“Greed is good” ... or is it? Economic ideology and moral tension in a graduate school of business
This article reports the results of an exploratory investigation of a particular area of moral tension experienced by MBA students in a graduate school of business. During the first phase of the study, MBA students' own perceptions about the moral climate and culture of the business school were...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
1992
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| In: |
Journal of business ethics
Year: 1992, Volume: 11, Issue: 4, Pages: 273-283 |
| Further subjects: | B
Graduate School
B Social Responsibility B Human Behavior B Final Section B Economic Growth |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article reports the results of an exploratory investigation of a particular area of moral tension experienced by MBA students in a graduate school of business. During the first phase of the study, MBA students' own perceptions about the moral climate and culture of the business school were examined. The data gathered in this first part of the study indicate that the students recognize that a central part of this culture is constituted by a shared familiarity with a set of institutionally reinforced premises about human behavior and motivation including the ideas that: 1) people are self-interested utility-maximizers, 2) individuals should be unimpeded in their pursuit of their own self-interest through “economic” transactions, and 3) virtually all human interactionsare economic transactions. The data further indicated that the business students experience a degree of tension between this ethic of “self-maximizing” and the “everyday” ethics prevalent in our broader culture, in which altruism and selflessness are central elements. The final section of the study was an effort to see whether and how these institutionally sanctioned premises were integrated into the students' arguments about the relationship between self-interest and social responsibility. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-0697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/BF00872169 |