Kevin Jackson

This paper advances a virtue-theoretic reinterpretation of shareholder moral responsibility, proposing a shift from beneficence—an action-based duty to do good—toward benevolence, understood as a stable virtue of character. Engaging Santiago Mejia’s deontological account of shareholder discretion and latitude in discharging imperfect duties, it argues that such action-based models, while structurally clarifying, leave unexamined the moral quality of the agent herself. Drawing on Aristotelian concepts of phronēsis, aisthesis, and hexis, the paper contends that shareholders are genuine moral agents whose investment, voting, and engagement decisions shape and are shaped by their character. It introduces the notion of “vicious beneficence”—praiseworthy acts undertaken from vice, as in strategic philanthropy—to show why disposition, not merely outcome, matters morally. Rather than displacing deontology, the argument integrates the two frameworks: duty supplies structure, virtue supplies motivation and perception. Benevolence thus emerges as a foundational business virtue grounding capitalism’s moral legitimacy.

This paper argues that ethical agency in professional and organizational contexts is profoundly shaped by how agents normatively inhabit time. While business ethics scholarship has emphasized long-term thinking, sustainability, and character-based approaches, it has largely overlooked temporal orientation as a constitutive dimension of moral formation. The paper introduces the concept of transcendent temporal orientation to describe the disposition through which agents interpret present action in light of ends that exceed immediate incentives and local outcomes. Distinguishing between immanent-teleological and eschatological-teleological modes of orientation, the paper develops a framework drawing on MacIntyre’s account of narrative unity and practices, Aquinas’s teleology of beatitude, and Ignatian disciplines of discernment. I argue that while immanent frameworks extend ethical reasoning across time, they leave historical flourishing as the final horizon of moral intelligibility. Consequently, they are at a loss to render rational what I call non-redeemable moral loss -- forms of fidelity that permanently foreclose success within time. By contrast, an eschatological horizon relativizes temporal goods and thereby secures the intelligibility of principled sacrifice without expectation of restoration. This shift has direct implications for human dignity. When moral worth is no longer tethered to institutional effectiveness, recognition, or narrative recovery, the person can remain an end even in failure, exclusion, or defeat. Integrating virtue ethics, moral psychology, and organizational theory, the paper offers a normative lens for analyzing how workplaces cultivate the horizons within which dignity is either stabilized or rendered fragile. Recovering moral time, I suggest, is inseparable from recovering the conditions that allow persons to remain valuable when history offers nothing in return.

The article discusses the financial predicament in the U.S. through the amoral and moral points of view. I suggest going beyond the mere discussing of terminology ascribed at the economic downturn whether it's a recession or a depression. I argue that a moral-cultural view of the situation reveals a moral-cultural malaise, and that promulgating new laws and regulations to address the economic conditions leaves the responsibility to the legal authorities. I argue that the approach is not enough, calling for the adoption of a moral-cultural mode of analysis.

This Article seeks to develop a frame of reference for comprehending legitimacy structures in emerging global economic governance regimes. To that end, it provides, in contradistinction from positivist and pragmatist approaches, an alternative normative justificatory framework for soft law. As its very name suggests, soft law is a law-like phenomenon, distinct from classical notions of law, yet no less significant, and hence worthy of receiving systematic moral analysis. It is therefore reasonable to draw upon philosophy of law as an intellectual resource for undertaking such a conceptual endeavor. Accordingly, this Article examines philosophical justifications for evolving soft law syndicates that profess to impose obligations on business enterprises and other participants dealing with human rights and sustainability matters. The Article concludes that a naturalistic cosmopolitan jurisprudence that embraces the intrinsic value of rule of law and human rights provides a vital intellectual pathway for surmounting legitimacy gaps in global economic governance.

The anthology Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings, edited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca, seeks to shift the often-polarized immigration debate by focusing on concrete personal stories rather than on abstractions and stereotypes. The book shows us that migrants are not mere statistics but flesh-and-blood individuals, each harboring their own hopes, fears, and dreams. Featuring contributions ranging from essays, poetry, and artworks, the book illuminates the multifaceted experiences of people charting complexities of migration and identity in the United States, while revealing how identity shapes the migration experience and how societal perceptions often complicate it.

The recent global financial crisis raises pressing issues that are not exclusively economic. The health of the economy, Kevin T. Jackson contends, reflects the moral health of the wider culture: ethics must be considered along with economics to understand world markets, especially now that globalization and other forces have increasingly complicated the regulation of transnational corporate conduct. Virtuosity in Business calls on businesspeople and ethicists to expand their thinking by stressing the profound relevance of philosophy to business and economics. Virtuosity in Business shows that ethics has been the overriding problem for business and that it is the only enduring solution. Drawing on a variety of philosophical sources, including Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Jean-Paul Sartre, Jackson applies the concept of virtue to the competitive realm of the marketplace. Virtuosity, in all realms of human endeavor, is not merely a display of technical skill or adherence to conventional norms. The invisible law of virtuosity, which discourages misconduct and rewards good corporate citizenship, guides ethical firms and wise entrepreneurs toward greater success by playing a constructive part in the human enterprise. A pioneering work in the contemporary philosophy of business, Virtuosity in Business revivifies business ethics to address concerns arising from the global financial crisis, such as restoration of faith in the market, respect for human rights, and environmental sustainability.

The anthology Somewhere We Are Human: Authentic Voices on Migration, Survival, and New Beginnings, edited by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñansaca, seeks to shift the often-polarized immigration debate by focusing on concrete personal stories rather than on abstractions and stereotypes. The book shows us that migrants are not mere statistics but flesh-and-blood individuals, each harboring their own hopes, fears, and dreams. Featuring contributions ranging from essays, poetry, and artworks, the book illuminates the multifaceted experiences of people charting complexities of migration and identity in the United States, while revealing how identity shapes the migration experience and how societal perceptions often complicate it.

In light of the diversity of hybrid, social, and faith-based enterprises, the paper aims to deepen and widen the descriptive and normative reach of the theory of the firm. Higher ends of business are core philosophical components for an expanded normative theory of the firm. To regard shareholders, managers, and all stakeholders of a business firm in a fully moral light means expanding one’s view of such roles beyond merely economic and legal conceptions to encompass their full humanity and associated moral obligations and social responsibilities. Any adequate normative theory of the firm will cast business participants not just as economic actors and as legal agents but as flesh-and-blood moral persons with ethical responsibilities. When the theory of the firm is normativized – not privileging moral rights and obligations of stockholders or stakeholders in advance of consideration of balance of reasons -- the false dichotomy of shareholder primacy versus stakeholder primacy falls away, ceasing to provide a basis for giving categorically incompatible accounts of prima facie moral obligations of business participants.

The dissertation advocates a "constructive" conception of legal interpretation as a way of making sense of judicial recognition of the emerging international law of human rights. A centerpiece of the study consists of cases in which United States courts recognize human rights such as freedom from torture and genocide as universalizable norms backed by a consensus of the world community. Emphasis is given to analyzing competing interpretations of jurisdiction, international custom, signatory intent, and the concept of universality in connection with the application of generalizable provisions from treaties, conventions, and declarations. ;Today the dominant paradigms for rights interpretation are positivism, realism, and law-as-integrity. Positivism recognizes as valid only those rights which are identifiable as a matter of plain fact based on actual conventions and practices of a determinate community. As such positivism presupposes a "scientific" conception of human rights interpretation. Realism views rights as useful social/political fictions at best. Thus, realism finds judicial interpretations of rights to be ultimately subjective or arbitrary. This amounts to a "creative" or "rhetorical" conception of human rights interpretation. Law-as-integrity mediates these extreme positions by identifying interpretations of legal rights with normative theories which seek to take rights seriously through constructing the best possible justifications for settled law. A principle advantage of law-as-integrity over positivism and realism is that it enables disputes surrounding the legality of human rights at general as well as specific levels to remain cogent and fertile. From the perspective of law-as-integrity disagreement about interpretations and applications of human rights centers around competing interpretive claims of justifying theories instead of as exaggerated ideological opposition between "skeptical" and "optimistic" philosophies of international law. ;Ultimately the dissertation demonstrates how abstracting and universalizing central tenets of law-as-integrity's conception of rights interpretation from its domestic origins to international contexts yields a cogent philosophical basis for human rights adjudication

In the aftermath of scandals such as those at Enron and WorldCom, there is a growing suspicion of the corporate world. For this reason it is more important than ever for firms to maintain a good reputation. In Building Reputational Capital, Kevin T. Jackson offers a practical guide to taking the high road--the only path that leads to lasting success. Based on extensive research and real-world experience, Building Reputational Capital reveals basic principles of integrity and fairness with which firms can build an enduring reputation. More than image, a firm's reputation is a form of capital often neglected in the boardroom and overlooked in conventional analyses of financial statements. Speaking directly to the work experience of real people in practical business settings, Jackson couples each principle with straightforward actions that drive management systems, and he provides tested strategies--from downsizing techniques to e-commerce tips--that cultivate the hidden power of a good reputation. He outlines the advantages of a superior reputation, describes the vital role the firm's leader must play, offers ways to build and protect your reputation on the Internet, and shows how to rescue your reputation once disaster hits. Perhaps most important, he shows how to strike the right balance of virtues like authenticity, honesty, responsibility, and stewardship of the environment, employees, and the economy. Highlighted with real-life success stories--from giants like Hewlett-Packard to small firms like Thanksgiving Coffee Company, Building Reputational Capital offers a simple but effective guide for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, legal professionals, and corporate consultants.

The paper introduces a virtue-theoretic critique of recent “prosocial” revisions of shareholder primacy. The paper aims at widening the scope of virtue-based business ethics beyond its nearly exclusive focus on the character and virtue of managers, employees, and organizations. In contrast to MacIntyre-inspired research, the paper takes a “good intentions” approach that looks squarely at shareholders, regarding them as real people (not algorithms or institutions) occupying distinctive roles as principals of firms who are, ideally, virtuous moral agents. It is argued that virtue ethics can play a part in questioning normative features of shareholder primacy and the objective function of the firm. Probing deeper than prudential and instrumental concerns, the paper poses normative questions about interpreting shareholder motivations: what _ought_ shareholders to prefer/want/desire?; _ought_ shareholders to desire profit maximization versus profit satisficing?; _ought_ shareholders to prefer other, prosocial goals, alongside of wealth?; should self-interested motivation in profit-seeking be considered virtuous? To lend focus, the paper taps Hart and Zingales’ recently revised “pro-social” version of shareholder primacy, as well as Munger and Russell’s analysis of “virtuous profit-seekers,” as normative frames of reference. Doing so enables a critical engagement with their respective accounts from the standpoint of virtue theory. Taking a “virtuous shareholders” perspective provides an aretaic standpoint, one that is appropriate, given that shareholders care about matters of justice and the common good. Shareholders are not simply concerned about making money. Hence it is the moral intentions and motivations of ideally virtuous shareholders which ought to modulate the profit-seeking activities of shareholders in accordance with maximizing their welfare.

The article posits the concept of economy of mutuality as an intellectual mediation space for shifts in emphasis between market and social structures within economic theory and practice. Economy of mutuality, it is contended, provides an alternative frame of reference to the dichotomy of market economy and social economy, for inquiry about what business is for and what values it presupposes and creates. The article centers around the objective of gaining a broadened understanding of business so as to include not just market economy, but social enterprise and social economy. In pursuit of this objective, a range of various archetypes of business enterprise are considered in light of higher ends of economic life. The highest telos of business encompassing all such archetypes, it is argued, is founded on reciprocity and integral human development. The article concludes that, compared to market economy per se, economy of mutuality provides a better conceptual framework for business in undertaking the challenges of sustainability.

Many ethical issues facing managers of multinational corporations are polycentric problems. That is, they involve a number of distinct centers -- each of which define rights and obligations of a multiplicity of affected parties -- and resolving matters around one center typically creates unpredictable repercussions around one or more of the other centers. Polycentricity is a normative phenomenon especially unsuited for adjudication, often requiring recourse to alternative processes of contract (or reciprocal adjustment) and managerial direction. This study explores how such concerns about the limits of adjudication (and its various moral counterparts) apply to international decisionmaking connected to human rights obligations of multinational companies. The focus is on ethical problems such as controlling child labor in LDCs such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan; setting wages in developing countries like Honduras; and conducting business transactions with rights-violating regimes, such as the governments of Nigeria and Myanmar.

Spirituality, in the broad sense, provides a deeper foundation for principles of international business ethics than legalistic, command-based ethics programs. Spiritual-based principles and values are presupposed and endorsed by established legal and ethical principles for international business. Identifying such spiritual-based principles and values requires the exercise of moral imagination and an openness to values embraced by the world's religions. Once identified, a new realm of moral freedom is attained for multinational corporations which may help them move beyond an "ethics for sale" orientation.

Competing schools of contemporary jurisprudence can be “internationalized” to elucidate special problems in interpreting obligations of multinational firms under emergent corporate and international codes. An “integrity” model proves superior to a relativist conception of international business precepts. An integrity jurisprudence provides a coherent vision of a globaI rule-of-law and ethics-of-principle for the world community’s rights correlative to MNC obligations while accomodating the indeterminate and contestable nature of interpretations of such textually-based directives.

The article aims to provide a standpoint from which to critically address two broad concerns. The first concern surrounds a naïve view of mindfulness, which takes it as a given that it is a good thing to cultivate mindfulness and attendant qualities like compassion because these virtues are key to improving the quality of life and bettering effective decisionmaking within business. Yet the virtue of mindfulness has roots in religious and spiritual traditions, and the virtue of compassion is complex and contextual; neither of these virtues operate in a vacuum. Nor do they function independently from other virtues and values. Reasonable people of goodwill possessing the virtues of mindfulness and compassion in good measure, may nevertheless strongly disagree about what the compassionate, mindful thing to do is, particularly in a business setting. It is, moreover, conceivable that intensively cultivating mindfulness and compassion could lead one to reject altogether the “dog-eat dog” culture of competitive business that draws upon selective features of mindfulness meditation that lie in the corporate comfort zone yet which are not especially countercultural from a religious or spiritual vantage point. The second concern is that Western virtue-based business ethics is largely confined to academic philosophical theories. As such, virtue-driven business ethics is often more centered around developing theoretical wisdom than developing “hard core” practical wisdom earned through yoga asanas, meditation, chanting, and breathing, whereas for contemplative practices the reverse is the case, with practical wisdom emphasized over theoretical wisdom. Accordingly, the article examines prospects for cross-fertilization between, on the one hand, mindfulness and compassion interpreted as virtues in Eastern contemplative practices, and on the other hand, mindfulness and compassion as interpreted within Western virtue-oriented business ethics. Illuminating a pathway for such interpretative cross-pollination calls for an appropriate conceptual frame of reference that the article organizes around a set of interconnected themes. The first theme is that mindfulness and compassion represent key virtues within contemplative practices. This indicates a promising touchpoint between Eastern and Western traditions: their respective focus upon character, inner states, intrinsic motivation, and self-improvement toward ethicality in the world. The second theme is that such virtues in Eastern contemplative practices, as well as character traits integral to Western virtue-oriented approaches, denote contested “normative-interpretive” concepts that engage philosophical debate rather than indisputable empirical-criterial concepts that can be taken at face-value. The third theme advocates moving beyond behaviorist and neuropsychological accounts of virtue, approaching character traits of Eastern contemplative practice and Western virtue ethics through nonscientific inquiry into normative interpretive questions concerning such virtues. This supports debate over competing views of the nature, purpose, cultivation, and cultural context of mindfulness, compassion, and other virtues – issues arising as mindfulness enters the business management sphere -- to be conducted on normative grounds. With the background conceptual framework established, the article presents key points about the prospects for cross-fertilization between virtue ethics and contemplative practice, and why it matters, with reference to business ethics.

In the absence of any institution for imposing legal liability on global business, the idea of instituting a cosmopolitan court for international corporate offenses is advocated. The proposal is then critically examined and defended in light of a number of key objections. Having both civil and criminal jurisdiction, such a tribunal could benefit domestic and international legal systems, multinational corporations, and victims of transnational and international corporate misdeeds. By laying down minimal global standards of corporate liability, resolving conflicts between the regulatory activities of national legal systems, and affording redress for aggrieved parties in countries with inadequate legal infrastructures, the tribunal would promote the objectives of compensatory, distributive, procedural and retributive justice at the global level. Moreover, the court would assist corporations by translating compliance with minimum ethical standards to the bottom line. Ethical corporations will gain competitive advantage relative to unscrupulous firms, since the latter'ss activities will be sanctioned. The international community need not leave obedience to basic norms up to the voluntary good-will and discretion of multinational firms.

The paper links philosophical reflection with business-and-society considerations concerning a culture of compassion for economic life. The initial part of the paper explores the philosophical genealogy of the concept of compassion, revealing it as a primordial feature of the human condition, albeit a feature subject to a variety of interpretations. In the analysis, the paper highlights several tensions attending alternative interpretations of the concept of compassion that appear across ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern treatments in the Western philosophical tradition. The paper then proceeds to extend some of these interpretative perspectives on compassion into contemporary economic life, focusing on hybrid social enterprise. The paper concludes that compassion can constitute a motivation and inspiration for seeking pro-social entrepreneurial business solutions in our deeply divided and profoundly needy world.

Sustainability has been gaining recognition as an innovative pathway for general learning from early childhood to higher education. This article advances acura personalis, or care for the entire person, approach for integrating sustainability into the domain of business management education. Such an approach centers on fostering higher-order dispositions including creativity, critical moral awareness, existential authenticity, excellence, relatedness, and overall well-being and thus constitutes a broader, deep ecological alternative to received scientistic and quantitatively controlled programs.

Taking a Sartrean existentialist viewpoint towards business ethics, in particular, concerning the question of the nature of businesspersons’ moral character, provides for a dramatically distinct set of reflections from those afforded by the received view on character, namely that of Aristotelian-based virtue ethics. Insofar as Sartre’s philosophy places human freedom at center stage, I argue that the authenticity with which a businessperson approaches moral situations depends on the degree of consciousness he or she has of the various choices at stake. Finally, I consider some practical changes in business ethics education, managerial decision-making, and business organizations that Sartrean reflections might prompt.

This article challenges an argument from Tom Donaldson''s recent bookThe Ethics of International Business with a claim that distributive justice, deemed in many circles to impose a duty of mutual aid on individuals and nations, establishes a basis for holding multinational corporations to such a duty as well. The root idea I advocate is that Rawls'' theory of justice can be deployed — beyond its original intent yet in line with its spirit — to underwrite aprima facie obligation of international business to render aid to ameliorate suffering on behalf of the inhabitants of developing countries in which they operate.

This chapter analyzes two facets of mindfulness for servant leadership of B-Corporations, which is an emerging form of social enterprise. One facet concerns inner states and motivations for leading business for non-instrumental reasons. This facet encompasses an ethics-in-practice dimension alongside of merely theoretical approaches, a dimension well suited for leadership of B-Corps, whose governance structure places ethics and sustainability at the center of the non-instrumental quest for the creation of social value and respect for human rights by business enterprises. The motivation for care of the mindful servant leader matches the investors’ expectations of social impact for the firm. The other facet concerns leadership decisions and actions fulfilling the mission of B-Corporations in creating social value alongside of economic value for a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Concerning this second facet, mindfulness is vitally involved in that servant leaders pay attention to the whole business and its explicit social benefit, not just this or that element of the firm’s operations. The chapter advances two arguments. The first argument—tied to the first facet—posits that the virtue of mindfulness contributes a key element of non-instrumental motivation for leadership generally missing from extant leadership approaches. The second argument—tied to the second facet—addresses the decision-making side of mindfulness. It asserts that the virtue of mindfulness is especially poised to equip servant leadership for the B-Corporation movement for two vital challenges: balancing demands from multiple stakeholders; and assimilating multiple criteria and values—both financial and non-financial.

This article asks whether a “law-as-integrity” approach to human rights adjudication provides a theoretical framework within which to make sense of authoritative regional interpretations of basic human rights for the global community. To focus analysis, I consider U.S. court interpretations of international human rights as an interpretive context. I argue that, with appropriate modification so as to include the world community as a “community of principle” for purposes of human rights adjudication, the law-as-integrity perspective permits disputes surrounding the legality of human rights to revolve around competing interpretive claims backed up by justifying legal theories, rather than as ideological battles external to a juridical philosophy of rights.