Introduction: Ethics and Justice
This book collects my thoughts on the relationship between morality and economics. I have been mulling over this issue for a long time, since the mid 1980s, when I wrote the introduction to a collection of works of seminal importance [1] edited by Hopt an
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Introduction: Ethics and Justice
This book collects my thoughts on the relationship between morality and economics. I have been mulling over this issue for a long time, since the mid 1980s, when I wrote the introduction to a collection of works of seminal importance [1] edited by Hopt and Teubner. It was their work which prompted my research, and its outcome was a number of papers that opened a new stage in my thoughts on this theme [2]. In essence, I realised the need to consider the philosophical dimension of the relationship between morality and the most significant, modern, social aggregate of economic action, that is, the firm. At the international scale, the approach to this relationship has been nothing more than intellectual speculation, and the only objections to the prevailing technical perspective have come from the German and French thinkers Luhmann and Habermas, on the one hand, and from the phenomenologist Ricouer, on the other. Objections can also be found in the work of Anglo-Saxon philosophers of law—such as Lyons and Green. This misconception has downscaled the issue to the purely economic sphere, and we are now perceiving its negative consequences at the social, moral and institutional level.
G. Sapelli, Morality and Corporate Governance: Firm Integrity and Spheres of Justice, DOI 10.1007/978-88-470-2784-8_1, # Springer-Verlag Italia 2013
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1 Introduction: Ethics and Justice
There is ongoing debate on ethical ratings: a shift from “theory” to action. . . economic action, precisely. Agencies and companies assign ratings to firms. They also sell firms, a procedure to implement their ethical organisation. But is not an organisation made first and foremost by people rather than by systems? Can ethics be reduced to “packages” offered by consultants? “Ethical” funds are sold on the financial markets. These funds are fashionable in the new, well-off classes, but they are also appreciated by well-intentioned firms, lured by the merchants of the temple. There is also talk about attributing “ethical” certification coupons, “assigned” and “maintained” by diligent consultants. These coupons would be the pass to obtain contracts and permits, to participate in associations and so on. There is confusion on the concepts of reputation and morality, on the one hand, and on the concepts of reputation and ethics, on the other hand. This is just as dangerous as confusing the meanings of reputation and image. Reputation is what citizens and markets think of a firm. It is the outcome of staunch loyalty to ethical principles, which must inevitably contend with the changes in the ideals that upset human aggregates. For example, let’s ask ourselves the following question: would a firm investing in nuclear funds have a good reputation today? The answer is simple: its reputation would not be damaged if the investment was made in France, but it surely would be damaged if the investment were made in Italy. The image of a firm is different. It is the result of a masterly advertising operation. It can be built much mor
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