IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsocec/v71y2013i2p209-227.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Principles as “Rules Of Thumb”: A Particularist Approach to Codes of Ethics and an Analysis of the Dutch Banking Code

Author

Listed:
  • Bastiaan van der Linden

Abstract

The rise of ethical codes suggests that such codes may enhance ethical behavior. However, research on ethical codes is far from univocally positive about this. Recently, in practical philosophy, particularists have argued against the idea that principles are important for ethics because principles express reasons for or against an action, whereas what is a reason for a certain action in one situation can be a reason against, or no reason at all, in another one. Nevertheless, according to particularists, the case for principles—and thus ethical codes—is not hopeless. Even if principles cannot capture the full complexity of reasons for action, they can help as “rules of thumb” to remember possibly important reasons. This paper develops a particularist approach to codes of ethics, and presents some conclusions about the conditions under which codes of ethics may enhance ethical behavior. An analysis of the Dutch banking code shows the usefulness of a particularist approach.

Suggested Citation

  • Bastiaan van der Linden, 2013. "Principles as “Rules Of Thumb”: A Particularist Approach to Codes of Ethics and an Analysis of the Dutch Banking Code," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 71(2), pages 209-227, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsocec:v:71:y:2013:i:2:p:209-227
    DOI: 10.1080/00346764.2013.799966
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00346764.2013.799966
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00346764.2013.799966?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. Boudewijn Bruin, 2016. "Pledging Integrity: Oaths as Forms of Business Ethics Management," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 136(1), pages 23-42, June.
    2. Øyvind Kvalnes & Salvör Nordal, 2019. "Normalization of Questionable Behavior: An Ethical Root of the Financial Crisis in Iceland," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 761-775, October.
    3. Tobias Beck & Christoph Bühren & Björn Frank & Elina Khachatryan, 2020. "Can Honesty Oaths, Peer Interaction, or Monitoring Mitigate Lying?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 163(3), pages 467-484, 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:taf:rsocec:v:71:y:2013:i:2:p:209-227. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RRSE20 .

    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.