The movement for reforming American business ethics: A twenty-year perspective (original) (raw)

1992, Journal of Business Ethics

This paper presents a succinct review of" the movement for moral genesis in business that arose in the 1970s. The moral genesis movement is characterized by: (a) the rejection of-the premise that business and ethics are antagonistic; (b) the rise of the Issues Management approach, Rejection of the premise that business and morality are antithetical In contrast to the prevailing premise that business and ethics are rivals, recent publications and research findings give evidence to the argument that, in the long run, adopted ethical practices are more beneficial than they are determintal. In The Hard Problems of Management: Gaining the Ethics Edge, Mark Pastin provided a list of 25 "high ethics-high profit" organizations. These highly-ethical corporations include Cadbury-Schweppes, Atlantic Richfield, Motorola, Northern Chemical Co., and Apple Computers. High ethics/high profit corporations are characterized by an obsession with fairness and a commitment to their social enviromnent. They feel at ease interacting with diverse internal and external stakeholder groups (e.g., employees, shareholders, suppliers, consumers, government and special interest groups), and act under the proposition that the good of these groups is inseparable from their own good. In these firms, individuals assume personal responsibility for the actions of the firm. James O'Toole, the author of Vanguard Management: Redesigning the Corporation Future, characterizes