RT Article
T1 Putting the Law in Its Place: Business Ethics and the Assumption that Illegal Implies Unethical
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 160
IS 1
SP 35
OP 51
A1 Young, Carson
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1785609947
AB Many business ethicists assume that if a type of conduct is illegal, then it is also unethical. This article scrutinizes that assumption, using the rideshare company Uber’s illegal operation in the city of Philadelphia as a case study. I argue that Uber’s unlawful conduct was permissible. I also argue that this position is not an extreme one: it is consistent with a variety of theoretical commitments in the analytic philosophical tradition regarding political obligation (i.e. the moral duty to obey the law because it is the law). I conclude by showing why business ethicists would have a better rejoinder to the “dominant view” of business ethics associated with Milton Friedman if they dispensed with the assumption that illegal implies unethical.
K1 Legal disobedience
K1 Corporate Social Responsibility
K1 Political Philosophy
K1 Political Obligation
K1 analytic philosophy
DO 10.1007/s10551-018-3904-4