Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-qxdb6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T23:10:00.962Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Defending the Stockholder Model: A Comment on Hasnas, and on Dunfee’s Mom

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

John Dobson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Here I synthesize certain ideas presented in two different articles that appeared in the same issue of Business Ethics Quarterly. One article (Hasnas) invokes the stockholder model as a valid normative theory of business ethics, the other article (Dunfee) invokes a marketplace of morality. Both articles imply that the accepted financial-economic view of the firm is a view that can accommodate ethics. I offer empirical support for this view. I also identify the ethic of the stockholder model as a variant on might-makes-right and consider the social acceptance of this ethic as a postmodern phenomenon.

Type
Response Article
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1999 , pp. 337 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bartlett, Christopher A., and Ghoshal, Sumantra, 1989. Managing Across Borders. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press.Google Scholar
Bowen, Sally, 1998. “People Power Keeps Peru’s Investors in Check.” Financial Times, Friday, February 6. P. 6.Google Scholar
Chambers, Donald R., and Lacey, Nelson J., 1996. “Corporate Ethics and Shareholder Wealth Maximization.” Financial Practice and Education 3, no. 2 (Spring/Summer): 93–96.Google Scholar
Cozine, Robert, 1998. “More Top Shell Jobs For Women.” Financial Times, Tuesday, January 13. P. 17.Google Scholar
Donaldson, Thomas, 1989. The Ethics of International Business. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dunfee, W. Thomas, 1998. “The Marketplace of Morality: Small Steps Toward a Theory of Moral Choice.” Business Ethics Quarterly 8, no. 1 (January): 127–146.Google Scholar
Friedman, Milton, 1970. “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” The New York Times Magazine. Reprinted in Business Ethics, by Hoffman, W. M. and Moore, J. M.New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990. Pp. 153–156.Google Scholar
Hasnas, John, 1998. “The Normative Theories of Business Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed.” Business Ethics Quarterly 8, no. 1 (January): 19–42.Google Scholar
Jensen, M. C., and Meckling, W. H., 1976. “Theory of The Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure.” Journal of Financial Economics 3, no. 4 (October): 305–360.Google Scholar
Johnson, Elmer W., 1997. “Corporate Soulcraft in the Age of Brutal Markets.” Business Ethics Quarterly 7, no. 4 (October): 109–124.Google Scholar
Klein, Sherwin, 1998. “Don Quixote and the Problem of Idealism and Realism in Business Ethics.” Business Ethics Quarterly 8, no. 1 (January): 43–64.Google Scholar
Leavis, F. R., ed., 1950. Mill on Bentham and Coleridge. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1988. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1967. The Will to Power, ed. Kaufmann, Walter, trans. Kaufmann, Walter and Hollingdale, R. J.New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Willman, John, 1998. “Large Scoops of Social Values.” Financial Times, Monday, February 9, p. 8.Google Scholar