ethics.” In line with the hope that the papers would be responsive to both fields, almost every paper submitted was reviewed by one person who is identified with business ethics and one person who is identified with accounting ethics. As it turns out, most of the papers in this issue were written by people whose academic home is the accounting department. The mix of papers reflects the emphasis in the accounting literature on empirical research on ethical behavior.

Business actors often act in ways that may harm other parties. While the law aims to restrict harmful behavior and to provide remedies, legal systems do not anticipate all contingencies and legal regulations are not always well-enforced. This article argues that the logic of double effect (LDE), which has been developed and deployed in other areas of practical ethics, can be useful in helping business actors decide whether or not to pursue potentially harmful activities in commonplace business activity. The article illustrates how LDE helps to explain the exploitative nature of payday lending, the distinction between permissible and impermissible forms of market competition, and the potential wrong of imposing risk of harm on others. The article also addresses foundational debates about LDE itself. We offer the article as an illustration of the sort of “midlevel” theorizing that can address directly the needs of practitioners.

We present a second-personal account of corporate moral agency. This approach is in contrast to the first-personal approach adopted in much of the existing literature, which concentrates on the corporation’s ability to identify moral reasons for itself. Our account treats relationships and communications as the fundamental building blocks of moral agency. The second-personal account rests on a framework developed by Darwall. Its central requirement is that corporations be capable of recognizing the authority relations that they have with other moral agents. We discuss the relevance of corporate affect, corporate communications, and corporate culture to the second-personal account. The second-personal account yields a new way to specify first-personal criteria for moral agency, and it generates fresh insights into the reasons those criteria matter. In addition, a second-personal analysis implies that moral agency is partly a matter of policy, and it provides a fresh perspective on corporate punishment.

Michael Lewis’ book, Liar's Poker, presents a scary picture of behavior within the investment community. While this portrayal is interesting in its own right, it presents us with an opportunity to subject real business behavior to analysis and suggestions for reform. As such, the issues raised here transcend a mere review of the book's plot and prose. Real business behavior, described in gory detail by Lewis, will provide the basis for a moral analysis. Machiavelli's The Prince will provide the framework for most of this analysis.

Ignited in this and other countries by the rapid rise of the modem corporation to a position of strategic importance, both nationally and internationally, an intense debate continues today unabated. At the heart of the debate is a fundamental question: What role should the modern corporation play in a free society? And, as corporations become increasingly multinational, the fundamental question might more accurately be stated as a question about the role the multinational corporation should play in a free society, indeed, in the world. This question, I believe, should provide the orientation for research inquiries in Business Ethics and Business and Society.

Within the business community in the U.S., two dominant responses to the fundamental question emerged quite early in the century, responses which have been characterized as the Classical and Managerial business ideologies. Approaching the 21st century, these remain the two major alternatives, reflecting not merely the competing ideological frameworks of the business community, but of the larger society in the U.S. as well. That these constitute the dominant alternatives is extremely regrettable, even dangerous, for, as I have argued elsewhere, both are seriously inadequate.

Roberto Frega argues for the advancement of workplace democracy theorisation by synergising the conceptual pathways of various disciplines. He places a particular emphasis on the practice of employee involvement, which, according to him, constitutes one of the three pillars of workplace democracy, the other two being voice and representation. The present commentary broadens the interdisciplinary horizons of this debate by reflecting on the central role of accountability in workplace democracy and the workings of the three pillars identified by Frega. The commentary explores the potential of accountability and the insights drawn from critical accounting research to translate democratic ideals into meaningful and sustainable organisational practices and so strengthen workplace democracy.

Organized immaturity, the reduction of individual capacities for public use of reason constrained by sociotechnological systems, constitutes a significant pushback against the project of Enlightenment. Forms of immaturity have long been a concern for philosophers and social theorists, such as Kant, Arendt, Fromm, Marcuse, and Foucault. Recently, Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism” describes how advancements in digital technologies lead to new, increasingly sophisticated forms of organized immaturity in democratic societies. We discuss how sociotechnological systems initially designed to meet human needs can inhibit the multidimensional development of individuals as mature citizens. To counteract these trends, we suggest two mechanisms: disorganizing immaturity as a way to safeguard individuals’ and collectives’ negative freedoms (freedoms from), and organizing maturity as a way to strengthen positive freedoms (freedoms to). Finally, we provide an outlook on the five further articles that constitute the Business Ethics Quarterly Special Issue “Sociotechnological Conditions of Organized Immaturity in the Twenty-First Century.”

Research on ethical norms has grown in recent years, but imprecise language has made it unclear when these norms prescribe “what ought to be” and when they merely describe behaviors or perceptions (“what is”). Studies of ethical norms, moreover, tend not to investigate whether participants were influenced by the prescriptive aspect of the norm; the studies primarily demonstrate, rather, that people will mimic the behaviors or perceptions of others, which provides evidence for the already well-substantiated social proof theory. In this review article, we delineate three streams of norms research in business ethics: behavioral, perceptual, and prescriptive. We argue that by properly categorizing norms, and designing studies to investigate when prescriptions, more than mere mimicry, improve ethical outcomes in organizations, researchers can enhance managers’ efforts to promote ethical outcomes in organizations.

Managers have the primary role responsibility to protect and promote the economic viability of their organizations. Utilizing a formula that demonstrates the inherently unstable nature of economic systems, I argue that managers are sometimes morally required to make adjustments that result in harming people who work for them in order to reestablish the equilibrium necessary to remain viable. The question of who is going to be harmed and how this harm is morally justified is the focal point of this paper. I argue that utilizing traditional methods associated with our common morality cannot solve the issue of who is going to be harmed, and that the traditional methods for reestablishing equilibrium promote a distribution of harm that cannot be justified from a rationally defensible moral point of view. Utilizing the constraint of impartiality and the concept of the health of the organization, I argue that an equal distribution of harm among everyone affected by the decision is the only one that is rationally defensible.

Entrepreneurs should act as stewards of entrepreneurial rent. Entrepreneurial rent is the difference between the ex post value of a venture and its ex ante costs. It is the result of competition among buyers and sellers within the market process rather than the sole efforts of the entrepreneur. As a result, entrepreneurs should allocate entrepreneurial rent for the benefit of other market participants rather than consuming it for themselves. The moral obligation to steward entrepreneurial rent is consistent with traditional bases of property rights and the norm of social welfare maximization, and it applies to corporations and their shareholders, as well as individual entrepreneurs.

The Inuit in Alaska speak eloquently of their “rights” to be granted larger quotas for whale hunting, so that they might compete more fairly with Japanese business interests. The Jari Corporation in the Amazonia in Brazil, struggles to cut trees in the rain forest and provide employment, in a sustainable way, without importing exotic species and without exploiting all the land they own. Yet they still use chlorine in their manufacturing operation, and still need to cope with the problems the previous management left for them. In the Great Lakes Basin, the U.S./Canada Joint Commission demands a chlorine ban for the Basin, citing abundant scientific evidence about habitat and wild-life devastation in the area, as well as mounting evidence of a link between chlorine in water and breast cancer. The meeting is attended by thousands of citizens supporting the ban, but the industry’s representatives protest the “emotionalism” of the presentations, and counter it with the so-called “hard facts”: veiled threats of unemployment and higher prices, due to a “premature ban.”

This paper contends that rationality is more properly evaluated as a property of an organization’s relationships with its stakeholders than of the organization itself. We predicate our approach on the observation that stakeholders can hold goals quite distinct from those of owners and top managers, and these too can be rationally pursued. We build upon stakeholder theory and Weber’s classic distinction between wertrationalitat and zweckrationalitat, adding to them the “new institutionalist” concept of the organization field (1983, 1991). Stakeholders employ a variety of direct and indirect mechanisms to rationalize relations with the firm. We discuss four: internal subunits, legislated stakeholder participation, legislated access to information, and direct stakeholder activism. These developments are blurring the distinction between the environment and the organization by importing the values and goals of external stakeholders into the internal organization. They are also precipitating a more structured set of relationships among the actors who comprise the field. To the extent that the zweckrationalitat values of managers and owners as well as the wertrationalitat concerns of stakeholders are met, the firm is more rational.

Dees and Cramton have argued that we should take a deontological stand to make negotiations more ethical (“Promoting Honesty in Negotiation: An Exercise in Practical Ethics” BEQ, Vol. 3, #3). I suggest that their analysis is overdetermined, and that one can, in fact, reach the same conclusions through a Hobbesian approach to negotiation. I suggest that an equally valid way to develop ethical negotiation is through the consequentialist “Harmony Thesis” which posits that moral behavior is coextensive with beneficial results.

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore as wily as serpents and harmless as doves

Organized immaturity refers to the capacity of widely institutionalized sociotechnical systems to challenge qualities of human enlightenment, autonomy, and self-determination. In the context of surveillance capitalism, where these qualities are continuously put at risk, data transparency is increasingly proposed as a means of restoring human maturity by allowing individuals insight and choice vis-à-vis corporate data processing. In this article, however, I draw on research on General Data Protection Regulation–mandated data transparency practices to argue that transparency—while potentially fostering maturity—itself risks producing new forms of organized immaturity by facilitating user ignorance, manipulation, and loss of control of personal data. Considering data transparency’s relative “successes” and “failures” regarding the cultivation of maturity, I outline a set of possible remedies while arguing for a general need to develop more sophisticated ethical appreciations of transparency’s complex and potentially problematic implications for organized (im)maturity in the digital age.

Here I synthesize certain ideas presented in two different articles that appeared in the same issue of Business Ethics Quarterly. One article (Hasnas) invokes the stockholder model as a valid normative theory of business ethics, the other article (Dunfee) invokes a marketplace of morality. Both articles imply that the accepted financial-economic view of the firm is a view that can accommodate ethics. I offer empirical support for this view. I also identify the ethic of the stockholder model as a variant on might-makes-right and consider the social acceptance of this ethic as a postmodern phenomenon.