Durham, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  •  890
    Utilitarianism
    Ethics. 2006.
    This chapter and the one that follows analyze and elucidate the normative structure of utilitarianism. Although Moore did not consider himself a utilitarian, it becomes evident as the book proceeds that he accepts utilitarianism’s consequentialist account of right and wrong despite rejecting its hedonistic value theory. These opening chapters are a model of analytic exposition as Moore lays out utilitarianism’s theoretical commitments and contrasts various distinct but closely related normative …Read more
  •  749
    Moore maintains that, in principle, there is an objective answer to questions of right and wrong. More specifically, that a particular action cannot be both right and wrong, either at the same time or at different times. In this chapter and the next, Moore argues against theories that deny this latter proposition and thus reject the objectivity of moral judgments. Beginning with a critique of the thesis that when one asserts that an action is right or wrong, one is merely asserting that one has …Read more
  •  513
    Free Will
    Ethics. 2006.
    This chapter is Moore’s most important discussion of the subject of free will. He distinguishes the question of whether right and wrong depend not on what we can do if we choose, but rather on what we can do in some more absolute sense, from the question of whether we ever could have done anything different from what we actually did do. He analyzes closely the ambiguities of ‘could have done’ and ‘could have chosen’. He maintains that certain propositions ordinarily taken to be perfectly true ar…Read more
  •  150
    On the Implications of the Practice–Institution Distinction
    Business Ethics Quarterly 12 (1): 19-32. 2002.
    After exploring MacIntyre’s (1985) practice—institution distinction, the article demonstrates its applicability to business-as-practice and to corporations as institutions. It then considers the implications of MacIntyre’s schema to ethical schizophrenia, to the claim that themarket is a source of the virtues and to the opposite claim that capitalism corrodes character. A fully worked out modern virtue ethics, based on MacIntyre’s work, is then established and the claim is made and substantiated…Read more
  •  143
    The comparison of corporate social performance with corporate financial performance has been a popular field of study over the past 25 years. The results, while broadly conclusive of a positive relationship, are not entirely consistent. In addition, most of the previous studies have concentrated on large-scale cross-industry studies and often with a single variable for corporate social performance, in order to produce statistically significant results. This weakens the richness of understanding …Read more
  •  140
    Humanizing Business
    Business Ethics Quarterly 15 (2): 237-255. 2005.
    The paper begins by exploring whether a “tendency to avarice” exists in most capitalist business organisations. It concludes that it does and that this is problematic. The problem centres on the potential threat to the integrity of human character and the disablement of community.What, then, can be done about it? Building on previous work (Moore, 2002) in which MacIntyre’s notions of practice and institution were explored (MacIntyre, 1985), the paper offers a philosophically based argument in fa…Read more
  •  134
    The fair trade movement: Parameters, issues and future research (review)
    Journal of Business Ethics 53 (1-2): 73-86. 2004.
    Although Fair Trade has been in existence for more than 40 years, discussion in the business and business ethics literature of this unique trading and campaigning movement between Southern producers and Northern buyers and consumers has been limited. This paper seeks to redress this deficit by providing a description of the characteristics of Fair Trade, including definitional issues, market size and segmentation and the key organizations. It discusses Fair Trade from Southern producer and North…Read more
  •  130
    Corporate moral agency: Review and implications (review)
    Journal of Business Ethics 21 (4). 1999.
    The debate concerning corporate moral agency is normally conducted through philosophical arguments in articles which argue from only one point of view. This paper summarises both the arguments for and against corporate moral agency and concludes from this that the arguments in favour have more weight. The paper also addresses the way in which the law in the U.K. and the U.S.A. currently views this issue and shows how it is supportive of the concept of corporate moral agency. The paper concludes …Read more
  •  97
    Corporate philanthropy in the U.k. 1985–2000 some empirical findings
    with David Campbell and Matthias Metzger
    Journal of Business Ethics 39 (1-2). 2002.
    This paper briefly reviews the theories that seek to explain the phenomenon of corporate charitable donations and then provides a review of the empirical issues that have arisen in previous studies in this area. The findings of an analysis of charitable donations data from the entire U.K. FTSE index for the years 1985–2000 are then reported. These findings include the observation of a time-related increase in charitable donations, which is compared with an earlier study to give a 24 year history…Read more
  •  78
    Re-Imagining the Morality of Management: A Modern Virtue Ethics Approach
    Business Ethics Quarterly 18 (4): 483-511. 2008.
    In this paper the problematic nature of the morality of management, in particular related to business organisations operating under Anglo-American capitalism, is explored. MacIntyre’s critique of managers in After Virtue serves as the starting point but this critique is itself subjected to analysis leading to a more balanced and contemporary view of the morality of management than MacIntyre provides. Paradoxically perhaps, MacIntyre’s own virtues-goods-practice-institution schema is shown to pro…Read more
  •  71
    Tinged shareholder theory: Or what's so special about stakeholders?
    Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 8 (2). 1999.
    This paper contrasts the normative foundations of the stakeholder and shareholder theories of the firm. It demonstrates how the shareholder theory of the firm appears to have at least as much normative support as stakeholder theory and suggests that a way forward may be for a variant of pure shareholder theory to emerge
  •  67
    Corporate character, corporate virtues
    Business Ethics: A European Review 24 (S2): 99-114. 2015.
    This paper extends previous discussions of corporate character and corporate virtues. By drawing particularly on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, it offers a perspective on context-dependent categories of the virtues. It then provides a philosophically grounded framework which enables a discussion of which virtues are required for business organizations to qualify as virtuous. It offers a preliminary taxonomy of such corporate virtues and provides a revised definition of corporate character
  •  65
    Corporate Character
    Business Ethics Quarterly 15 (4): 659-685. 2005.
    This paper is a further development of two previous pieces of work (Moore 2002, 2005) in which modern virtue ethics, and in particular MacIntyre’s (1985) related notions of “practice” and “institution,” have been explored in the context of business. It first introduces and defines the concept of corporate character and seeks to establish why it is important. It then reviews MacIntyre’s virtues-practice-institution schema and the implications of this at the level of the institution in question—th…Read more
  •  62
    Criteria for Responsible Business Practice in SMEs: An Exploratory Case of U.K. Fair Trade Organisations
    with Richard Slack and Jane Gibbon
    Journal of Business Ethics 89 (2): 173-188. 2009.
    This paper develops a set of 16 criteria, divided into four groupings, for responsible business practice (RBP) in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) drawn from the existing SME/RBP literature. The current lack of a general set of criteria against which such activity can be judged is noted and this deficit is redressed. In order to make an initial assessment in support of the criteria so derived, an exploratory feasibility study of RBP in U.K. Fair Trade organisations was conducted. The fi…Read more
  •  51
    Managing ethics in higher education: Implementing a code or embedding virtue?
    Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 15 (4). 2006.
    This paper reviews a publication entitled ‘Ethics Matters. Managing Ethical Issues in Higher Education’, which was distributed to all UK universities and equivalent in October 2005. The publication proposed that HEIs should put in place an institution‐wide ethical policy framework, well beyond the customary focus on research ethics, together with the mechanisms necessary to ensure its implementation. Having summarised the processes that led to the publication and the publication itself, the pape…Read more
  •  50
    Humanizing Business
    Business Ethics Quarterly 15 (2): 237-255. 2005.
    The paper begins by exploring whether a “tendency to avarice” exists in most capitalist business organisations. It concludes that it does and that this is problematic. The problem centres on the potential threat to the integrity of human character and the disablement of community.What, then, can be done about it? Building on previous work (Moore, 2002) in which MacIntyre’s notions of practice and institution were explored (MacIntyre, 1985), the paper offers a philosophically based argument in fa…Read more
  •  49
    Hives and horseshoes, Mintzberg or MacIntyre: what future for corporate social responsibility?
    Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 12 (1): 41-53. 2003.
    A horseshoe is regarded as a lucky, perhaps even romantic, symbol of our industrial heritage. Why is it, then, that much of English literature, from Mandeville's ‘Grumbling Hive’ on, portrays business in a murky light? The paper begins with an analysis of this phenomenon and concludes that it is the institutionalisation and legitimisation of avarice and its consequential effects that gives rise to such a portrayal. A horseshoe has also been used as a convenient means of conceptualising an answer…Read more
  •  48
    Corporate Character
    Business Ethics Quarterly 15 (4): 659-685. 2005.
    This paper is a further development of two previous pieces of work (Moore 2002, 2005) in which modern virtue ethics, and in particular MacIntyre’s (1985) related notions of “practice” and “institution,” have been explored in the context of business. It first introduces and defines the concept of corporate character and seeks to establish why it is important. It then reviews MacIntyre’s virtues-practice-institution schema and the implications of this at the level of the institution in question—th…Read more
  •  46
    The Virtue of Governance, the Governance of Virtue
    Business Ethics Quarterly 22 (2): 293-318. 2012.
    The current economic and preceding financial crises seem to provide evidence in favour of the self-destruction thesis of capitalism. Responses to the crisis have been polarised. Some suggest that regulatory changes are all that is needed. Others suggest the need to change the economic system by developing a new global economic ethic. The first is too limited, the second too utopian. This article suggests that a MacIntyrean virtue ethics approach provides both a more convincing diagnosis of the p…Read more
  •  44
    Editorial: Responsibility and small business (review)
    with Laura Spence
    Journal of Business Ethics 67 (3): 219-226. 2006.
  •  44
    Regulatory Perspectives on Business Ethics in the Curriculum
    Journal of Business Ethics 54 (4): 349-356. 2004.
    The paper begins by providing a classification of the regulatory environment within which Business Schools, particularly those in the U.K., operate. The classification identifies mandatory vs. voluntary and prescriptive vs. permissive requirements in relation to the Business and Management curriculum. Three QAA Subject Benchmark Statements relating to Business and Management, the AMBA MBA guidelines, and the EQUIS and AACSB standards are then compared and contrasted with each other. The cognitiv…Read more
  •  37
    Comments on BEQ’s Twentieth Anniversary Forum on New Directions for Business Ethics Research
    with Andrew Crane, Dirk Ulrich Gilbert, Kenneth E. Goodpaster, and Marcia P. Miceli
    Business Ethics Quarterly 21 (1): 157-187. 2011.
  •  36
    The UK supermarket industry: An analysis of corporate social and financial performance
    with Andy Robson
    Business Ethics, the Environment and Responsibility 11 (1). 2002.
    In a previous paper (Moore, 2001), the headline findings from a study of social and financial performance over three years of eight firms in the UK supermarket industry were reported. These were based on the derivation of a 16‐measure social performance index and a 4‐measure financial performance index. This paper discusses the formulationof the indices and then reports on: discussions with two supermarket firms concerning the overall results; inter‐relationships between individual financial per…Read more
  •  35
    This article examines the impact of the prevailing state ownership in the Chinese stock market on corporate governance and the financial regulatory system, respectively, as the internal and external monitoring mechanisms to deter corporate fraud and protect investors. In line with the literature that state ownership exaggerates the agency problem, we find that the retained state ownership in privatised firms increases the incidence of regulatory enforcements against fraud. For the state-owned en…Read more
  •  32
    Catholic Social Teaching and the Firm. Crowding in Virtue: a MacIntyrean Approach to Business Ethics
    with Ron Beadle and Anna Rowlands
    American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 88 (4): 779-805. 2014.
    Catholic Social Teaching aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice, and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission—it fails to look “inside” the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre’s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provide…Read more
  •  30
    MacIntyrean Virtue Ethics in Business: A Cross-Cultural Comparison
    Journal of Business Ethics 132 (1): 185-202. 2015.
    This paper seeks to establish whether the categories of MacIntyrean virtue ethics as applied to business organizations are meaningful in a non-western business context. It does so by building on research reported in Moore : 363–387, 2012) in which the application of virtue ethics to business organizations was investigated empirically in the UK, based on a conceptual framework drawn from MacIntyre’s work. Comparing these results with an equivalent study in Sri Lanka, the paper finds that the cate…Read more
  •  29
    This paper contrasts the normative foundations of the stakeholder and shareholder theories of the firm. It demonstrates how the shareholder theory of the firm appears to have at least as much normative support as stakeholder theory and suggests that a way forward may be for a variant of pure shareholder theory to emerge.