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Millennial Reservations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Lisa H. Newton
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Abstract:

The decade in which the Business Ethics Quarterly has flourished has been a good one for business and business ethics, in which new guiding theories (like stakeholder theory), new interpretations of older ethical concepts (trust, virtue, and the social contract, for instance), and whole new paradigms of doing business (the Triple Bottom Line) have entered the literature. But practice has not kept up with theory, and the theoretical gains seem to be offset by terrible losses in the temperance of greed, the fostering of trustworthiness, and sensitivity to the natural environment.

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Articles
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Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , January 2000, pp. 291 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2000

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References

1 Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits,” The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970, pp. 33ff.

2 R. Edward Freeman, “The Politics of Stakeholder Theory: Some Future Directions,” Business Ethics Quarterly 4 (1994): 409–421.

3 Plato, The Last Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, trans. Tredennick, ed. Tarrant (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 88, 51d.

4 Leviathan (1621) (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1950).

5 “Second Treatise of Civil Government,” in Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1789), intro and notes by Peter Laslett (New York: New American Library, 1960).

6 The Social Contract (1762), ed. and intro Lester G. Crocker (New York: Washington Square Press, 1967).

7 See, for starters, Thomas Donaldson, Corporations and Morality (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1982).

8 Thomas W. Dunfee, “Introduction to the Special Issue on Social Contracts and Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 167–171, p. 167.

9 Edward J. Conry, “A Critique of Social Contracts for Business,” Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 187–212, p. 207. Emphasis supplied.

10 Thomas W. Dunfee and Thomas Donaldson, “Contractarian Business Ethics: Current Status and Next Steps,” Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 173–186, p. 181.

11 Diana C. Robertson and William T. Ross, “Decision-Making Processes on Ethical Issues: The Impact of a Social Contract Perspective,” Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 213–240.

12 Karl N. Llewellyn, “What Price Contract? An Essay in Perspective,” Yale Law Journal 40 (1931): 704–751, cited in Michael Keeley, “Continuing the Social Contract Tradition,” Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 241–256, p. 247. Impartiality: Keeley, pp. 249–253.

13 Thomas Donaldson, The Ethics of International Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

14 Business Ethics Quarterly 2 (1992): 271–282.

15 Richard T. De George, Competing With Integrity in International Business (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

16 De George, “International Business Ethics,” Business Ethics Quarterly 4 (1994): 1–9, p. 1.

17 Which is why I never understood LaRue Tone Hosmer’s Special Report in the July 1996 issue, even though he said some nice things about me, in which the distinction between “article” and “response” becomes absolutely crucial. Who cares who started the conversation? The quality of the participants is the key to the quality of the exchange, and that has been excellent.

18 Volume 7 (1997), led off by Leonard J. Weber, “Ethics and the Political Activity of Business: Reviving the Agenda,” pp. 71–80.

19 Volume 5 (1995), led off by “Ethics and Leadership: the 1990s,” pp. 1–3.

20 Laura Westra, “The Corporation and the Environment,” Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 661–673.

21 George G. Brenkert, “The Environment, The Moralist, The Corporation and Its Culture,” Business Ethics Quarterly 5 (1995): 675–697.

22 For an account of the events that led up to the adoption of Responsible Care® in the chemicals industry, and a rather more adequate account of how it works, see Lisa H. Newton and David P. Schmidt, Wake-Up Calls (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1991).

23 John Elkington, Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (Stony Creek, Conn.: New Society Publishers, 1998). I’m not going to try to explain the title.

24 AP dispatch, April 21, Cleveland. “Welch Defends Pay: Ratio Proposal Rejected by Shareholders,” Connecticut Post, Thursday, April 22, 1999, pp. C1–C2. At the same meeting the Dominican and Maryknoll Sisters urged GE to do something related to the PCBs they’d left in the Hudson River; Welch insisted that GE met all environmental standards and besides PCBs weren’t that harmful.

25 Peter Elstrom, “Mike Armstrong’s Strong Showing,” Continental, April 1999, pp. 43– 45 (reprinted from Business Week).

26 Frank Partnoy, FIASCO: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), pp. 63–65.

27 Ibid. Emphasis in original.

28 Ibid., p. 133.

29 Ibid., p. 60.

30 Ibid., pp. 60–61.

31 Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, p. 95. This section was originally a column in The New York Times. It scared me then, too.

32 You read it in The Ecologist (“In Brief,” Vol. 28, No. 6, November/December 1998, p. 2).

33 The New York Times Magazine, May 9, 1999, pp. 54–57.