Avoiding the Separation Thesis While Maintaining a Positive/Normative Distinction

While many scholars agree that the “separation thesis” (Freeman in Bus Ethics Quart 4(4):409–421, 1994)—that business issues and ethical issues can be neatly compartmentalized—is harmful to business ethics scholarship and practice, they also conclude that eliminating it is either inadvisable because...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Abela, Andrew V. (Author)
Contributors: Shea, Ryan
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2015
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2015, Volume: 131, Issue: 1, Pages: 31-41
Further subjects:B value dichotomy / Fact
B Positive / normative distinction
B Separation Thesis
B Virtue Theory
Online Access: Volltext (JSTOR)
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Summary:While many scholars agree that the “separation thesis” (Freeman in Bus Ethics Quart 4(4):409–421, 1994)—that business issues and ethical issues can be neatly compartmentalized—is harmful to business ethics scholarship and practice, they also conclude that eliminating it is either inadvisable because of the usefulness of the positive/normative distinction, or actually impossible. Based on an exploration of the fact/value dichotomy and the pragmatist and virtue theoretic responses to it, we develop an approach to eliminating the separation thesis that integrates “business” with “ethics” while still permitting a positive/normative distinction, which we call “ethics from observation.”
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2254-0