The Autonomy of the Contracting Partners: An Argument for Heuristic Contractarian Business Ethics

Journal of Business Ethics 68 (3):347 - 361 (2006)
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Abstract

Due to the domain characteristics of business ethics, a contractarian theory for business ethics will need to be essentially different from the contract model as it is applied to other domains. Much of the current criticism of contractarian business ethics (CBE) can be traced back to autonomy, one of its three boundary conditions. After explaining why autonomy is so important, this article considers the notion carefully vis à vis the contracting partners in the contractarian approaches in business ethics. Autonomy is too demanding a condition for the realm of CBE. But a less stringent version of the contract may be possible, a version which uses the contract as a heuristic device, which merely requires moral responsibility. Furthermore, it is argued that views of (human) agency and the moral subject should be made explicit in such a theory.

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References found in this work

What we owe to each other.Thomas Scanlon - 1998 - Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals.Immanuel Kant - 1785 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Thomas E. Hill & Arnulf Zweig.
Leviathan.Thomas Hobbes - 1651 - Harmondsworth,: Penguin Books. Edited by C. B. Macpherson.
What We Owe to Each Other.Thomas Scanlon - 2002 - Mind 111 (442):323-354.

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