The Foundations of Business Ethics

In Corporate and White-Collar Crime. pp. 81-101 (2008)
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Abstract

While theoretically, egoism may be considered one kind of ethics, generally speaking, egoism, defined as self-interest at the expense of others, is contrary to the central principles of ethics, which are, in the main, other-directed. While Adam Smith's economics is famously argued to serve both self and other, the core thesis of this chapter is that Adam Smith's position is seriously flawed. The chapter argues that self-interest economics is fundamentally flawed and needs to be replaced by an objective, value-based economics. It is shown that Adam Smith's notions of humans as simultaneously ethical beings and beings who pursue their self-interest are contradictory. Economics cannot exist for the sake of itself: it must exist for the sake of a higher end.

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Robert E. Allinson
Soka University

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