Reflections on Business Ethics

Abstract

Business ethics courses have been launched with professors from business pulling on one oar, and professors of philosophy pulling on the other, but they lack a sense of direction. Let's begin with the basics: What is an ehtical decision? More fundamentally, why the interest in professional ethics in the first place?There are over 300 centers for the study of applied ethics in this country—why? The events which face our society today (income and wealth disparity, environmental degradation, etc.) are outside the business-oriented collection of shared beliefs that set our public policy agenda. Our beliefs are too narrow, thus we see, understand, and control small slices of life.Business ethics should be the study of the structure and impact on us of what we call “business science,” e.g., accounting, marketing, economics, law, etc., and the corresponding study of the process of what Carl Jung called individuation: learning to become one's own unique self in the face of these bodies of professional knowledge which have structured our lives and charted the direction for our sensibilities for too long.