Learning from History – The Relevance of the History of Business Ethics for the Practice of Business Ethics

Abstract

Why should those currently engaged in business ethics seek a fuller understanding of how others engaged in these practices in the past? This essay addresses this question by reviewing in broad historical strokes three typical expressions of the practices of business ethics: namely, efforts to cultivate fitting virtues, efforts to enhance the ethical problem solving capabilities of businesses, and efforts to establish publically enforceable normative standards/laws. Using seven huge, troubling contemporary ethical crises as a point of reference, the essay concludes by examining ways businesses learn from a critical review of the history of business ethics in order more responsibly to address these issues.