Morality, Competition, and the Firm
The Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2014
- Category
- General
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780197513941
- Publish Date
- Feb 2020
- List Price
- $38.50
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780199990481
- Publish Date
- Aug 2014
- List Price
- $115.50
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Description
In this collection of provocative essays, Joseph Heath provides a compelling new framework for thinking about the moral obligations that private actors in a market economy have toward each other and to society. In a sharp break with traditional approaches to business ethics, Heath argues that the basic principles of corporate social responsibility are already implicit in the institutional norms that structure both marketplace competition and the modern business corporation.
In four new and nine previously published essays, Heath articulates the foundations of a "market failures" approach to business ethics. Rather than bringing moral concerns to bear upon economic activity as a set of foreign or externally imposed constraints, this approach seeks to articulate a robust conception of business ethics derived solely from the basic normative justification for capitalism. The result is a unified theory of business ethics, corporate law, economic regulation, and the welfare state, which offers a reconstruction of the central normative preoccupations in each area that is consistent across all four domains. Beyond the core theory, Heath offers new insights on a wide range of topics in economics and philosophy, from agency theory and risk management to social cooperation and the transaction cost theory of the firm.
About the author
JOSEPH HEATH is the director of the Centre for Ethics at the University of Toronto, as well as a professor in the department of philosophy and the School of Public Policy and Governance. He is the author of five books, including The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t Be Jammed (with Andrew Potter) and Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism. He lives in Toronto.
Other titles by
Cooperation and Social Justice
Philosophical Foundations of Climate Change Policy
The Machinery of Government
Public Administration and the Liberal State
Enlightenment 2.0
Following the Rules
Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint
Rebel Sell
Why The Culture Can't Be Jammed
Filthy Lucre
Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism
The Efficient Society
Why Canada Is As Close To Utopia As It Gets