Commercial Ethics: A Victorian Perspective on the Practice of Theory

Abstract

Abstract LIKE so many revivalists, students and advocates of modern business ethics have been highly selective in their points of reference and have largely eschewed consideration of historical precedents. Preoccupation with the establishment of business ethics as an element of the curriculum in universities and management schools has perhaps contributed to the implicit assumption that coherent thinking on the subject did not exist before it was ‘professionalized’. In the Journal of Business Ethics, for example, which was established in 1982 to examine business activity from a moral point of view, there has been almost no historical discussion and relatively little reference to Christian teaching. Moreover, because more attention has been paid at an academic level to business ethics in the USA, there has been a more limited perspective on the development of debate in Britain.