Reframing the Moral Limits of Markets Debate: Social Domains, Values, Allocation Methods

What should and what should not be for sale in a society? This is the central question in the Moral Limits of Markets (MLM) debate, which is conducted by a group of business ethicists and liberal egalitarian political theorists. These MLM theorists, which we will dub ‘market moralists,’ all put forward a specific version of the argument that while the market is well suited to allocate some categories of goods and services, it is undesirable for the allocation of other such categories. We argue that the current MLM debate is too much framed in terms of a market/non-market dichotomy. Moreover, authors tend to distinguish insufficiently between values such as freedom, equality, and efficiency, and allocation methods such as the market, the queue, and rationing. We introduce a new conceptual scheme consisting of societal domains, values, and allocation methods to provide a better structure for this debate. The argument is illustrated from the education and healthcare domains

Four Design Criteria for Any Future Contractarian Theory of Business Ethics

This article assesses the quality of Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) as a social contract argument. For this purpose, it embarks on a comparative analysis of the use of the social contract model as a theory of political authority and as a theory of social justice. Building on this comparison, it then develops four criteria for any future contractarian theory of business ethics (CBE). To apply the social contract model properly to the domain of business ethics, it should be: (1) self-disciplined, i.e., not aspire results beyond what the contract model can realistically establish; (2) argumentative, i.e., it should seek to provide principles that are demonstrative results of the contractarian method; (3) task-directed, i.e., it should be clear what the social contract thought-experiment is intended to model; and (4) domain-specific, i.e., the contractarian choice situation should be tailored to the defining problems of business ethics

Contractarian Business Ethics: Promise and Application Conditions

Abstract: Donaldson and Dunfee¿s project for an Integrated Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) arguably is the most promising approach to business ethics currently available. At any rate, in this paper we will argue that the contract model potentially forms a better point of departure for a theory of business ethics than the presently dominant stakeholder model. Whereas the stakeholder model is unable to crack three types of defining problems of business ethics, the contract model is in principle capable of providing more concrete practical guidance on these issues. These are the problems of accommodation, of incommensurability and of collective action. On the other hand, we will argue in this paper that the use of the social contract model as a basis for a theory of business ethics is bound to some strict application conditions. As can be shown from a comparative analysis of the manner in which the contract model was used in two earlier application domains, a well-formed Contractarian Business Ethics (CBE) requires a prior answer to the question of stakeholder-identification and would need to factor in the criteria of self-disciplinedness, argumentativity, task-directedness and domain-specificity. In delineating the policy-guiding capacity of CBE we distance ourselves from the broad criticism which sees the ISCT project as providing insufficiently practical guidance. We suggest that the authors of ISCT and their critics alike have so far been looking for the wrong kind of practical guidance to be derived from a theory of business ethics and we make a plea for a realistically actionable CBE