Evolutionary Processes, Moral Luck, and the Ethical Responsibilities of the Manager
Abstract
The responsibilities of the manager have
been examined through several lenses in the business
ethics literature: Kantian (Bowie, 1999), contractarian
(Donaldson and Dunfee, 1999), consequentialist (Friedman,
1970), and virtue ethics (Solomon,1992), to name
just four. This paper explores what the ethical responsibilities
of the manager would look like if viewed through
an evolutionary lens. Discussion is focused on the impact
of evolutionary thinking on the process of moral reasoning,
rather than on the sources or the substance of
morality. The conclusion is reached that the evolutionary
lens supports the view that moral luck plays an important
role in how we assign ethical responsibilities.
Description
The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-009-0071-7
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.Collections
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