Basing their claims on findings in the behavioral sciences that illuminate cognitive deficiencies, scholars spanning multiple disciplines argue that certain features of free market capitalist societies threaten human wellbeing, especially insofar as such societies are marked by a proliferation of consumer choices and incessant demands on decision making. This paper thus attempts three things. First, it outlines the criticisms of the expansive freedoms found in free market societies, based on those findings, in order to provide a reliable overview of the (...) shape of the critics’ concerns. Second, it surveys typical objections to these critics’ concerns, while also taking note of actual and anticipated counter-responses, in order to demonstrate why the debate about the value of those freedoms is not settled by those objections. Third, it argues that one objection remains that demands further debate and consideration before the critics’ choice restrictions should materialize. Namely, since there is solid evidence that entrepreneurship contributes to overall happy and healthy societies, and since the benefits of entrepreneurship are best realized in the types of societies marked by more expansive freedoms than the critics would countenance, the critics, who are concerned with general wellbeing, ought to consider the impact of their choice-restricting proposals on entrepreneurship. This paper does not claim that these critics offer baseless concerns about various threats to our wellbeing that arise from ample exercises of liberty, but it does argue that recognizing the role that entrepreneurship plays in fostering such wellbeing severely dampens the force of their implications for liberty. (shrink)

The concept of business responsibility, usually termed as corporate social responsibility (CSR), originated in the early 1930s after the Wall Street crash of 1929 exposed corporate irresponsibility in large organisations. The understanding of CSR has evolved since then and its scope has now broadened from mere compliance to corporate laws to active alignment of internal business goals with externally set societal aspirations. Unfortunately, the significance of this multidimensional concept within the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector has continued to be (...) overshadowed by its application in large and multinational organisations. More importantly, this has led to the practice of judging SMEs, which are experiencing increasing pressure to engage in social activities, as if they are no different from their larger counterparts. This study therefore investigates CSR from the perspective of SMEs in Australia without any theoretical presumptions and then comments on the relevance and applicability of the two theories that have been commonly used to investigate business responsibility, namely, stakeholder theory (ST) and social capital theory (SCT). The research findings indicate that CSR within the SME sector is more aligned to the fundamentals of SCT, mainly owing to the unique resource and survival challenges that they face, and which are, arguably, not so pronounced in large organisations. (shrink)

During the past twenty years, there has been an explosion of new interest in entrepreneurs and their activities. Yet only recently has serious research attention been devoted to the ethical problems encountered by entrepreneurs and their organizations. Entrepreneurs face uniquely complex moral problems related to basic fairness, personnel and customer relationships, distribution dilemmas, and other challenges. This essay surveys contemporary research in entrepreneurial ethics, examines the kinds of ethical dilemmas entrepreneurs confront, identifies major research topics and methodological approaches, and discusses (...) possible directions for future research. (shrink)

Corporate entrepreneurs -- described in the academic literature as those managers or employees who do not follow the status quo of their co-workers -- are depicted as visionaries who dream of taking the company in new directions. As a result, though, in overcoming internal obstacles to reaching their professional goals they can often walk a fine line between clever resourcefulness and outright rule breaking. A framework is presented as a guideline for middle managers and organizations seeking to impede unethical behaviors (...) in the pursuit of entrepreneurial activity. This paper examines the barriers middle managers face in trying to be entrepreneurial in less supportive environments, the ethical consequences that can result, and a suggested assessment and training program for averting such dilemmas. We advise companies that embrace corporate entrepreneurship: (1) establish the needed flexibility, innovation, and employee initiative and risk-taking; (2) remove the barriers that the entrepreneurial middle manager may face to more closely align personal and organizational initiatives and reduce the need to behave unethically; and (3) include an ethical component to corporate training which will provide guidelines for instituting compliance and values components into the state-of-the-art corporate entrepreneurship programs. (shrink)

The overall objective of this dissertation is to study moral entrepreneurship within animal and business ethics in relation to moral change. In particular the current capability in bringing about moral change and its potential to do so.