A Theoretical Ground for PRactice of Business Ehtics

8/3/2019 A Theoretical Ground for PRactice of Business Ehtics

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A THEORETICAL GROUN D FOR THE PRACTICEOF BUSINESS ETH ICS: A COMMENTARY

Peter Madsen

In the second half of 1993, two articles one then published and one as yetto be published posed challenges to my presuppositions about the nature ofbusiness ethics. The first of these was Andrew Stark's "W hat's the Matter withBusiness Eth ics? "' This article is now well-known in business ethics circleswith many being highly critical of its philosophical content^ and Stark alreadyhaving had some opportunity to reply to these critics.^ According to him, busi-ness ethics as it has developed in the literature and in academia is irrelevant tomost practicing managers since what has been produced in the academy is toogeneral, too theoretica l and too impractical. No doubt there will be more saidabout and by Stark on whether academic business ethics can fit into the practicalwork world of corporate managers. For my part, I suggest that while Stark'scritique of business ethics contains some flawed understanding and analysis, itis a critique that nonetheless needs to be taken seriously by those who wish tosee business ethics flourish in the corporation, I will have some more to sayabout Stark's position later in this commentary.The second piece that forced a rethinking of the field of business ethics uponme was one that I was asked to review for Business Ethics Qua rterly and whichnow appears in this edition, I am referring to John Dienhart's ambitious papertitled "Rationality, Ethical Codes and an Egalitarian Justification of EthicalExpertise: Implications for Professions and Organizations," In this work, Dien-hart has made an important contribution to our understanding of what constitutesbusiness ethics and how it should conducted, I will begin with a short, selectivesummary of Dienhart's work and then turn to examine some implications of itthat Dienhart himself did not draw, but which can and should be drawn. At thatjuncture, we will be able to see better the relationship between what Dienharthas accomplished successfully for business ethics and what Stark has offered not

so successfully as a critique of it,A Reasonable Account of Rationality and

an Acceptable Conception of Ethical ExpertiseDienhart divides his paper into four major parts, but for the purposes of thesecomments I will be concerned with only two of his treatments, namely, hisanalysis of rationality and his discussions about 'ethical expe rtise.' What heproposes in Part I is a re-evaluation (a deconstruction, perhaps) ofthe basis fromwhich we make rational judgments in general and in business ethics in particular.

He offers a substitute version of our time-honored understanding of rationality,the 'classical view,' by offering a newer version of it, first proposed by Harold


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452 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLYAccording to Dienhart and Brown, the classical view of rationality holds thata judgment is rational only when it displays the properties of being universal,necessary and rule-governed. These have been the hallmarks of rationality sincethe Ancient Greek s. Those who have taught courses in formal logic will imm e-diately recognize this classical depiction and will recall the difficulties that

many students have in learning formal logic since it requires them to abstractfrom their experience with judgment-making and the everyday kinds of rationaljudgments tha t they form which fail to display the classical traits of universality,necessity and an overt abiding by some set of rules. The classical view fallsshort of everyday life,Dienhart and Brown offer what might be called a more reasonable account ofrationality. In place of the classical view, they see rationality as having threecompletely different features. They hold that: 1) rationality is not a matter offollowing some set of rules, 2) rational judgments can be rational without also

being necessary judgments and 3) rational judgments are produced against thebackdrop of two kinds of information *a body of background knowledg e' and'information relevant to the case at hand .' As can be seen, the first two of thesecounter the classical view directly, thereby making room for a non-classicalunderstanding of the nature of rational judgm ents.This understanding is a much more reasonable one, since it can account formuch more than the classical view. It jibes with real life w here the classicalaccount seems an affront to it. If one were to view rationality strictly in theclassical sense, then such reasoned judgments as deciding not to teach formallogic any longer or choosing to stop at a stop sign at a busy intersection couldnot be called rational since they do not bear the features of universality, neces-sity and being rule-governed in their formation. In fact, the classical view hastrouble justifying itself since the kinds of rational judgments one would need tomake about the nature of rationality would not bear the stamp of the classicalversion and Dienhart recognizes this problem parenthetically in a footnote.After critiquing the classical and positing the non-classical view, Dienhartthen turns to setting out his thesis about 'ethical expertise' that relies heavilyupon the idea of a non-classical version of rationality and rational judgments.Dienhart talks first about experts and their judgments in general and then in PartIII of the paper turns his full attention to experts in ethics. Quoting Brown, hesays initially that: "Experts are those who can make defensible and reliablenon-rule-guided judgments in areas about which they have two types of informa-tion: 'a body of background knowledge (including techniques), and a body ofinformation relevant to the case at hand.'"^ Identifying the notion of expertisein this fashion within the non-classical view of rationality w ill have some impor-tant ramifications when it comes time for Dienhart to defend his position thatethical expertise can be justified in an egalitarian way.But initially, Dienhart paints a picture of expert judgm ent-making that closely

follows his not^-classical view of rationality. The expert makes judgments thatare non-mle-guided, i, e,, there are no executive rules that the expert appeals to to


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THEORETICAL GROUND: A COMMENTARY ON DIENHART 453Accounting Principles,' but they will not find any 'executive rules to whichexperts can appeal which tell them the how to choose the right rules [from theGenerally Accepted Accounting Principles], to intercept the chosen rules, or toapply the chosen and interpreted rules to a particular case .'^ Being an expertrequires more than just merely following the rules.

Likewise, expert judgm ents are not infallible judgm ents. The pronounce-ments of experts do not automatically carry the enviable marks of universalityand absolute necessity. Experts do not always get the right answer but that in noway diminishes their stature as having expertise or as being reliable. As Dienhartputs it: 'In sum, an expert is not always successful, and experts can disagreeabout how to handle the very same case . Further, it is possib le for experts to bewrong, even when they do agree. There is no definitive, infallible answer to thequestion of how successful one must be to be an expert, for that itself is a matterof (non-rule-guided) ju dg m en t'The definitive trait of expertise lies in the fact that experts demonstrate acertain skill in the making of their defensible and reliable jud gm ents. Theymake use of two important kinds of information. Being an expert is usinginformation in such a way that one gets recognized as having expertise in a givenfield. One gets valued for being good at using this information and experts arein demand because they get so recognized and so valued. Experts have a bodyof background knowledge and they are in possession of information that isrelevant to the matter, case or issue that they are called upon to offer theirexpertise. To use the example of accounting again, it can be said that the expertaccountant knows the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and knows therevenues, the expenses, the assets and the debits of the firm she is accountingfor. The final accounting statement she is invited to issue will be taken as areliable and defensible one because she has these centrally important kinds ofinformation about GAAP and about the firm under her current accountant'sscrutiny.The specific questions of ethical expertise are addressed by Dienhart in PartIII and it presents something of a special case since 'the notion of ethical exper-tise makes many uncom fortable.' I have to admit that upon my first reading ofDienhart's paper, L too, was uncomfortable, feeling that the very idea of an

ethics expert was somehow counter-intuitive to the matter of ethics and ethicalanalysis. Is the ethics expert someone who always got the right answer to anethical dilemma? Is it not elitist to assert that some can be an experi at ethics,while others are not? These w ere among some of the questions I found myselfmuttering to the paper in front of me.Part III of Dienhart's work is dedicated to countering those who have suchdifficulties with the notion of expertise in ethics as I did originally as Dien-har t's "anonym ous reviewer,"^ In his survey of this issue, he replies to critics ofthe concept and his retorts result in an "egalitarian justification" of ethical

expertise what I would call an acceptable conception of ethical expertise,Dienhart demonstrates how ethical expertise does not hinge upon the possession


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454 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLYadoption of a non-classical view of rationality and the fact that the ethics expertfunctions like a consultant, the ethics expert must presuppose the autonomy ofthe principal with whom the ethics expert shares his or her rational judgments.It is this autonomy that Dienhart cites as the main reason for calling his justifi-cation of ethical expertise egalitarian.

Given the grounding of "expertise" on a non-classical view of rationality, itcan be said with Dienhart that just as there are experts in law and medicine, sotoo can there be experts in ethics. Like the attorney and the physician, theethicist is a manipulator and provider of information. And the more skilled oneis in applying the background body of knowledge called ethics to a case or issueabout which the ethicist also has relevant information, then the more one quali-fies as an ethics expert. The business ethics expert, then, is one who know ethicsand how to apply it and who has relevant information about the business m atter,case or issue at hand that requires the business ethics expert's attention.Although Dienhart gives an admirable reply to those who might demure fromthe term "ethics expert," to those who are uncomfortable with it, there are somepoints in his arguments with which one might still reasonably quarrel. In otherwords, while his egalitarian justification does result in an acceptable conceptionof expertise in ethics, it can be bolstered even further. For exam ple, I think thathe does not give enough em phasis to the role that public recognition plays in theestablishment of expertise. It would be objectionable to hold that anyone mayproclaim the ir expertise and hang out a shingle and practice it. Expertise, itseems to me, requires substantial recognition of others and that self-proclama-

tions about expertise should be suspect. Expertise is not established in a vacuumand it requires more than just self-promotion. It requires the critical appraisalof the community in which it is practiced.When it comes to ethics the important role that the community plays in theestablishm ent of expertise is even more paramount, I think. Ethics happens tobe inherently a public matter and in some instances the ethical guidelines thatone must follow are guidelines promulgated by a given community. So it fol-lows, that the community and its collective judgment should have a say indetermining who is or who is not qualified to be an ethics expert. And mem bersof the community verify their judgments about ethical expertise by valuing theknowledge shared by the ethics expert and retum to him or her as their needs forthis know ledge dictate s. (This is a kind of consumer satisfaction theory ofethical expertise.) Ethics experts, then, are those who can both publicly dem on-strate their skills of applying the requisite two kinds of knowledge and who arejudged by others and recognized as so skillful.But even with this objection, Dienhart's work is original and provocative. Heis, I believe, successful in providing a more reasonable account of rationality andestablishing an acceptable conception of ethical expertise. What follows aresome thoughts and reactions some snapshots of the ways in which Dienhartprovoked me into re-thinking business ethics. I offer three implications that he did


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THEORETICAL GROUND: A COMMENTARY ON DIENHART 455/ . Business Ethics as a Practice

A non-classical version of rationality would seem to foster the followinginitial definition of what constitutes business ethics. Business ethics consists inmaking non-rule-guided, rational judgments based upon "a body of backgroundknow ledge and a body of information relevant to the case at hand." In otherwords, a business ethicist is one who has mastered that body of knowledge wecall ethics and can thereby demonstrate ethical expertise and who also hasacquired a body of relevant business information that is likewise central in themaking of rational business ethics judgm ents about a specific case at hand . Thiswill be a public demonstration of ethical expertise and the business ethics expertwill be recognized as such by those in the business comm unity. Therefore, auseful, first definition of business ethics should be to depict it as a practicebecause the expertise ofthe business ethicist is demonstrated within a consultingrelationship between a business ethicist and a business organization and thepeople within it.So understood, examples of business ethics expertise would include the pro-duction of rational judgm ents aimed at such things as: 1) writing and revisingcodes of business conduct and business policies having to do with ethics in theworkplace, 2) consulting with a business organization by making recommenda-tions about how it can achieve responsible behavior and be a good corporatecitizen, 3) performing ethics audits of various organizational activities, 4) assist-ing corporations to value its diverse workforce and customer base and to managethe diversity dilemmas that will arise given the continuing demographic shiftstoward more diversity, 5) helping a corporation to identify its own values andmeasure whether those values are operative in the organization, 6) setting upinternal corporate ethics review committees, and 7) designing and deliveringethics training and other educational activities to assist managers and em ployeesin business organizations to be better able to make their own rational judgmentswhen confronted with ethical issues, problems and dilemmas on the job.This is not an exhaustive list, but it does show that business ethics should bedefined primarily as a practice like law and medicine when one adopts thenon-classical version of rationality that Dienhart urges as the ground for busi-ness ethics. Lawyers practice their legal expertise by interpreting the law fortheir clients, by making recommendations to them or by defending or prosecut-ing alleged wrongdoers in courts of law. Physicians, nurses and other healthcare deliverers practice their medical expertise by interpreting the body of medi-cal knowledge for patients, prescribing medicinal remedies and making lifestylerecommendations to them or providing medical services such as surgery ormedical testing . And so too does the business ethicist practice her ethical exper-tise by interpreting the body of knowledge called ethics for business managers,by recommending courses of action for them to take and educating them about

matters of ethics in business.To say that business ethics is a practice akin to law and medicine is to say a


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456 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLYa consulting relationsh ip. As the practices of law and medicine are client cen-tered, hands-on kinds of professions, so too is business ethics. And, as theprofessional practices of law and medicine are service oriented, so too is busi-ness ethics. The business ethicist works in conjunction with a client on specificclient issues, problems or dilemmas and produces rational judgments (expertadvice) that will be useful to client organizations and the people in them whenthey engage in business. Doing business ethics is the professional practice ofproviding corporate consulting services.Hence, a grounding of business ethics on a non-classical view of rationalityappears to yield a non-traditional view of the field of business ethics. It suggeststhat business ethics needs to be taken as a professional activity where businessethicists use their acquired expertise in the delivery of services to a corporateclient. What Dienhart has done, then, is tantamount to establishing a theoreticalground for the practice of business ethics and in so doing his paper marks asignificant turn in the field of business ethics away from the purely theoretical,2. Theoretical Business Ethics versus Practical Business Ethics

If a non-classical version of rationality fosters a definition of business ethicsas the hands-on kind of work that an expert practitioner provides to a client in aconsulting relationship , then what can be said of other activities that are usuallydesignated by the phrase "business ethics?" Here I have in mind such things aswriting scholarly articles that appear in business ethics related journals andteaching college and university courses entitled "Business Eth ics." Since theseactivities fall outside the scope of those professional consulting services ren-dered to a corporate client that typifies the practice of business ethics based upona non-classical version of rationality, should we continue to place them under therubric of "business ethics" at all? Can we continue to call those courses "Busi-ness Ethic s?" And those journals should they really carry "B usiness Ethics"on their covers?

Perhaps an examination of the practices of law and medicine will shed somelight on these questions given the parallels I and Dienhart have already drawnbetween these two kinds of consulting practices and the practice of businessethics. Initially, it can be said that attorneys and physicians (or nurses and otherhealth care providers) engage in the practice of law and medicine when theyprovide services to clients who seek them out exactly for the services they canprovide. They are able to provide these services and their expertise in theirpractice when they have mastered a body of knowledge and when they haveknowledge of the case at hand, that is, are knowledgeable about the conditionsthat have brought the client to seek out their services. Then, in providing theseservices based upon these two kinds of knowledge, they are practicing theirprofession and are being attorneys or physicians.

What if now such a practitioner were to engage in a different activity wherethey were not providing consulting services directly to a client who is in need of


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THEORETICAL GROUND: A COMMENTARY ON DIENHART 457practicing physicians, or to do both should we still refer to what the hiredphysician w ill do as practicing medicine? Strictly speaking, we should not and,in actuality, we do not. The physician who performs research may be adding tothe body of knowledge we call medicine and the physician who teaches m edicinemay be adding to the existing pool of practicing physicians, but strictly speakingneither medical research nor the teaching of medicine constitutes the practice ofmed icine. This is the case because a central ingredient in professional consult-ing practices happens to be missing in research and teaching, namely, the pro-viding of some hands-on services to an immediate client who has sought out thepractitioner for his or her expertise given a condition that requires the assistanceof that professional and his or her expertise.

It is better to say that lawyers and physicians who do research or who teachare contributing to their professional field when they research and teach, but notthat they are practicing law or medicine when they do so. And this is not todiscount or devalue such a contribution. In fact, research and teaching arenecessary to a field, if it is to progress. But while this work will contribu te tothe practice of a given field, it is not itself that practice. It even could be argued although I will not go into details he re for the sake of brevity that it is onlya convenience of nomenclature, habit and a matter of respecting their years oftraining and education, that we continue to call physicians who research andteach "physicians." They are really researchers and teachers engaged in moretheoretical pursuits than their counterparts who are examining, testing, educat-ing or operating upon patients. It would be a kind of category mistake to identifywhat these researchers and teachers do as a practice . Theorizing buildingtheory through research and sharing it through teaching and practice are, asphilosophers have said for some time, quite different.

Parallels can now be drawn to the field of business ethics. Historically, thefield of business ethics has been primarily populated by those who have per-formed the tasks of research and teaching. Business ethics has its origins in theacademy and has born the trait of "academic" since then. A "business ethic ist"has usually meant someone who has published his or her research in the fewjournals dedicated to ethical issues in business and who teaches business ethicscourses at the college and university leve ls. And while the search for legitimacyin the academy by those who have been the leading researchers and teachers ofbusiness ethics has often been arduous, there is today something of an accep-tance in some cases a reluctant acceptance of the field in philosophydepartments and business schools validating this specialized research and teach-ing. In short, business ethics has been historically a theorizing about business,business managers and corporations and their ethical context.But if Dienhart and I are right, we should be hesitant to identify only thosewho have traditionally been called business ethicists by such a title any longer.As with law and medicine, while this research and teaching is an importantcontribution to progress in the field, these activities do not themselves constitutethe practice of business ethics. Grounding business ethics in a non-classical


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458 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLYThe first is one that would define business ethics as a doing or a practice andallow for the work of the business ethics expert in the corporate world, while thesecond would define it as a theorizing. While the latter has historical roots andwhile those who toil as theorists do make w orthwhile contributions to the bodyof knowledge about ethics and business ethics, they are not practicing businessethicists and it would be a mistake to define business ethics solely as such atheoretical undertaking.Business ethics experts, then, are those who have a practice and provide aservice to a client who seeks them out exactly because they can provide someneeded ethical expertise. And since research and teaching in a field are notexamples of practicing in it, we should not use them as the only (necessary andsufficient) standard to identify those who are business ethics experts. But as inlaw and medicine, whether out of some convenience of nomenclature, habit orrespect, we will no doubt continue to refer to those who research and teach as"business ethicists." And the practicing business ethicist is in debt to the theo-retical business ethicist since the latter makes important contributions to thekinds of knowledge that the practicing business ethicist relies upon in the con-duct of his orher practice. Yet still, it would be wrong to say that business ethicsis nothing more than a meta-activity of theorizing. Such a definition that seesbusiness ethics as solely the production of theory that can be debated by academ -ics in a jargon that alienates others overlooks the fact that business ethics itselfis ma terially the product of three equal partners: business ethics theorists, busi-ness ethics practitioners atid business organizations and the people in them.

Theorists-practitioners-managers, This triad formulates a more accurate anda more dynamic conception of how business ethics should be viewed. It presentsa more complete picture ofthe activities that should be understood as comprisingbusiness ethics. Each partner in this triad has a proper role responsibility tocarry out and each partner has an obligation to learn from the other partners ifbusiness ethics is to ever be a reality in business organizations. Much morethought and much more delineation about this triadic picture of business ethicsneeds to be done and said than what can be done and said in this commentary.At a bare minimum, how ever, what I am suggesting here is that a new relation-ship be formed by those who come from differing perspectives but who yet stillhave hopes that business ethics can flourish in the corporation, A new teamneeds to be forged where theory, practice and managing are on equal footing andwhere mem bers of the team share common goals if not common methods. Thiscommentary is, inone sense, then, a call for a re-engineering of this field so thattheorists, practitioners and managers cooperate as equals to promote businessethics.5. Professionalism and the Practice of Business Ethics

The ligitimization of business ethics as a practice means that business ethicsexperts are professionals in many of the same respects as practicing attorneys


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THEORETICAL GROUND: A COMMENTARY ON DIENHART 459required to have a license to practice, for example. And, as Dienhart points out,unlike physicians, business ethics experts will not often be in a position toperform the advice that they give. But in most concrete activities that demar-cate the professions, the work of business ethics practitioners is similiar enoughto other practices so that they can correctly be referred to as "p rofessionals."

If business ethics practice is a professional activity, then it will have its ownethical issues, problems and dilemmas just like practitioners in law, medicineand accounting do . Those who have provided any of the various consu ltingservices to a corporate client that I have outlined above are aware, no doubt, ofthe kinds of ethical issues, problems and dilemmas that the business ethicspractitioner can encounter. Among these we should identify: 1) conflicts ofloyalties and interests where the practitioner has difficulty maintaining clearsight of just who the client is (the client organization? Its managers and/oremployees? Its stakeholders? Its shareholders? Society? Business ethics? Thetruth? All of the above?); 2) qualifications and credentials where the questioncenters on the practitioner's expertise (how much knowledge of theory and ofbusiness should a business ethics expert have? Should there be qualifying tests?How should business ethics practitioners be credentialed, if at all? Shouldlawyers be business ethics practitioners?); 3) conduct and behavior issues wherehow the business ethics practitioner achieves professionalism is paramount (Ifone learns of corporate wrongdoing in the course of one's practice, what obliga-tions does one have? What constitutes a fair fee structure? How should businessethics practitioners be governed in their practices?)This is nowhere near to an exhaustive list of issues, dilemmas and problemsand there is a pressing need for more attention to the questions of the profes-sional ethics of business ethics practitioners. While there is an ad hoc comm itteeof the Society for Business Ethics that has been charged with posing and exam-ining a number of the professional concerns about business ethics consulting, itis not yet clear just what recommendations this committee will reach nor howthe Society will proceed with those recomm endations. In any event, there mustbe some hard reflection from those who would call themselves business ethicspractitioners (and others, e, g,. business ethics theorists and business managers)and hopefully this commentary may also serve as an invitation for more attentionto this issue.

Wh at's the M atter With Andrew Stark?At the beginning of this commentary, I offered to say more about AndrewStark's Harvard Business Review article "W hat's the Matter with Business Ethics?"If one allows defining business ethics as the productive partnership betweenbusiness ethics theorists, business ethics practitioners and business organiza-tions and the people in them, then we can begin to see what the matter is withStark and how he has misunderstood business ethics. In his article, he says

business ethics is too general, too impractical and too theoretical. He says thatit is "bew ildering ," "off-putting" and "irrelevan t" to managers. He says that


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460 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLYThese are strong words. In a few qu arters, they were fighting words. Yet,interestingly enough, even though some of his individual depictions of somepositions of some business ethics theorists may be wrong. Stark may be rightabout business ethics as he defines it in his critique of it. First of all, as manyhave already pointed out. Stark is wrong because he does a poor job of critiquing

the claims made by various business ethics theorists, I want to add that Stark isalso wrong for having misunderstood business ethics by overlooking the three-sided partnership that really constitutes the endeavor of business ethics. Starkfocuses upon the theorists of the field at the expense of the other two partners.He never, for examp le, offers testimony from business managers that contains anobjection to business ethics. Not one single business person is quoted in thearticle as having a problem with business ethics. They are left out of Stark'sarticle. Instead, it is his own (mistaken) interpretation of business ethics theorythat he critiques.Likewise, Stark does not even give a nod to the work that has been carried outby business ethics practitioners in conjunction with business organizations overthe past number of years. He overlooks the contributions that practition ers havemade in sharing their ethics expertise in a host of corporate ethics prog ram s. Hefails to include the role that business ethics practitioners have had in the corpo-rate world and the various infiuences they have had on it. Instead, he focuses onthe academic world and the theorizing aspect of business ethics and in so doinghe misses the point.It is as if Stark was more concerned with grinding an ax about business ethics

theory and theorists and used the HBR a rticle as an occasion to do so . But hisax grinding is at the same time an ignoring of the truth of the matter aboutbusiness eth ics. Many business ethics practitioners have had successful rela-tionships with business organizations and the people within them and in practi-cal ways have brought the wisdom of theory found in the history of ethics andbusiness ethics to corporate boardrooms and training roo ms. He makes no men-tion of the work done by business ethics practitioners to write codes of conductand ethics policies, or their numerous business ethics training sessions, or theirsignificant consulting work that have helped several organizations to engage inorganizational culture change. No , Stark chooses not to mention these successesnor the managers in business who have benefited from the work of businessethics practitioners, honing in on the supposed failures of theoretical businessethics instead.But, to be fair. Stark is not all wrong either. Yes, he overlooks two ofthe majorcomponents of the business ethics triad. Yes, he has made mistakes about busi-ness ethics theory and the claims of business ethics theorists. Yet, he does havehis finger on the pulse of a problem that is very worthy of attention. Thisproblem has to do with the fact that most of, probably the vast majority of,business managers are not prone to appreciate the subtleties of theory as it is

played out in business ethics courses and jou rna ls. There is an aversion tobusiness ethics theory in business and Stark rightly calls our attention to this


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THEORETICAL GROUND: A COMMENTARY ON DIENHART 461 often ju st a set of useful heuristics that can be of assistance to them whenthey are confronted with any number of moral mazes that typify business deci-sion-making, e. g., whether to become a whistleblower, how to avoid conflictsof interest, how to manage the numerous dilemmas that arise in a diverse work-force, how to create a socially responsible organization, et c , etc. In short,managers seek tools from business ethics that can be used to help them identifythe right thing to do in a difficult situation. Or to put it in the language ofDienhart's paper, managers seek ways to reach rational judgments about ethicalissues in business, but they lack a mastery of one of the two kinds of know ledgerequired in ethical expertise. The business ethics practitioner is in a position toassist managers in this task of building their knowledge base and does so bysharing his or her ethical expertise in any num ber of concrete ways by prov idinga service to the business organization.

The most comprehensive article to date on the controversy that Stark startedis "What is (and Isn't) the Matter with 'What's the Matter...'" written by JosephH, Monast,^ In his conclusion to a very astute reading of Stark, Monast accu-rately summarizes how he had been both wrong and right:

While Stark's concrete objections are misguided, his intuitions are not; and hisarticle should serve as a reminder to business ethicists that their products mustin some way serv e their "clien ts" as they participate in the business world,^

Monast, after correcting Stark, is calling for a new awareness among thosewho would call themselves business ethicists. He seeks a more practical rela-tionship between business ethicists and business where managers are taken asthe "clien ts" of business ethicists who provide "prod ucts" that are useful to themin the world of w ork, I take this to be a call for an understanding of businessethics that urges a turn away from the purely theoretical concerns o fth e businessethics theorists to one that includes a place for understanding business ethics asa practice which recognizes the working relationship among theorists, practitio-ners and m anagers.Thanks to the provocative insights of John Dienhart and the correct intuitionsof Andrew Stark, I have attempted a cali to a new aw areness in this com mentary,I suggest that a non-classical view of rationality leads to a new understanding ofbusiness ethics that departs from a traditional definition of it as the productionof theory to one that recognizes and legitimates the work of business ethics

practitione rs. Further, I suggest that a more realistic and functionally moreaccurate and dynamic totai picture of business ethics be adopted. Businessethics needs to be seen for w hat it is, has been and can continue to develop to be:the rich interplay between theorists, practitioners atid managers. Each partnerof this triad needs the others; each partner can learn from another, A practicalcharting out of the interplay between these partners, includmg their individualresponsibilities and their responsibilities to one another and to society, is thework of future reflections.

Notes


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462 BUSINESS ETHICS QUARTERLY^In addition to a panel discussion added to the agenda o fthe 1993 meeting of The Society

for Business Ethics held in Atlanta, more formal responses to S tark's article include: Bow ie,Norman E, , "Enough Already," The Society for Business Ethics Newsletter, vol, 4 (1994),pp, 3-4, Dusk a, Ron ald, "Letter to the Editor," Harvard Business Review, vol, 71 (1993),pp, 188-96. W erhane, Patricia, "Letter to the Ed itor," Harvard Business Review, vol. 71(1993), p, 202,

^See: Stark, Andrew, "Response to a Rejoinder," The Society for Business Ethics News-letter, vol, 4 (1993), pp. 12-15 and "Response," Harvard Business Review, vol, 71 (1993),pp. 198-203

" ^ n , H, I., (1988), Rationality (New York: RouU edge, 1988).^Dienhart, John, "Rationality, Ethical Codes, and an Egalitarian Justification of EthicalExp ertise' Implications for Professions and Orga nizations," Business Ethics Quarterly, vol5 ( 1 9 9 5 ) , p p 4 1 9 - 5 0^ , pp, 424-25,

id., Business Ethics Quarterly, pp, 440-41,^Monast, Joseph H,, "What is (and Isn't) the Matter with 'What's the Matter,, , '" BusinessEthics Quarterly, vol, 4 (1994), pp, 499-512,

id., p. 5U.


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A Theoretical Ground for PRactice of Business Ehtics