IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/buetqu/v25y2015i04p489-516_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can Hypernorms Be Justified? Insights From A Discourse–Ethical Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Scherer, Andreas Georg

Abstract

I explore the role of hypernorms in the Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) of Thomas Donaldson and Thomas W. Dunfee, who suggested that hypernorms are a necessary condition for the rejection of cultural relativism and justification of moral norms within and across social communities. Hypernorms are, thus, a significant part of a conception of international business ethics. I highlight philosophical problems that emerge in attempts to identify and justify hypernorms. These problems have not been sufficiently addressed in the ISCT; therefore, I will discuss the discourse–ethical contributions of contemporary German philosophers toward resolving the justification problem with regards to universal norms. Discourse ethics builds on the linguistic and the pragmatic turns in philosophy and develops procedural rules for the assessment of norms. I explore variants of discourse ethics with regards to their concept of justification and discuss the implications of discourse ethical procedures for the justification of norms and actions.

Suggested Citation

  • Scherer, Andreas Georg, 2015. "Can Hypernorms Be Justified? Insights From A Discourse–Ethical Perspective," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(4), pages 489-516, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:25:y:2015:i:04:p:489-516_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1052150X15000366/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Roger Leonard Burritt & Katherine Leanne Christ & Hussain Gulzar Rammal & Stefan Schaltegger, 2020. "Multinational Enterprise Strategies for Addressing Sustainability: the Need for Consolidation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(2), pages 389-410, June.
    2. George G. Brenkert, 2019. "Mind the Gap! The Challenges and Limits of (Global) Business Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(4), pages 917-930, April.
    3. Ulrich Leicht-Deobald & Thorsten Busch & Christoph Schank & Antoinette Weibel & Simon Schafheitle & Isabelle Wildhaber & Gabriel Kasper, 2019. "The Challenges of Algorithm-Based HR Decision-Making for Personal Integrity," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 377-392, December.
    4. Fabrizio Ferraro & Daniel Beunza, 2018. "Creating Common Ground: A Communicative Action Model of Dialogue in Shareholder Engagement," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(6), pages 1187-1207, December.
    5. Livia Levine, 2019. "Digital Trust and Cooperation with an Integrative Digital Social Contract," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(2), pages 393-407, December.
    6. Tolga Ulusemre & Xin Fang, 2022. "How do Expatriate Managers Draw the Boundaries of Moral Free Space in the Case of Guanxi?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 176(2), pages 311-324, March.
    7. Federico Ast, 2019. "The Deliberative Test, a New Procedural Method for Ethical Decision Making in Integrative Social Contracts Theory," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 155(1), pages 207-221, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:buetqu:v:25:y:2015:i:04:p:489-516_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/beq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.