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Alain Anquetil
Dans RIMHE : Revue Interdisciplinaire Management, Homme & Entreprise 2013/5
(n° 9, vol. 2), pages 3 à 14
Éditions ARIMHE
ISSN 2259-2490
DOI 10.3917/rimhe.009.0003
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Alain ANQUETIL1
Abstract
The phrase ‘business ethics’ frequently evokes an incompatibility between business and ethics. Such
an incompatibility reflects a negative skeptical attitude regarding the possibility of an ethics in
business. This attitude raises in turn the following epistemological question: what was the influence
of skepticism on normative theories that have been built in business ethics? In this paper, it is argued
that skepticism have played a central and structuring role in normative theorization within this field.
For this purpose, and using examples taken from the business ethics literature, we will try to show
how business ethicists answer to this skepticism before exposing their theories and showing how they
can address it.
The argument will be presented in two steps. First, four species of skepticism will be considered. The
first one is ideological: it is based on a radical criticism of the foundations of the market economy.
The second kind of skepticism has an anti-theoretical dimension: it questions the practical relevance
of ethical theory. The third, which pertains to meta-ethics, is concerned with the view that moral
statements have no truth value and therefore lack any power of conviction. The fourth kind of
skepticism refers to an egoistic account of moral human motivations, which reduces significantly
the practical authority of morality.
The second step of the argument will deal with the answers that have been proposed in the business
ethics literature, especially within its normative branch, to these forms of skepticism. The meta-
ethical and egoistic kinds will be more specifically considered. The former kind is often summarized
by the phrase “separation thesis,” that is, the idea that business morality is less demanding than
common morality. One answer to the separation thesis has been advanced by Freeman. It consists
in changing the language with which business facts and practices are described. Another answer,
proposed by Solomon, is that economic and non-economic activities are part of a single community
governed by the same moral rules, and that each economic actor should consider himself as a member
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Key words : Business ethics, skepticism, normative theories, separation thesis, egoism.
Résumé
L’expression « éthique des affaires » évoque souvent une incompatibilité entre l’éthique et la vie
économique marchande. Cette incompatibilité reflète une attitude sceptique sur la possibilité d’une
éthique dans les affaires. Il en résulte une problématique épistémologique : celle de l’influence du
scepticisme sur les théories qui ont été élaborées dans le champ de l’éthique des affaires. Dans
cet article, nous défendons l’hypothèse selon laquelle une telle attitude sceptique a pu contribuer
à structurer les approches normatives proposées dans l’éthique des affaires. À cette fin, nous
montrerons à partir d’exemples issus de la littérature la manière dont les théoriciens répondent à ce
scepticisme avant de proposer des positions normatives.
Notre méthodologie se développera en deux temps. D’abord, nous distinguerons quatre formes de
scepticisme sur l’éthique dans les affaires : la première, idéologique, est fondée sur une critique des
fondements du système économique ; la seconde, anti-théorique, affirme que les théories morales
ont peu d’utilité car elles sont déconnectées des pratiques des acteurs ; la troisième, méta-éthique,
énonce que les principes moraux censés gouverner la vie des affaires sont dépourvus de valeur de
vérité, ce qui implique qu’ils n’ont pas un pouvoir de conviction suffisant ; la quatrième repose sur
une conception égoïste des motivations humaines qui compromet l’efficacité de l’éthique dans les
affaires.
Dans un second temps, nous traiterons des réponses apportées à ces formes de scepticisme. Nous
présenterons ainsi plusieurs éléments permettant de vérifier l’influence du scepticisme sur les
approches normatives de l’éthique des affaires. Nous traiterons en particulier des formes « méta-
éthique » et « liée à l’égoïsme de la nature humaine ». La forme méta-éthique peut être résumée
par la thèse de la séparation, qui affirme que la morale de la vie économique est séparée de la
morale ordinaire. Une réponse à la thèse de la séparation, due à Freeman, consiste à proposer
un nouveau langage pour décrire la vie économique. Une autre réponse, due à Solomon, est de
défendre l’idée que les activités économiques marchandes et les autres domaines de la vie humaine
font partie intégrante d’un même ensemble régi par les mêmes règles morales, et que chaque acteur
doit se penser lui-même comme membre d’une unique communauté morale. En ce qui concerne
le scepticisme lié à l’égoïsme de la nature humaine, deux réponses sont présentées. La première se
situe dans le champ du marketing. Proposée par Robin et Reichenbach, elle revient à concevoir la
morale des affaires comme un instrument de compensation des « sympathies limitées » dont font
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Mots clés : Éthique des affaires, scepticisme, théories normatives, thèse de la séparation, égoïsme.
Resumen
La expresión « ética de los negocios » evoca muchas veces una incompatibilidad entre la ética y
la vida económica mercantil. Esta incompatibilidad refleja una actitud escéptica a propósito de la
posibilidad de una ética en los negocios. De ello procede una problemática epistemológica : la de la
influencia del escepticismo a propósito de las teorías que se han elaborado en el ámbito de la ética
de los negocios. En este artículo, defendemos la hipótesis según la cual semejante actitud escéptica
ha podido contribuir a estructurar los enfoques normativos propuestos en la ética de los negocios.
Con este fin, demostraremos, a partir de ejemplos procedentes de la literatura, cómo reaccionan los
teóricos frente a este escepticismo antes de proponer orientaciones normativas.
Nuestra metodología se desarrollará en dos fases. En un principio, distinguiremos cuatro formas de
escepticismo sobre la ética de los negocios : la primera, ideológica, que se fundó en una crítica de los
fundamentos del sistema económica ; la segunda, antiteórica, afirma que las teorías morales tienen
poca utilidad porque se han desconectado de las prácticas de los actores; la tercera, metaética,
enuncia que los principios morales que supuestamente gobernan la vida de los negocios están
desprovistos de valor de verdad, lo que implica que no tienen un poder de convicción suficiente
; la cuarta se funda en una concepción egoísta de las motivaciones humanas que comprometen
la eficacia de la ética en los negocios. En un segundo tiempo, trataremos de las respuestas que se
dan a estas formas de escepticismo. Presentaremos así varios elementos que permiten comprobar
la influencia del escepticismo a propósito de los enfoques normativos de la ética de los negocios.
Trataremos en particular de las formas « metaética » y « vinculada al egoísmo de la naturaleza
humana ». La forma metaética puede resumirse por la tesis de la separación, que afirma que la moral
de la vida económica está alejada de la moral ordinaria. Una respuesta a la tesis de la separación,
que se debe a Freeman, consiste en proponer un nuevo lenguaje para describir la vida económica.
Otra respuesta, que se debe a Solomon, es defender la idea según la que las actividades económicas
mercantiles y los otros sectores de la vida humana forman parte íntegra de un mismo conjunto
regido por las mismas reglas morales, y cada actor tiene que pensarse a sí mismo como miembro
de una única comunidad moral. En lo que atañe al escepticismo relacionado con el egoísmo de
la naturaleza humana, se ofrecen dos respuestas. La primera se sitúa en el sector del marketing.
Propuesto por Robin y Reichenbach, consiste en considerar la moral de los negocios como un
instrumento de compensación de las « simpatías limitadas » que manifiestan los seres humanos. La
segunda respuesta, formulada por Sen, consiste en denunciar los fundamentos de la creencia según
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Palabras clave : Ética de los negocios, escepticismo, teorías normativas, tesis de la separación,
egoísmo.
Introduction
Moral skepticism has an important place in the academic field of business ethics.
It is not a radical skepticism such as the attitude which gave rise to skeptical
doubt in ancient philosophy, but rather an uncertainty about the possibility
of behaving morally and leading an ethical life in the context of business. The
skeptical attitude has of course a positive dimension. It corresponds to the
etymological meaning of the word “skeptical,” from the Greek skeptikos, which
means “examining, observing, reflective” (Godin, 2004, p. 1177). It refers also
to an essential aim of skepticism, that is, fighting dogmatic thought, especially
religious dogmatism. But the skeptical attitude has also a negative dimension.
It is particularly present in the normative edge of the business ethics literature,
which aims at building theories that describe the organizational conditions
allowing economic agents to act rightly and lead a good life. As it often appears,
such theorists begin by mentioning some sort of skepticism about the possibility
of establishing ethics in business – or at least their own interpretation of
skepticism – before exposing their theories and showing how they can address
it. Understanding the influence of the negative skeptical attitude on business
ethics is a complex task that we will not undertake here. Rather, we will try to
stress the way the skeptical attitude has been connected with some significant
normative conceptions in business ethics. In particular, we will try to underpin
the epistemological argument that the negative skeptical attitude regarding the
possibility of an ethics in business may have structured, of course partially, the
academic field of business ethics. This argument is rather hypothetical. There
is no guarantee that it can be empirically verified. Naturally, other factors have
shaped the field, such as the advent of a globalized economy, the diversity of
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Sweet, 1993) or the place of democracy within the firm (McMahon, 2010). The
second form of skepticism about the implementation of ethics in business may
be called “anti-theoretical.” Bertrand Russell (1925), who did not believe that
ethical knowledge can exist, proposed a striking example. In his view, desire is the
source or every human behavior. Moral injunctions, if regarded as independent
of desire, cannot produce any practical effect. We cannot appeal to and count
on any ethical theory in order to make a right decision, regardless of our desire.
“The superfluity of theoretical ethics is obvious in simple cases,” Russell writes
(1925, p. 129). “Suppose, for instance, your child is ill. Love makes you wish to
cure it, and science tells you how to do so. There is not an intermediate stage of
ethical theory, where it is demonstrated that your child had better be cured. Your
act springs directly from desire for an end, together with knowledge of means.”
It is important to see that Russell does not exclude normative analysis, as he
recommends that, in any choice, the expected consequences of the options be
assessed. But he denies the usefulness of ethical knowledge if it is independent
of desire. Such a rejection of ethical theory may foster a quite ordinary form of
skepticism with regard to the practical authority of morality. It has also been
observed within applied ethics, perhaps especially in business ethics. Arguments
against the practical relevance of ethical theory have often focused on the too
general character of normative conceptions stemming from moral philosophy,
such as utilitarianism and deontologism (Cavanagh, Moberg and Velasquez,
1995). Even if moral advice given by these conceptions often reflect ordinary
moral intuitions, such advice would in practice be ineffective in complex moral
decision-making.
Solomon (1992, p. 317) argues more generally that “a large part of the problem
is that it is by no means clear what a theory in business ethics is supposed to look
like or whether there is, as such, any such theoretical enterprise.” But he himself
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particular, with the meaning of moral terms, the truth value of moral statements
and the motivational power of ethical judgments. We will briefly deal with the
question of the truth value of moral statements.
Examining whether moral statements may be true or false is intuitively important
to explain skepticism about ethics in business. Scientific statements such as “Two
plus two equals four” and “Water boils at one hundred degrees Celsius (under
some initial conditions, i.e. at sea level)” are true. But is it the same for such
statements as “Corruption is morally wrong” or “Profits should be shared out
fairly among the stakeholders”? With regard to moral statements, emotivists
(as well as expressivists and prescriptivists) contend that such statements simply
express the speaker’s preferences. The agent who argues that “Corruption is
morally wrong” is not referring to a moral truth. She is only asserting her own
preference with respect to the problem of corruption. Moreover, by publicly
expressing her judgment, she is seeking to convince her hearers that her judgment
is right. Now, according to emotivism, moral statements articulated in a public
context, e.g. a public debate, lack the power to convince. They would certainly
be far more persuasive if they could be proven true as is the case for scientific
statements. Doubt about the truth value of moral statements assuredly plays a
role in the “moral muteness of managers,” a phrase devised by Frederick Bird
and James Waters (1989). They stress how difficult it is for managers to express
moral concerns in business contexts. Managers may even be led to remain silent
on some moral questions they are confronted with. Such a moral muteness may
be linked to the explicit or implicit belief that moral statements are less persuasive
than scientific statements because they only express subjective preferences. Added
to this is the belief that the public confrontation of moral statements expressing
the participants’ subjective preferences results in sterile and insoluble debates. If
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For instance, they suggest that the masculinist metaphor of hierarchy, which is
commonly and often unconsciously applied to organizational structures, should
be replaced by a metaphor, supposedly stemming from a feminist outlook,
emphasizing a “radical decentralization and worker empowerment” (Wicks,
Gilbert and Freeman, 1994, p. 491). Their perspective, also influenced by
pragmatism and postmodernism, is typical of an attempt to answer the deeply
rooted skepticism stemming from the separation thesis. In the first section of his
paper, Robert Solomon (1992) tackles various theoretical frameworks that have
been quite frequently invoked in order to set the foundations of business ethics.
After highlighting their imperfections, Solomon contends that business ethics
should be grounded on an Aristotelian moral philosophy. Such a framework
attaches much importance to the development of virtues within the firm
understood as a human community. But Solomon (1992) also offers a critique
of skepticism about the place of morality in business. In his view, this skepticism
is based on two prejudices. The first one stems from Aristotle’s distinction
between household management (oikonomia) and commerce with a view to
profit (chrematistike). The second type is oriented toward a purely mercantile
aim, viz. maximizing profit (Aristotle, Politics, 1257b4). Consequently, it is not
virtuous. As Solomon (1992, p. 321) reminds us, “Aristotle declared the latter
activity wholly devoid of virtue and called those who engaged in such purely
selfish practices ‘parasites’.” As for the second prejudice, which has a Christian
origin, it is expressed in a “contempt for finance.”
Such prejudices have helped to buttress the belief that business (understood
here as “profit as an end in itself ”) is governed by very specific moral rules, that
is, rules separate from those that govern the community. This is why Solomon
(1992) puts forward a holistic theory which views the market economy and other
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their “potentially most damaging effects” (Robin and Reidenbach, 1993, p. 100).
According to Robin and Reidenbach, the language of “limited sympathies” fits
well into marketing because marketers target particular segments of the market
while ignoring those segments, i.e. people, who are outside the target. Moreover,
they strive to satisfy exclusively the egoistic desires of those who are included
in market targets. Robin and Reidenbach present a definition of the object
of ethics that is worth quoting here because it refers to skepticism about the
supposedly egoistic nature of man: “Ethics is an attempt by human beings to use
their intelligence and capacity for reasoning to improve on the ‘law of the jungle’
conditions from which they evolved. Lower order animals lack this capacity and
must face conditions in which power, in the form of force, speed, and instinct, as
well as pure chance, dictates the length and quality of life. Power and chance are
obviously part of the human condition as well, and with the addition of increased
intelligence, the human capacity to use power is extended far beyond that found
in any jungle. The moral dictates of societies and organizations represent an
attempt to temper the use of power and perhaps at least reduce the grossest
impacts of chance” (1993, p. 100). We may recall the reference Solomon (1992)
makes to Milton Friedman (1970) in the passage quoted above.3 This famous
economist is often associated with Adam Smith, although for certain reasons
only, e.g. with regard to invisible hand arguments. And it is true that Smith has
(unwittingly) fed a form of skepticism based on the “virtuous” effects resulting
from supposedly self-interested economic agents.
In a famous section of The Wealth of Nations, Smith asserted that “It is not from
the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner,
but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their
humanity but to their self-love…” (Smith, 1776, p. 23-24). In Sen’s view (1993),
this passage has been misinterpreted. That is, the view that collective prosperity
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Conclusion
What we have tried to show in this paper is that different forms of skepticism
about ethics in business have played a central and structuring role in normative
theorization within the field of business ethics. Of course, the skepticism in
question is not a radical skepticism in a philosophical sense, rather an attitude
of doubt and suspicion toward the possibility of acting well and leading a good
life in the context of business. In the first part, we laid out some the forms that
skepticism may take. Then we proposed four examples from the normative side
of business ethics that illustrate the role played by the skeptical attitude – we
should say rather different forms of such attitudes – in the construction and
content of theories. At a minimum, as the previous examples show, skepticism,
or one of its forms, has been used as a heuristic device. The epistemological
hypothesis presented here has three limits which should be emphasized. The
first is that the presumed influence of skepticism is restricted here to the
normative branch of business ethics. Now, the discipline also includes a quite
well developed empirical branch. But it was deemed more relevant to attend to
the effects of the skeptical assumption specifically in the normative branch, as
theoretical contributions are more elaborate than in the empirical – a point that
will be not be expanded on here due to space limitations. The second limit comes
from the fact that we have not offered a systematic analysis of the influence
of skepticism on normative constructions in business ethics. However, we may
observe that the four examples mentioned in the previous part correspond to
significant and often-cited normative work in the discipline. In our opinion,
they are sufficiently developed to support the epistemological hypothesis we
argue for. The third limit relates to the absence of a well-established definition
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