David Bevan

As the editors of this volume write in summary, capitalism remains an efficient and effective producer of human wealth. Competing with such necessarily thin, portmanteau definitions, a systems thinking approach suggests that capitalism is alternately a complex adaptive system itself fully integrated with—if not structural to—global, contemporary human society. As such, it is susceptible to criticism on account of increasing and disparate income inequalities; an array of unaddressed crises in climate change attributed to ‘free’ industrialization; a one-size-fits-all to commercial organizations; as well as institutionalized racism, sexism, multiple additional forms of categorical discrimination, and widespread corruption. In the face of such polemical processes, a question arises as to what is the future of this global capitalism as it spreads throughout the planet? In this paper we discuss three possible scenarios for the future of global political economies. We imagine: firstly, the spread of Western models of capitalism will continue, largely unabated, despite any flaws. Secondly, that the world might experience a violent revolution and an interruption to this sort of enterprise, with an emergence of neo-Marxism, or some equivalent anarchy. And/or, thirdly, the future of viable forms of free enterprise rest in the reformulation of this model as a set of social imaginaries lodged specifically within, and operating in conjunction with local mores, norms, and social frameworks, each of which might produce a unique form of enterprise. To contextualize this discussion, we begin with a foreword offering a review of the structural significance and agency of the imaginaries, that tend to dominate the discourses on this topic in the field of business ethics; and by advancing a summary of conditions that we consider as indicative, significant and structural for any possible analysis or paradigmatic reformulation exercise. To that extent this article is an original and speculative position paper drawing on, reviewing, and interpolating existing literature. Empirical evidence illustrates two of the contrasting imaginaries in the interests of clarity.

This article, written with Calton, Hartman and Bevan, develops the position that poverty, globally, can be alleviated if not eradicated if Western industrial companies and other commercial institutions will form partnerships and collaborations in the emerging economies. These efforts are not intended to arise from any form of philanthropy. Indeed, the authors here argue both (i) that charity simply makes those people it sets out to assist even more dependent and (ii) that there is evidence to suggest that globally – even in the poorest communities – what is free is not valued nearly as much as those goods or services for which one has to pay, even if only a few cents. Indeed, the collaborations proposed here are not dependency relationships but partnerships which are truly equitable business relationships that create value-added for both parties.Original publication: Calton, J.M., Werhane, P.H., Hartman, L.P. & Bevan, D. “Building Partnerships to Create Social and Economic Value at the Base of the Global Development Pyramid.” Journal of Business Ethics (2013) 117.4: 721–33. ©2013 Reprinted with permission.

Werhane, joined by her co-author David Bevan, argues that Smith was not, as some have thought, a radical individualist allegedly eschewing social relationships as sidelines in our individual development. Referring to texts in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, the authors demonstrate that according to Smith, “we are utterly social by nature and indeed, cannot manage without one another” (Bevan and Werhane 2015, p. 331). Without extensive social interactions each of us would be mute and we would have no sense of ourselves as individuals. Smith contends that as human beings we develop our personalities, our values and ourselves as conscious moral beings only when we have social contacts with others. This “inexorable sociality,” as the authors call it, allows exchanges and self-development out of which emerge our consciences. But the conscience is not merely an inevitable outcome of sociality. It emerges when each of us realizes that we are more than how others see us. We then begin stepping back from our social selves to act as impartial spectators of our own behavior and values as well as those of others.Original publication: Bevan, D. & Werhane, P. “The Inexorable Sociality of Commerce: The Individual and Others in Adam Smith.” Journal of Business Ethics (2015) 27.2: 327–35. ©2015 Reprinted with permission.

In the wake of the global financial market collapse of 2007–2008, Werhane and her co-authors Hartman, Archer, Bevan and Clark reconsider the issue of trust. Trust is considered here as invaluable and essential metaphorical glue in the smooth running of any globalized economy. The causes and effects of such a breakdown in this dynamic are identified, and the generally institutional barriers to any remedies are discussed with positive and negative examples. The paper proposes a range of organizational and cultural transformations which include adopting: (i) a preference for collaborative, rather than authoritarian, leadership; (ii) a more dynamic approach to corporate responsibility; and (iii) a more egalitarian and democratic approach to managing and communicating with stakeholder constituencies.Original publication: Werhane, P., Hartman, L., Archer, C., Bevan, D. & Clark, K. 2011. “Trust After the Global Financial Meltdown.” Business and Society Review, vol. 116, no. 4, pp. 403–433. ©2011 Reprinted with permission.

In this paper we set out to explore the claims that corporate social responsibility (CSR) itself is little more than a complementary extension of the project of coloniality initiated by the Enlightenment (e.g. Banerjee 2019). We will not dispute that claim. Rather we will develop three points. First, we will apply a non-linear, systems approach to demonstrate how we all, of any color, ethnic origin or historical location are all part of an interconnected interrelated sets of systems—what some thinkers call a complex adaptive system or systems (e.g., Miller and Page 2007) so that dismissing or degrading any particular ethnic, gender, or racial group is dismissing part of our history and origin. Secondly, we will argue that Enlightenment, coloniality, as well as neo-coloniality, and decoloniality sprung up from the Enlightenment projects themselves. Thus, the very critiques of Enlightenment, accurate as they may be, evolved from that perspective and have to be taken into account even in those critiques. Third, what appears to be an “either-or” – that is, that commerce should stick to business and not engage in political activities (forms of neocolonialism) or accept these business-political activities despite critiques – is not a simple choice. Rather, conceding that commerce and political systems cannot be nicely separated, we will provide some principles or ways to evaluate these activities, seemingly ubiquitous particularly in emerging economies.

This book celebrates the work of Patricia Werhane, an iconic figure in business ethics. This festschrift is a collection of articles that build on Werhane’s contributions to business ethics in such areas as Employee Rights, the Legacy of Adam Smith, Moral Imagination, Women in Business, the development of the field of business ethics, and her contributions to such fields as Health Care, Education, Teaching, and Philosophy. All papers are new contributions to the management literature written by well-known business ethicists, such as Norman Bowie, Richard De George, Ronald Duska, Edwin Hartman, Michael Hoffman, Mollie Painter-Morland, Mark Schwartz, Andrew Wicks, and others. The volume is comprised of articles that reflect on Werhane’s work as well as build on it as a way to advance further research. At the end of the festschrift, Pat Werhane provides responses to each chapter. The first chapter of the book also includes the overview of Patricia Werhane’s work and her academic career. The book is written to appeal to management scholars and graduate students interested in the areas of Business Ethics, Modern Capitalism, and Human Rights. Patricia Werhane is one of the most distinguished figures in the field of business ethics. She was a founder of the field, she is one of its leading scholars, and she has had a profound impact on the world of business practice. Among her many accomplishments, Pat is known for her original work on moral imagination, she is an acclaimed authority on employee rights in the workplace, and she is one of the leading scholars on Adam Smith. Having been active in Academia for over 50 years, Werhane is a prolific author of over a hundred articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of twenty-seven books, including Adam Smith and his Legacy for Modern Capitalism, Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making, and co-authored books Organization Ethics in Health Care, Alleviating Poverty Through Profitable Partnerships, Obstacles to Ethical Decision-Making, Corporate Responsibility: The American Experience, and Research Approaches to Business Ethics and Corporate Responsibility.

This volume brings together a selection of papers written by Patricia Werhane during the most recent quarter century. The book critically explicates the direction and development of Werhane’s thinking based on her erudite and eclectic sampling of orthodox philosophical theories. It starts out with an introductory chapter setting Werhane’s work in the context of the development of Business Ethics theory and practice, along with an illustrative time line. Next, it discusses possible interpretations of the papers that have been divided across a range of themes, and examines Werhane’s contribution to these thematic areas. Patricia H. Werhane is a renowned author and innovator at the intersection of philosophy and Applied Business Ethics. She is professor emerita and a senior fellow at the Olsson Centre for Applied Ethics at Darden and was formerly the Ruffin Professor of Business Ethics. She is also professor emerita at DePaul University, where she was Wicklander Chair in Business Ethics and director of the Institute for Business and Professional Ethics. A prolific author whose works include Moral Imagination and Management Decision-Making and Organization Ethics for Health Care, Werhane is an acclaimed authority on employee rights in the workplace, one of the leading scholars on Adam Smith and founder and former editor-in-chief of Business Ethics Quarterly, the leading journal of Business Ethics. She was a founding member and past president of the Society for Business Ethics and, in 2001, was elected to the executive committee of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. Before joining the Darden faculty in 1993, Werhane served on the faculty of Loyola University Chicago and was a Rockefeller Fellow at Dartmouth College and Senior Fellow at Cambridge University.

Over the last decade, and culminating in the 2008 global financial meltdown, there has been an erosion of trust and a concomitant rise of distrust in domestic companies, multinational enterprises, and political economies.In response to this attrition, this article presents three arguments. First, we suggest that trust is the “glue” of any viable political economy, and we propose that the stakes of violating public trust are particularly high in light of the asymmetry between trust and distrust. Second, we identify a constellation of key barriers to overcoming distrust that companies face in the current environment: (1) corporate mind-sets that promote a preoccupation with quantification, hierarchical leadership models, and “blind trust” in authority; (2) the anonymity of core stakeholders; (3) the agency of the media as a driver of the political economy; and (4) firm-centric models of stakeholder relationships.Third, we argue that, notwithstanding these challenges, these phenomena are not fatal and can be addressed through a holistic transformation in corporate culture. Such a transformation might include a shift to collaborative leadership models and replacing authority models with responsibility, a “names and faces” approach to stakeholders through cases and stories, more egalitarian communication exchanges with external stakeholders, and a reprioritization of the firm as a vital element among others within a system rather than the central core of a network.We conclude that the value of trust at the individual, institutional, national, and global levels cannot be overstated. Without a reinvigoration of trust in our political economies, at all levels, the future of an economically vibrant planet is indeed bleak.

In this paper we reconsider Adam Smith’s ethics, what he means by self-interest and the role this plays in the famous “invisible hand.” Our efforts focus in part on the misreading of “the invisible hand” by certain economists with a view to legitimizing their neoclassical economic paradigm. Through exegesis and by reference to notions that are developed in Smith’s two major works, we deconstruct Smith’s ideas of conscience, justice, self-interest, and the invisible hand. We amplify Smith’s insistence, through his notions of the virtues, that as human beings, and by analogy, organizations, we are intrinsically social, rather than selfish and or egoistically self-centered. Thus, we have responsibilities to and because of others. We conclude that such a managerialist preoccupation with shareholder value is challenged, if not completely refuted, by taking seriously the social character of Smith’s complex vision of commerce.

I am grateful to the Editors of for the opportunity to respond to the address given by Steve Williams at the Vincentian Conference of 2013, and published in the preceding pages. Mr. Williams takes the 2008 crisis of Western capitalism as his focus and offers at least two distinct narratives: in the first of these he outlines his experience of an extensive and complex professional, commercial world in. In a more extensive, second theme he offers some constructive suggestions as a means to recovering from this cataclysm and moving away those characteristics which he identifies as somehow causal. I will interpretively retrace Mr. Williams’s insights of the recent financial crisis. I will also comment on the challenges he outlines towards a resolution of this crisis. I draw on selected business and professional ethics positions, along with my personal experience of management practice and the pedagogy of business ethics in Western Management Schools. I delimit this appreciation of market capitalism as the systemic dominant social paradigm, the status quo.

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasizes an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognize, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organized around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice.

This informal essay attempts to summarise Pat Werhane’s performance at the conference celebrating her work and offer some insights into the light-handed carefulness that characterizes the continuing project of her work – her practice - in the field of Business Ethics. Appreciating the complex scope of the work to which this volume is a tribute, Pat presented her summary in front of a contrastingly simple organizational slide. At the center of the slide there is a text box containing the words “the linguistic turn”. Radiating from this idea are a dozen or so distinct areas of Business Ethics to which Pat has contributed, including her ongoing areas of interest. At the foot of the slide was an animated graphic of an endless pile of turtles, one on top of the next. In this essay I shall explore some possible origins and significances for this characteristically modest scheme. How might this linguistic turn, that Pat has identified for us as a unifying thread, arise? What may we understand of its significance among her otherwise eclectic interests?

This paper builds on London and Hart’s critique that Prahalad’s best-selling book prompted a unilateral effort to find a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Prahalad’s instrumental, firm-centered construction suggests, perhaps unintentionally, a buccaneering style of business enterprise devoted to capturing markets rather than enabling new socially entrepreneurial ventures for those otherwise trapped in conditions of extreme poverty. London and Hart reframe Prahalad’s insight into direct global business enterprise toward “creating a fortune with the base of the pyramid” rather than at the BoP. This shift in language requires a recalibration of strategic focus, we argue, and will necessitate implementation of “moral imagination” to formulate new mental models that can frame the possibility of local entrepreneurs working collaboratively and discursively with development partners drawn from civil society, corporate, and government sectors. Successful partnerships will arise from interactive processes of emergent, co-creative learning within a shared problem domain or “community of practice”. We call attention to three related pluralist framings of situated learning within such communities of practice: decentered stakeholder networks; global action networks; and a focus on “faces and places” as a cognitive lens to humanize and locally situate diverse inhabitants within base of the pyramid partnership projects.

The moral philosophy of Levinas offers a stark prospectus of impossibility for corporate ethics. It differs from most traditional ethical theories in that, for Levinas, the ethical develops in a personal meeting of one with the Other, rather than residing in some internal deliberation of the moral subject. Levinasian ethics emphasises an infinite personal responsibility arising for each of us in the face of the Other and in the presence of the Third. It stresses the imperious demand we experience to be open to, prepared for and impassioned with that which we may not know, or recognise, about ourselves or about the Other. Such a demand transcends our intellectual and/or rational potential; it involves us in a carnal and somatic bodily experience of otherness. If we are to speak of Levinasian ethics in a business context, it cannot be a matter of corporate ethics but only a matter of individual managerial ethics. What such an ethics would be like is yet to be outlined. This paper proposes a series of questions and suggestions that will explicate some key terms of a practice organised around a Levinasian vocabulary of otherness, responsibility, proximity, diachrony and justice.