Some Remarks on Jeurissen

Abstract

First of all, I would like to make some remarks about the sketch given by R. Jeurissen of the recent developments in the world of business, then I will briefly discuss the central thesis of his article. Jeurissen’s article takes a specific point of view on business ethics: business ethics is an integrating force in a socio-economic world which is much more complex than it used to be. In order to show the relevance of this point of view, he sketches some recent developments in the world of business. The examples he invokes should therefore serve to illustrate this tendency for ethics to act as an integrating force. However, I think one could also find examples which are less compatible with the developments he sets forth. The overall picture is selective, and gives what seems to me to be a rather optimistic account. Even the examples that are given could be interpreted in a less than encouraging way. I found some of the examples to be somewhat unclear. For instance, where it is a question of the link between an employee’s loyalty and security. Clearly, a feeling of insecurity will have negative effects on an employee’s productivity. An atmosphere in which the personnel are all engaged in looking for another job is hardly optimal. Likewise, the necessity to lower production costs does not always have to translate into job losses. Jeurissen believes that productivity can be increased by improving loyalty among the employees, but I have trouble imagining what such an ‘improved loyalty’ might consist of. One thinks spontaneously of ‘team-building’ activities where groups spend a weekend together engaged in exploits such as parachute jumping and the like. This kind of group activity does indeed have an effect on productivity, but any extra productivity is only obtained during a period of time outside regular working hours. There are people who would consider it a chore to take part in such an activity, and who would prefer to spend that time with their family. A second point made by Jeurissen is less innocuous. He claims that, in general, the hierarchical system of control is disappearing (but it is not very clear what this claim is based on). On the other hand, in describing economic changes, Jeurissen directs attention to the fact that companies are more and more shifting risks onto their employees. Short-term contracts, job flexibility and, at the limit, employees who are effectively independent sub-contractors competing amongst themselves where only the most productive are in a position to benefit are only some aspects of the increasing responsibility of employees. If the disappearance of hierarchical control is only the counterpart to this kind of risk displacement, then there is little reason for rejoicing. The article’s main thesis is this: ‘only an adequate ethics of responsibility can integrate a highly differentiated and ultra-complex society like ours.’ The corollary is that other, inadequate, forms of ethics cannot play such an integrating role, or at least not in the same way. I will not examine the question of how best to interpret this notion of integration; rather I propose to address two other questions: first of all, what is an adequate ethics of responsibility? And secondly, what are the other ethics, or the other integrating factors, which are destined to fail and therefore rejected? Following Bernard Williams, we can classify ethical theories according to the importance placed on one of the following three aspects: consequences, rights or virtues. Another way of drawing the same distinction is to say that ethics can concentrate on a state of affairs and judge an act either in function of its consequences on this state of affairs, or in function of the act’s intrinsic