The Elephant in the Room: On the Absence of Corporations in Bernard Hodgson’s Economics as a Moral Science
In his book Economics as a Moral Science, Bernard Hodgson argues that economics is not value neutral as is often claimed, but is a value-laden discipline. In the long argument for this in his book, Hodgson never discusses or even mentions corporations. This article explains that corporations are abs...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
2012
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| In: |
Journal of business ethics
Year: 2012, Volume: 108, Issue: 1, Pages: 27-35 |
| Further subjects: | B
stockholder theory
B Value-laden economics B Corporations B Rationality B Neo-classical economics B Economic Theory B Moral science |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In his book Economics as a Moral Science, Bernard Hodgson argues that economics is not value neutral as is often claimed, but is a value-laden discipline. In the long argument for this in his book, Hodgson never discusses or even mentions corporations. This article explains that corporations are absent from Hodgson’s discussion because he considers only the consumption side of general equilibrium theory (GET), and it shows that if Hodgson had included corporations and the production side, his overall argument would have been more complete and convincing. This article shows that Hodgson’s methodology, when applied to the production side of GET, has value implications for CEOs of large corporations, for shareholders and members of Boards of Directors, and for legislators and regulators of business. Hodgson’s claim that economics must consider the ability of economic agents to create or change the institutional, cultural, and organizational conditions of their own economic actions is supported and expanded. |
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| ISSN: | 1573-0697 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10551-011-1084-6 |