Jacob Dahl Rendtorff

This article searches to define a concept of the corporation that can function as the basis for a more sustainable concept of the economy. The chapter aims at discussing the possibility of a concept of the business organization that can deal with global problems of ecological crisis, introducing a sustainable vision of the business organization. In the context, the article proposes a heterodox concept of the business organization moving beyond the traditional neo-classical view of business as only being oriented towards economic returns for owners. The chapter proposes to move beyond the “shareholder corporation” towards a broader, heterodox concept of the “stakeholder corporation”. Given the present crisis of sustainability it is important to rethink the business corporation as situated in the social and cultural context of society. Thus, we need to situate the business corporation within the economy of the good life. With the new focus on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals businesses need to be directed toward the common good of society. Here, business organizations should contribute to make a difference for society. In order to provide the necessary basis for sharing economy, circular economy and community economics in business, we need a business organization that aims at the common good for human beings and society. Accordingly, the chapter proposes the concept of the stakeholder corporation as the basis for a new economy of responsible corporate citizenship.

This book brings together different perspectives on economy and organisation in a debate about sustainability and the role of economy, politics and society in working towards a more sustainable future. The ecological crisis, accompanied by increasing global inequality and the realization that financial and economics systems are vulnerable, have led to an upsurge of political movements and theoretical interventions articulating possible solutions to the perceived crisis. This includes a manifold of suggestions for how to rethink economy based on representations of more sustainable visions of economy and society. In the age of the Anthropocene humankind is foregrounded as a geological force or agent, it relevant to consider our dispositions and ways of organizing societies and economies. Climate change is a wake-up call that our economies cannot go on with business as usual. This new situation calls for scrutinizing and rethinking practices, including economic practices of production, exchange, consumption, as well as distribution, and how we organize these activities. Some advocate “taking back the economy”, by giving way to post-capitalist principles of organizing the economy that serve the needs of people and societies and respect ecological concerns, and that radically challenge the existing political-economic order. Another new approach, Raworth’s Doughnut Economics, aims to develop economics and to learn how “to think like a twenty-first century economist”. Such approaches suggest the need for a new economy, one which is based on different principles than those usually associated with the mainstream market economy and the growth paradigm. New efforts entail re-orienting economics towards humanities’ long-term goals and taking explicitly into consideration a social foundation of human well-being and an economic ceiling of planetary pressure. In other words, it calls for a reorientation of economy towards more sustainable ways for humans, societies and nature as an alternative to the growth paradigm. Amsterdam is the first city in the world to adopt the principles of Doughnut Economics to emerge from the current Covid-19 crisis and “rethink the future”. At the same time suggestions for environmentally attuned and socially oriented economic alternatives come from activists, development agencies, grass-roots organizations and from other proponents of greener capitalist alternatives such as green capitalism, Green Economy, regenerative capitalism alongside more radically alternative visions of economy.

This article is based on an exchange between Peter Kemp and Jacob Dahl Rendtorff on the occasion of Peter Kemp’s seventieth birthday in 2007. It presents the development of Kemp’s ethical philosophy from his philosophy of technology and technology ethics to his philosophy of bioethics and biolaw. It also discusses Kemp’s relation to Existentialism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and Marxism with the development of a critical hermeneutic philosophy of engagement. This is related to Kemp’s work on humanistic ethics of technology in his book on the ethics of the irreplaceable. The article presents Kemp’s long discussion with Paul Ricœur about the ethics of the good life and about narrative ethics. Finally, it elaborates on the bioethical turn towards an ethics for the living world and discusses the role of basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability in relation to cosmopolitan and global responsibility for sustainability and humanity.

This article is based on an exchange between Peter Kemp and Jacob Dahl Rendtorff on the occasion of Peter Kemp’s seventieth birthday in 2007. It presents the development of Kemp’s ethical philosophy from his philosophy of technology and technology ethics to his philosophy of bioethics and biolaw. It also discusses Kemp’s relation to Existentialism, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and Marxism with the development of a critical hermeneutic philosophy of engagement. This is related to Kemp’s work on humanistic ethics of technology in his book on the ethics of the irreplaceable. The article presents Kemp’s long discussion with Paul Ricœur about the ethics of the good life and about narrative ethics. Finally, it elaborates on the bioethical turn towards an ethics for the living world and discusses the role of basic ethical principles of autonomy, dignity, integrity, and vulnerability in relation to cosmopolitan and global responsibility for sustainability and humanity.

This article presents the influence on Danish philosophy of the French phenomenologist and hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricœur. Paul Ricœur’s poetic hermeneutics was an inspiration for Danish phenomenology and existentialist thought. Moreover, Ricœur had an influence on the development of poetic and narrative research in theology and the human and social sciences in Denmark. In addition, Ricœur provided a hermeneutic framework for research in the different disciplines of bioethics and biolaw, philosophy of law, philosophy of education and nursing philosophy. In particular, Peter Kemp has been important for presenting and promoting Ricœur’s narrative philosophy. The article gives an overview of the influence of the different aspects of Ricœur’s philosophy in Denmark, related to different schools of thought and to individual philosophers and researchers in theology and the human and social sciences in Denmark.

This article presents Jean-Paul Sartre’s concept of the tension between existence and politics and the role of political commitment in existentialist philosophy. Based on Sartre’s concept of engagement, the article analyzes the transition from the personal to the political perceived as a movement from personal moral consciousness to the awareness of the importance of the individual as a social actor and citizen in society. Sartre’s concept of political engagement can be characterized as critical intellectual commitment and “Socratic Citizenship.” Accordingly, this article is also an acknowledgment of the two important philosophers of ecoethica, Tomonbu Imamichi and Peter Kemp, both committed public intellectuals who said that the role of the philosopher is to contribute to the public affair of cosmopolitan society. Thus, the article presents the political engagement in four major parts: (1) From the existential to political engagement, (2) Political commitment as a struggle for human freedom, (3) The Socratic Citizenship, and (4). Conditions of authentic political action. Political engagement represents an effort to realize the respect owed to each individual as a universal singular, as well as that owed to freedom and democracy in the Kingdom of Ends.

This Handbook forms part of wider research in responsibility, ethics and legitimacy of corporations. Through an interdisciplinary perspective with comparative integration of sociological, politological, philosophical, theological, ethical, economic, legal, linguistic and communication theoretical approaches this Handbook will clarify how the interrelation between company and environment is mediated by legitimating notions in public spaces and public relations; how and why these notions have changed radically; how these transformations strike on the epistemological as well as practical dimension of business companies; and the problems involved in these transformations at the macro-, meso- and micro levels. The Handbook begins with a historical introduction and chronology of the development of business legitimacy, providing a comprehensive assessment of the concept’s evolution and identifying the most influential authors and their works. These may be divided into authors who follow a philosophical, sociological, or conceptual tradition in management and leadership in their treatment of legitimacy and those who belong to the research tradition of application of the concept in management science and leadership as well as in organizational theory and business practice in the interdisciplinary perspective of the different approaches. The Handbook continues with systematic approaches and major themes developed in the concept of business legitimacy. Contributions here may be conceptual, empirical/applied or case studies. The different parts of the volume deal with the different topics to which business legitimacy has been applied, with how legitimacy is relevant in the various operational areas of the firm, and with the legitimacy theory’s responses to some of the most important issues that businesses and organizations currently face.

As a scientific Rapporteur on a European Union Commission Project in the framework of the Research Programme Bio-Med II, I am currently writing a large report on basic bioethical and biolegal principles in Europe. The principles that are investigated are autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability. Against this background, this paper is a clarification of the foundation and significance of these basic principles in bioethics and biolaw. The task of this paper is to elaborate on the philosophical and conceptual framework of these principles. The point of departure is a discussion of the choice of exactly these principles in the context of the law of the human person as well as of the ethical and legal status of the principles. This leads to the definition and explication of each concept and their mutual relations. It is important to emphasize that the principles, rather than being mutually exclusive, are interdependent and imply each other in the protection of human beings in biomedical research and application. Finally, the definition of these principles will be set in relation to social solidarity and responsibility in the modern welfare state where we experience a transformation of the legal system towards an extended notion of state responsibility and a concern and protection of the vulnerable and weak in European societies.

This article discusses the concept of globalization in relation to global justice with the aim of developing a cosmopolitan spirit as the basis for international justice. Globalization was in the beginning an economic concept but with the emergence of global problems of global poverty, environmental degradation, climate change and global social and political interdependence we need to rethink the concept of justice for the international community at a cosmopolitan level. The article considers that it is the task of political philosophy to reflect on this other concept of globalization, not only as a utopia but also as a real alternative for the global community. The dream of another globalization includes overcoming the misery of the world in the struggle for democracy and hope for cosmopolitan justice in the age of hypermodemity.

The author discusses the concept of equality in ethics and political economy. The first section presents a philosophical concept of equality of resources, as it is suggested by Ronald Dworkin. The second section looks at the concept of equality in relation to the factual distribution in our contemporary political economy. It relies on Thomas Piketty who argues that it is the concept of capital that reproduces inequality and that is still the most essential concept in our economic system. The third section discusses the conceptions and perspectives on the relation between ethics and political economy in our present society.

This paper presents a concept of business ethics as a method of philosophical inquiry in business and economic. The proposes a concept of business ethics as developed in the book Responsibility, Ethics and Legitimacy of Corporations where business ethics is defined as a fundamental philosophical concept of corporations in a globalized world. It is argued that business ethics should be conceived as a holistic concept that integrates different ethical theories in “Republican business ethics”, based on the idea of “the good life for and with the other in just institutions” with duty, care and concern for state, community and civil society. Business ethics is in this sense not only limited to national corporate citizenship, but it also includes an international dimension based on global responsibility in cosmopolitan business ethics.

This article discusses the ethical interdependence and political practice in the age of the Anthropocene. The article presents the work on this topic by Bruno Latour in his discussions of social constructivism in relation to the political philosophy of the Anthropocene. With Latour we can perceive the emergence of a new form of geopolitics where the earth and its nature has become a field of politics. Politics has become climate change politics and the political hypermodernity is forced to integrate nature in the ethics and politics of our time. Therefore the age of the Anthropocene implies the emergence of a new form of international governance. Resilience politics in the age of the Anthropocene opens for a new responsibility for climate change that moves beyond the technological understandings of modernity because humanity is situated in the center of the earth in interdependence with nature and culture.

This paper demonstrates the importance of the concept of responsibility as the foundation of an ethics of the environment, in particular in the fields of politics and economics in the modem civilization marked by globalization and technological progress. We can indeed observe a moralization of responsibility going beyond a strict legal definition in the development of an ethics of the environment. Accordingly, the concept of responsibility for the environment and for sustainability is the key notion of international development in order to understand the ethical duty of a modem technological civilization.

The problem of the status of the embryo is central when considering genetic and reproductive technology. It is mainly about what is ethically justifiable in experiments with embryos at the earliest stages. However, ownership of the embryo, decisions about donation, and freezing of fertilized eggs are also important problems to discuss. Can embryos and fetal tissue be used for transplantation or in the pharmaceutical industry? The answer to these questions depends on the embryonal ethical and legal status of the embryo. This problem is one of the most controversial bioethical issues in Europe, where for religious and cultural reasons, there is a big difference between the perceptions of the various countries. Rendtorff argues that the embryo must be considered as a “third thing” between people and things. The legal policy discussion on embryo status shows that in the specific legal development, despite major differences between the perceptions of the status of the embryo, a pragmatic consensus on embryonal legal status between persons and things in the European countries can be traced. After having presented the ethical and philosophical issues relevant to embryo experiments and embryo research, he goes on to present a case study of the Danish debate about embryo experiments and embryo research. With this case example, he gives an overview of relevant issues concerning embryo experiments and embryo research in bioethics and biolaw, which concern the legal regulation of bioethical issues.

This paper discusses the relationship between a Kantian, cosmopolitan economic ethics and business ethics and the theory and practice of the honest businessperson in Scandinavia. A cosmopolitan business ethics is the prerequisite for accountability, ethics and legitimacy of companies in the global social and economic system. Accordingly, the need for a cosmopolitan business ethics in a complex and hypermodern society is considered as a basis for the theory and practice of the honest businessperson and merchant. Consequently, it is possible to formulate a philosophical theory of corporate governance in the global context of economic business. This raises the question of how such an idea of the cosmopolitan economics ethics and business ethics is expressed in the different cultural practices of the ideals of the respectable businessperson in different countries and regions in the world. In the present article, the author discusses the example of Denmark and Scandinavia. With this investigation, we can see that cosmopolitan business ethics is realized with the concepts of trust, transparency and integrity through corporate governance and with a focus on integration of accountability into corporate strategy of business firms. The values of the Protestant ethics of equality and asceticism are important aspects of this institutionalization business ethics. The economic ethics of the Scandinavian economy is very closely connected to the values of sustainability and corporate social responsibility in Denmark and Scandinavia.

This article presents the background of the discussions of the relation between business ethics and philosophy of management. The reason for the need for rethinking business ethics and philosophy of management is the many scandals and the crisis of business in contemporary society. The question is whether it is possible to overcome the oxymoron between ethics and business with the point of view that “good ethics is good business”. In order to answer this question we need to rethink business ethics with philosophy of management. From this perspective, the paper addresses the problem of moral blindness in organizations. The extended elements of moral blindness in organizations represent the basis for our need for business ethics. The state of the art of business ethics with utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, discourse ethics and recent approaches to philosophy of management within the analytical and continental traditions need to be aware of this need to rethink business ethics from the perspective of philosophy of management. On this basis the paper proposes a global philosophy of management with cosmopolitan business ethics as a foundation of the concept of the balanced company in international business. A case-study approach based on care evaluation of ethical decision-making and ethical dilemmas in particular companies may help to advance this approach.

This book presents a selection of articles with focus on the theoretical foundations of business ethics, and in particular on the philosophy of management and on human rights and business. This implies identifying and discussing conflicts as well as agreement with regard to the philosophical and other foundations of business and management. Despite the general interest in corporate social responsibility and business ethics, the contemporary discussion rarely touches upon the normative core and philosophical foundations of business. There is a need to discuss the theoretical basis of business ethics and of business and human rights. Even though the actions and activities of business may be discussed from a moral perspective, not least in the media, the judgments and opinions relating to business and management often lack deeper moral reflection and consistency. Partly for this reason, business ethicists are constantly challenged to provide such moral and philosophical foundations for business ethics and for business and human rights, and to communicate them in an understandable manner. Such a challenge is also of scientific kind. Positions and opinions in the academic field need to be substantiated by thorough moral and theoretical reflection to underpin normative approaches. Far too often, business ethicists may agree on matters, which they approach from different and sometimes irreconcilable philosophical standpoints, resulting in superficial agreement but deeper-lying disagreement. In other cases, it may be of high relevance to identify philosophical standpoints that despite conflicting fundamentals may arrive at conclusions acceptable to everyone.

This article gives an overview of my book French Philosophy and Social Theory. A Perspective for Ethics and Philosophy of Management, published by Springer 2014. As an extension of my earlier work on French philosophy, this book provides an application of important concepts from contemporary French philosophy to business ethics and the ethics of organizations. Although the book covers a wide range of philosophers and philosophical movements, there is a core and deep unity of the book. This is the demonstration of how the conceptual resources of contemporary French philosophy from the early 20th Century to the present day can be applied to give us new perspectives on business ethics and the ethics of organizations.

This paper presents a theoretical and practical approach to teaching business ethics, stakeholder management and CSR within the framework of the thematic seminar on business ethics and corporate social responsibility at Roskilde University. Within our programs in English of business studies and Economics and Business Administration the author of this article is responsible for this seminar that integrates issues of CSR and the ethics of innovation into the teaching ofcorporate social responsibility, stakeholder management and business ethics. This research oriented seminar provides a unique possibility for teaching CSR with an integration of methodological, theoretical and practical dimensions of business ethics. The idea is that the thematic seminar represents a tutor supported frame for extended studies of business ethics, stakeholder management and the social aspects of business and entrepreneurship. Each student shall present a paper on the basis of a collection of articles on the topic of ethics and social dimension of business. Moreover, it is required that the student is discussant of two other papers during the course. In addition, students shall prepare interactive participation in discussion of each paper. The sessions begin with a short introduction to the topic by the professor, then student presentations, after this discussant remarks, and finally general discussion followed by an evaluative assessment by the professor. During the seminar the student shall present both theory and case discussion so that we find a close interaction between theory and practice in the presentation. In the following, the paper elaborates on this development, in particular in the relation between theory presentation and case studies

La Comission européenne a soutenu, de 1995 à 1998, le programme de recherche intitulé « Les principes éthiques de base en bioéthique et en bio-droit européens ». Le projet était basé sur la collaboration de 22 partenaires issus de la plupart des pays de l’Union européenne. L’objectif du projet était d’identifier les principes éthiques d’autonomie, de dignité, d’intégrité et de vulnérabilité comme étant les quatre idées et valeurs majeures de la bioéthique et du biodroit européens. Les Propositions et les recommandations à la Commission européenne – la Déclaration de Barcelone de 1998 – constitue un résumé important du projet BIOMED. Cette déclaration est unique dans son genre car elle représente l’unanimité philosophique et politique des experts en bioéthique et en biodroit de nombreux pays. Dans ce texte, nous souhaitons comparer la Déclaration de Barcelone avec quelques nouveaux documents en bioéthique et en biodroit internationaux. Nous situerons la Déclaration de Barcelone dans le cadre proposé par les différents documents internationaux et les règlements relatifs à l’action dans le domaine de la bioéthique et du biodroit. Nous examinerons tout particulièrement les similitudes et les différences par rapport à la « Convention pour la protection des droits de l’homme et la dignité de l’être humain à l’égard des applications de la biologie et de la médecine », adoptée en 1996 par le Conseil des ministres. Enfin, nous étudierons la « Déclaration sur le génome humain » de l’Unesco de 1997. Donc, la Déclaration de Barcelone ne représente pas seulement les principes éthiques européens en matière de bioéthique et de biodroit, mais éclaire et articule les principes éthiques de base se trouvant au coeur de l’intérêt international pour une bioéthique et un biodroit universels