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Weaning Business Ethics from Strategic Economism: The Development Ethics Perspective

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Abstract

For more than three decades, business ethics has suggested and evaluated strategies for multinationals to address abject deprivations and weak regulatory institutions in developing countries. Critical appraisals, internal and external, have observed these concerns being severely constrained by the overwhelming prioritization of economic values, i.e., economism. Recent contributions to business ethics stress a re-imagination of the field wherein economic goals are downgraded and more attention given to redistribution of wealth and well-being of the weaker individuals and groups. Development ethics, a lesser known field of normative enquiry, already offers nuanced justifications against economism which business ethicists can use in their current attempts to wean the field from old habits.

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Notes

  1. Although, the idea that business must contribute to society is much older (De Bakker et al. 2005; Garriga and Melé 2004; Husted and Allen 2000), I have taken the launch of the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE) in 1982 as the starting point, for a specialist journal represents the emergence of a self-conscious field. The review of contributions focusing on developing countries that follows in later sections is largely limited to contributions to the JBE and Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ); these journals have been suggested earlier as acceptable indicators of current trends in business ethics scholarship (Talukdar 2011; Collins 2000).

  2. Retrieved from: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/economism. Accessed on April 11 2011.

  3. Of course, the majority of these contributions can be considered to be voices of Americans shocked by the role of their corporations in destroying lives and futures of their countrymen, in some cases by adopting attitudes they themselves may have espoused. See Marens (2010) for an historical overview of the influences of American political economy on the generation of ideas within business ethics. But the overall stress on securing the well-being of societies from insidious corporate misconduct is applicable in almost any context in the world.

  4. Though these philosophers do not identify themselves explicitly as development ethicists, since they position themselves as aiming to reorient social ethics as such, normative analysis of development without references to their work are rare (Drydyk 2011). Further, being a new and interdisciplinary field of attention, development ethicists do not necessarily associate themselves solely with development ethics. See the website of International Development Ethics Association (IDEA) and contributions to its partner Journal of Global Ethics.

  5. Gasper (2010b) observes that though “well-being” is used when we speak in terms of individuals and “quality of life” when we speak of societies, their meanings overlap. The former terms comes from psychology while the latter from sociology and social policy. Though the fine-grained differences in human well beings and qualities of life offered in development ethics is significant for business ethics, considering the introductory purpose this paper is intended to serve, these variations are not separately tackled.

  6. As Gasper (2008) and Crocker (2006) observe, Goulet had anticipated the capabilities approach before Sen, Haq or Nussbaum. It is evident in his observation—“authentic development aims toward the realization of human capabilities in all spheres” (Goulet 1971, quoted in Gasper 2008, p. 454).

  7. The impact of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice is deeply felt in most contemporary ethical theorizing that links moral philosophy to the social sciences (Coleman 1974), and development ethics is no exception. Central contributors to development ethics, including Sen and Nussbaum, have developed their theories against the backdrop of Rawlsian notions of a just society and individual capacities, extending its application to unique contexts in developing countries characterized by extreme diversity, resource scarcity, and historic forms of oppressions (Sen 2009; Nussbaum 2006a, b, 2011a, b). Rawlsian political philosophy is also pivotal in discussions among philosophers of the role of global institutions regulating distribution of wealth from rich to developing nations, since most of the flow is in the other direction (see, Pogge 2003).

  8. It is impossible to do justice to Sen’s and Nussbaum’s widely discussed and complex contributions to development ethics in this short space; for extended treatments, refer to Gasper (2004), (1997), Gasper (2013); Alkire (2002), and Crocker (1992).

  9. Summarizing Galtung (1979), the idea of basic needs was proposed as an alternative to the New International Economic Order (NIEO) intended to correct international trade imbalances considered to be skewed in favor of the advanced nations as a result of colonialism. The politicians and the elite in developing countries were, and still are, champions of the NIEO as they stood to benefit from increased trade and production in their countries. The basic needs approach (BNA) emanated in intellectual circles concerned with the lack of equitable distribution of the benefits of development within these newly independent countries; these scholars argued that basic needs of the poor be met as a condition for access to the lucrative global trade system. The elite in the developing countries often vociferously objected to these demands and interpreted these demands as surreptitious plots by advanced nations to maintain the advantages they could, in previous centuries, maintain by force (Galtung 1979).

  10. Later works on basic needs have, in turn, drawn from Sen’s insights. For instance, Doyal and Gough use Sen’s insights to distinguish between universal needs and “culturally-sensitive satisfiers” to indicate the level of satisfaction basic needs: “Basic needs, then, are always universal but their satisfiers are often relative”(Doyal and Gough 1991, p. 155).

  11. ‘Direct violence is an event; structural violence is a process with ups and downs; cultural violence is an invariant, a permanence remaining essentially the same for long periods, given the slow transformations of basic culture” (Galtung 1990, p. 293). Galtung uses the metaphor of earthquakes as direct violence, movement of tectonic plates as structural violence, and the fault lines as cultural features.

  12. Margolis and Walsh (2003) draw extensively on Nussbaum’s (1986) position on the incommensurability of values to build their approach to balance economic and social goals. Their acknowledgement of the tragedy of the human condition is compatible with the fundamental tenets of development ethics.

  13. Rights are a “major set of tools in the political struggles to claim fulfillment of needs” (Gasper 2005, p. 231). There are differences in the use of the terms—rights are used in legal and humanitarian worlds and needs for policy making and planning purposes (Gasper 2005). The differences in usage obscure the shared structure of both needs and rights language as concerning an intermediate requirement to attain an acceptable level of human existence. However, “rights” are understood as justified claims of individuals while “needs” are criteria used to allocate resources. (ibid).

  14. Their ethics of conducting deliberations involves an early identification of stakeholders, prior distribution of project information, facilitation of negotiations, and management of resettlement when required, good governance, and avoiding corruption (Penz, et al. 2011). Any change to the existing a living pattern of a community can be justified only if the supporters of a change can prove that (1) the new development is authentic development, (2) the development improves an existing barrier to well-being, (3) alternatives have been considered, and (4) fair deliberations were held to arrive at the decision. These are conditions more stringent and steps more explicit than what is currently available in business ethics (Byrne 2012; Kemp et al. 2011; Gilbert and Behnam 2008).

  15. It is quite surprising that business ethicists continued developing theories on the basis of a premise that academic opinion in global sociology and political economy on globalization had already concluded was a myth; rather the overwhelming evidence pointed to a reoriented but centrally relevant state (Hay 2005; Djelic and Quack 2003; Sassen 2000; Hirst 1997; Dicken 1994).

  16. Drawing interesting parallels between the past decades of business ethics scholarship and seventeenth century Britain, Marens (2007) argues that a majority of business ethicists who prefer the language of contracts tend to adopt Lockean versions of social contracts due to the match with the elitist purpose (protection of private property) Locke intended to serve. Adoption of a broader Rawlsian version, explicitly focusing on redistribution of wealth (the difference principle) also risks repelling the consumers (and/or funders) of business schools (Marens 2007). There are, of course, business ethicists like Hsieh (2009) who adopt Rawlsian versions of social contract. Development ethics, as noted earlier, believe even Rawlsian contracts require supplementing (cf. Sen 2009; Nussbaum 2004, Pogge 2003).

  17. The clients, many of whom were workers living in shanty towns were, according to market principles, assumed to be capable of making decisions on what is good for them. It was only after some poor workers started gambling away their monthly income and adversely affected the lives of family members, including children and elderly, the government stepped into pressure corporations to responsible to adapt and publicize the risks (Gasper 2004).

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  1. Neptunusstraat 142, 2586 GX, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil

  2. Indian Institute of Management, Tiruchirapalli, 620015, India

    Prabhir Vishnu Poruthiyil

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Poruthiyil, P.V. Weaning Business Ethics from Strategic Economism: The Development Ethics Perspective. J Bus Ethics 116, 735–749 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1818-8

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