IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v133y2016i1p165-178.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On Firms and the Next Generations: Difficulties and Possibilities for Business Ethics Inquiry

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Arenas
  • Pablo Rodrigo

Abstract

Despite the centrality of the topic for the debate on sustainability, future generations have largely been ignored by business ethics. This neglect is in part due to the enormous philosophical challenges posed by the concepts of future generations and intergenerational duties. This article reviews some of these difficulties and defends that much clarity would be gained from making a distinction between future generations and the next generations. It also argues that the concept of next generations offers a better starting point for business ethics to incorporate the topic in its research agenda. We then suggest four potential pathways to explore this territory. The four approaches build on the notion of organizations as communities with memory and vision, on the narrative shape of organizational life, on the affinity of stakeholders with the next generation, and on systems of indirect reciprocity. These first two approaches are connected to communitarian approaches to business ethics, and the last two engage in a dialog with contractarian views and stakeholder theory. The article ends with some implications for theory and practice. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Arenas & Pablo Rodrigo, 2016. "On Firms and the Next Generations: Difficulties and Possibilities for Business Ethics Inquiry," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 133(1), pages 165-178, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:133:y:2016:i:1:p:165-178
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2348-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-014-2348-8
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-014-2348-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Xiangyu Chang & Yinghui Huang & Mei Li & Xin Bo & Subodha Kumar, 2021. "Efficient Detection of Environmental Violators: A Big Data Approach," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(5), pages 1246-1270, May.
    2. Kévin André & Sylvain Bureau & Arthur Gautier & Olivier Rubel, 2017. "Beyond the Opposition Between Altruism and Self-interest: Reciprocal Giving in Reward-Based Crowdfunding," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 146(2), pages 313-332, December.
    3. Rob Macklin & Karin Mathison, 2018. "Embedding Ethics: Dialogic Partnerships and Communitarian Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 153(1), pages 133-145, November.
    4. Diego F. Uribe & Isabel Ortiz-Marcos & Ángel Uruburu, 2018. "What Is Going on with Stakeholder Theory in Project Management Literature? A Symbiotic Relationship for Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-23, April.
    5. Giuseppe Danese, 2017. "A social contract approach to sustainability," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 64(4), pages 327-339, December.

    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:kap:jbuset:v:133:y:2016:i:1:p:165-178. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.