IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v67y2006i1p1-14.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reframing “Morality Paysâ€\x9D: Toward a Better Answer to “Why be Moral?â€\x9D in Business

Author

Listed:
  • John Corvino

Abstract

This paper revisits the “morality paysâ€\x9D approach to answering the “Why be moral?â€\x9D question in business. First I argue that “morality paysâ€\x9D is weakest when it needs to be strongest, and thus inadequate to the task. Then I examine and reject a proposed virtue-ethics alternative, arguing that it either collapses into “morality paysâ€\x9D or else introduces a new problem. After sketching an account of moral reasons, I go on to argue that “morality paysâ€\x9D can be reframed, not so much as an answer to “Why be moral,â€\x9D but as a prescription for reforming corporate institutions. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2006

Suggested Citation

  • John Corvino, 2006. "Reframing “Morality Paysâ€\x9D: Toward a Better Answer to “Why be Moral?â€\x9D in Business," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 67(1), pages 1-14, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:67:y:2006:i:1:p:1-14
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9001-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-006-9001-0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-006-9001-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paine, Lynn Sharp, 2000. "Does Ethics Pay?," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(1), pages 319-330, January.
    2. Spurgin, Earl W., 2004. "Looking for Answers in All the Wrong Places," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(2), pages 293-313, April.
    3. Toenjes, Richard H., 2002. "Why be Moral in Business? A Rawlsian Approach to Moral Motivation," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 57-72, January.
    4. Freeman, R. Edward, 1994. "The Politics of Stakeholder Theory: Some Future Directions1," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(4), pages 409-421, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Matthew Caulfield, 2021. "Pay Secrecy, Discrimination, and Autonomy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(2), pages 399-420, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carol A. Adams & Glen Whelan, 2009. "Conceptualising future change in corporate sustainability reporting," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 22(1), pages 118-143, January.
    2. Andrew Lynn, 2022. "Ethics, Economics, and the Specter of Naturalism: The Enduring Relevance of the Harmony Doctrine School of Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(3), pages 661-673, July.
    3. Ruben Burga & Davar Rezania, 2016. "Stakeholder theory in social entrepreneurship: a descriptive case study," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 6(1), pages 1-15, December.
    4. Wei Peng & Baogui Xin & Yekyung Kwon, 2019. "Optimal Strategies of Product Price, Quality, and Corporate Environmental Responsibility," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(23), pages 1-24, November.
    5. Kazadi, Kande & Lievens, Annouk & Mahr, Dominik, 2016. "Stakeholder co-creation during the innovation process: Identifying capabilities for knowledge creation among multiple stakeholders," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 525-540.
    6. WANG Jifu & GUPTA Vipin & LYBOLT Liza & WANG Xiuli, 2022. "Corrected Game Model In Csr: Mnc Strategies And Chinese Practice," Studies in Business and Economics, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Faculty of Economic Sciences, vol. 17(3), pages 269-287, December.
    7. Nir Halevy & Sora Jun & Eileen Y. Chou, 2020. "Intergroup Conflict is Our Business: CEOs’ Ethical Intergroup Leadership Fuels Stakeholder Support for Corporate Intergroup Responsibility," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 162(1), pages 229-246, February.
    8. Lamin B. Ceesay, 2020. "Exploring the Influence of NGOs in Corporate Sustainability Adoption: Institutional-Legitimacy Perspective," Jindal Journal of Business Research, , vol. 9(2), pages 135-147, December.
    9. Müllner, Jakob & Puck, Jonas, 2018. "Towards a holistic framework of MNE–state bargaining: A formal model and case-based analysis," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 15-26.
    10. Ayman Hassan Bazhair & Mohammed Naif Alshareef, 2022. "Dynamic relationship between ownership structure and financial performance: a Saudi experience," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 2098636-209, December.
    11. Luciana Maines da Silva & Claudia Cristina Bitencourt & Kadígia Faccin & Tatiana Iakovleva, 2019. "The Role of Stakeholders in the Context of Responsible Innovation: A Meta-Synthesis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-25, March.
    12. Cairns, George & Wright, George & Fairbrother, Peter, 2016. "Promoting articulated action from diverse stakeholders in response to public policy scenarios: A case analysis of the use of ‘scenario improvisation’ method," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 97-108.
    13. Bazin, Damien, 2009. "What exactly is corporate responsibility towards nature?: Ecological responsibility or management of nature?: A pluri-disciplinary standpoint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 634-642, January.
    14. Jallat, Frédéric & Shultz, Clifford J., 2011. "Lebanon: From cataclysm to opportunityâCrisis management lessons for MNCs in the tourism sector of the Middle East," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 476-486, October.
    15. Vincenzo Formisano & Bernardino Quattrociocchi & Maria Fedele & Mario Calabrese, 2018. "From Viability to Sustainability: The Contribution of the Viable Systems Approach (VSA)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-17, March.
    16. Michaela Haase & Emmanuel Raufflet, 2017. "Ideologies in Markets, Organizations, and Business Ethics: Drafting a Map: Introduction to the Special Issue," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 142(4), pages 629-639, June.
    17. Horban Vasylyna B., 2016. "Management of Sustainable Energy Efficient Development at the Local Level: Stakeholder-Oriented Approach," The Problems of Economy, RESEARCH CENTRE FOR INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT PROBLEMS of NAS (KHARKIV, UKRAINE), issue 4, pages 47-56.
    18. Yuxuan Li & Xin Miao & Dequan Zheng & Yanhong Tang, 2019. "Corporate Public Transparency on Financial Performance: The Moderating Role of Political Embeddedness," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(19), pages 1-17, October.
    19. Jill Brown & William Forster, 2013. "CSR and Stakeholder Theory: A Tale of Adam Smith," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 112(2), pages 301-312, January.
    20. Maria Rosa De Giacomo & Raimund Bleischwitz, 2020. "Business models for environmental sustainability: Contemporary shortcomings and some perspectives," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(8), pages 3352-3369, December.

    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:kap:jbuset:v:67:y:2006:i:1:p:1-14. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.