IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buetqu/v1y1991i01p101-120_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Ethical Roots of Business Ethics

Author

Listed:
  • Vogel, David

Abstract

This paper traces the historical roots of some of our current preoccupations with the ethics of business. Its central argument is that many of the contemporary criteria that we use to evaluate the ethics of business are not new; rather, they date back several centuries. This paper illustrates this thesis by comparing historical and contemporary discussions of three sets of issues: the relationship between ethics and profits, the relationship between private gain and the public good and the tension between the results of capitalism and the intentions of businessmen.The fact that these tensions are inherent in the nature of capitalism, if not in human nature itself, does not make our contemporary concerns or standards any less valid. On the contrary, it underlies their significance. Contemporary discussions of business ethics constitute part of an ongoing moral dialogue with both deep secular and religious roots.

Suggested Citation

  • Vogel, David, 1991. "The Ethical Roots of Business Ethics," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 1(1), pages 101-120, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:1:y:1991:i:01:p:101-120_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1052150X00008812/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tyler Burch & Greg Murphy & Neil Tocher, 2019. "Entrepreneurship Education Enrollment Intentions: The Effect Of Attitudes, Norms And Personality," Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship (JDE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 24(03), pages 1-20, September.
    2. Saravana Jaikumar & Viswanath Pingali & Vineet Virmani, 2019. "Shareholders’ reaction to ethical image of sports teams: an event study in the Indian Premier League," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 46(4), pages 283-300, December.
    3. Carlo Ludovico Cordasco, 2024. "The Ethics of Entrepreneurship: A Millian Approach," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 191(2), pages 217-229, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:1:y:1991:i:01:p:101-120_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/beq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.