Open Access
Subscription Access
Open Access
Subscription Access
The Oxymoron that is 'Business Ethics'
Subscribe/Renew Journal
The process of capitalism has again come under scrutiny. Working under the basic assumption that the divergences between the "creators" of value in an industrial organization are different from the "appropriators" of value, certain factors come out in the moral and ethical framework of society. The paper argues in its seven propositions that perhaps the basic inequities in today's society are the result of fundamental flaws in the concept of capitalism as we understand it today. This would range from the choice of technology, separation of labor from the means of production, the problems of price and value, the application of CSR, and of course the use of strategy itself to gain market share and to increase profitability. Some suggestions are made on the way forward to resolve this imbroglio.
Keywords
Capitalism, Ethics, Contradictions, Business Models.
User
Information
- Badaracco J. L. and Webb, A. P. (1995), Business Ethics: A View from the Trenches, California Management Review, 37(2): 8-28.
- Becker, G. (1992), An Economic Approach to Human Behavior, Nobel Prize Lecture, Published by Brookings, 1996.
- Burke, L. and Logsdon, J. M. (1996), How Corporate Social Responsibility Pays Off, Long Range Planning, 29(4): 495-502.
- Dobb, Maurice (1955), On Economic Theory and Socialism, Chapter IIIc, Rutledge & Kagan Paul Ltd, London.
- Drucker, P. (1954), The Practice of Management, Reissue Edition (October 3, 2006), pp. 37, Harper Business.
- Drucker, P. (1973), Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, Reprint Edition (1993), pp. 39, Harper & Row Management Library, Harper Business.
- Drucker, P. (1994), The Theory of Business, Harvard Business Review, Sept-Oct: 95-104.
- Friedman, M. (1970), The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Profits, The New York Times Magazine, September 12.
- Gandhi, M. K. (1960), Trusteeship, Navajeevan Trust, Ahmedabad.
- Hicks, J. R. (1963), The Theory of Wages (2nd Ed), Macmillan, London.
- Kaldor, N. (1934), A Classificatory Note on the Determination of Equilibrium, Review of Economic Studies, 1 (February): 122-36.
- Lange, O. (1935), Marxian Economics and Modern Theory, Review of Economic Studies, 2(3): 189-201.
- Levitt, T. (1958), The Danger of Social Responsibility, Harvard Business Review, Sept-Oct: 41-50.
- Levitt, T. (1980), Marketing Success through Differentiation…of anything, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb: 83-91.
- Little, I. M. D. and Mirlees, J. A. (1974) Appraisal and Planning for Developing Countries, Basic Books, New York.
- Marshall, Alfred (1890), Principles of Economics (Revised Ed) Macmillan. Reprinted by Prometheus Books (1997).
- Marx, Karl (1867), Capital, Volume 1, Penguin Books, New York (1976).
- Piketty, T. (2014), Capital in the Twenty-First Century, The Bleknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA.
- Porter, M. E. (1979), How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy, Harvard Business Review, March-April: 137-145.
- Prasad, A. (2005), CSR as Nash Equilibrium, Journal of Management Research, 5(2), 59-71.
- Prasad, A. (2010), Strategy as “Inferior” Choice, Journal of Management Research, 10(1), 15-24.
- Robbins, L. (1932), The Subject Matter Of Economics: An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, Macmillan & Co.,London.
- Schumpeter, Joseph A. (1942), Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Routledge, London.
- Sen, A. K. (1962), The Choice of Techniques, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
- Titmuss, R. (1971), The Gift Of Blood, Society, 8(3): 18-26.
- Toynbee, A. J. (1953), The World and the West, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Vieta, Marco (2010), The New Cooperativism, Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, 4(1): ??-??.
- Weber, Max (1905), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Merchant Books (2013).
- Weber, Max (1947), The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, The Free Press, New York.
Abstract Views: 536
PDF Views: 11