Critical Business Ethics: From Corporate Self‐interest to the Glorification of the Sovereign Pater

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12142
• Date: 01 April 2018
• Published date: 01 April 2018

International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 20, 483–499 (2018)

DOI: 10.1111/ijmr.12142

Critical Business Ethics: From Corporate

Self-interest to the Glorification of the

Sovereign Pater

Carl Rhodes and Alison Pullen1

UTS Business School, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia, and 1Faculty of Business and

Economics, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia

Corresponding author email: carl.rhodes@uts.edu.au

Research in critical business ethics has demonstrated how economic self-interestis the

primary reason that businesses adopt nominally ethical practices. After reviewing this

body of research, the authors propose that it can be further developed by questioning

its conception of self-interest, by exploring its non-economic dimensions and byrecon-

sidering the meaning of the ‘self’ that is said to have such interests. Drawing insights

from feminist theory and political theology, the paper interrogates corporate business

ethics as a public glorification of corporate powerbased on a patriarchal conception of

the corporation. Genealogically rooted in early Christian ceremonial practices used to

glorify God the Father, this is a glorification for the sake of glory rather than just for the

sake of commercial ends. The authors further argue that corporate business ethics is

rendered as the feminized servant of the sovereign corporate patriarch, always at hand

to glorify the master. The meaning of corporate businessethics is hence one where the

feminine is not absent, but rather is servile to a masculinity conceived in relation to

domination, greatness and sovereignty. Collectively, this shows how the power wielded

and desired bycorporate business ethics far exceeds the pursuit of financial self-interest;

it is also related to modelling the corporation on a male God. The paper concludes by

considering how research in critical business ethics can be extended through forms

of inquiry that destabilize the ethical glorification of the corporation, and displace its

masculinist privilege.

Introduction

Practices associated with ethics are more prevalent

and fashionable than ever in the corporate world,

with organizations of all sorts being involved in pro-

grammes related to, inter alia, sustainability, cor-

porate social responsibility, corporate governance,

workplaceethics, ethical codes and ethical accounting

frameworks (Fleming and Jones 2012). Why is there

such a flourishing enthusiasm for ethics? A simple an-

swer would be that corporations have seen the light,

abandoned their pursuit of self-interest, and decided

to respond genuinely to the moral demands that are

presented to them so as to become ‘ethical organi-

zations’ in substance as well as image (Verbos et al.

2007). Such a view is beyond na¨

ıve, given the dismal

record of flagrant corporate disregard for ‘the ethi-

cal dimensions of global economic activity’ (Fleming

et al. 2013, p. 338). In response, it has been argued

that corporations have largely ‘failed to responsibly

use whatever autonomyand discretion they possessed

to produce fair and generous outcomes for their vari-

ous stakeholder groups’ (Marens 2010a, p. 761).

Since the 1990s there has been an outpouring of re-

search that has critically questioned the ethical cred-

ibility of what businesses do in the name of ethics.

This literature, which has been referred to as ‘crit-

ical business ethics’ (ten Bos and Willmott 2001;

Eastman 2013; Jones et al. 2005; Nijhof and Jeurissen

2010; O’Sullivan 2012; Sampford and Wood 1992),

treats the proclaimed purpose of corporate business

ethics suspiciously (Sampford and Wood 1992) and

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484 C. Rhodes and A. Pullen

challenges the received wisdom of the motives it pro-

claims (ten Bos and Willmott 2001, p.790). Such a

reformulation emphasizes ‘the value of alternative

narratives [ . . . ] that would providea valuable correc-

tive, complement, and alternative to mainstream nor-

mative and empirical business ethics’ (Eastman 2013,

p. 547).

Today, critical approaches to business ethics are

well established, and it is this literature that is the

focus of our paper. Central to critical business ethics

is the conviction that, while a variety of organiza-

tional practices and programmes are described and

justified in ethical terms, ethics is not their pri-

mary content or rationale. The focus of this cri-

tique is on ‘corporate business ethics’, that is the

range of corporate practices that seek to associate

themselves with ethics and are described in the lan-

guage of ethics (Rhodes 2016). Key dimensions of

this that have attracted attention in critical busi-

ness ethics research include business ethics per se

(e.g. Jones 2003) as well as corporate social re-

sponsibility (e.g. Banerjee 2008), ethical decision-

making (e.g. Clegg et al. 2007), corporate codes of

ethics (e.g. Jensen et al. 2009) social reporting (e.g.

Deegan 2002), sustainability (e.g. Livesey and

Kearins 2002), corporate governance (e.g. Roberts

2001) and corporate environmentalism (Phillips

2014). For the critical study of business ethics these

areas of corporate activity can be regarded as corre-

lates of each other in that they share a central ethical

motif and are articulated through ethical terminology

(Fleming and Jones 2012; Rhodes 2016).

The paper begins with a systematic review of criti-

cal business ethics, focusing especially on the differ-

ent ways in which it has questioned and explainedthe

reasons why corporations engage in nominally ethical

practices. This shows how, whether it is used to garner

direct commercial advantage, to enhance impression

management or to secure political legitimacy, corpo-

rate business ethics serves the primary purpose of

the pursuit of corporate self-interest. While we are

sympathetic to research in critical business ethics, in

reviewing it we raise the concern that that this shared

conclusion requires further interrogation. To engage

in such an interrogation, the paper turns to Giorgio

Agamben’s (2011) discussion of the theological basis

of political and economic authority and its association

with practices of glorification and ceremonial sym-

bols of power. Drawing on Agamben (2011), we con-

tend that corporate power operates similarly through

the way in which business ethics can be understood

as a form of corporate self-glorification achieved

through public and ceremonial acclamations of moral

righteousness. This qualifies self-interested-based

critiques of corporate business ethics by bringing

into question the character and construction of the

very ‘self’ that is said to have those interests. In

making this argument, we need to be clear that it

is not our intention to criticize religious faith per se,

nor to comment on the choices people make and the

commitments they hold in regard to that faith. In-

stead, our attention is on how religious symbolism

has and can be culturally appropriated through cor-

porate business ethics, and the implications of this

for the radical extension of corporate power. Just as

Agamben (2011) shows that political power has

its ‘roots in hidden legacies of the early Church’

(MacPhail 2015, p. 262), we suggest that also holds

for dimensions of corporate power.

Having considered corporate business ethics as a

form of glorification, we add a gendered critique ex-

ploring how the ethics that glorifies the corporation is

infused with a masculine ethos that privileges values

such as strength, power and victoriousness. This is a

trajectory that seeks to probe and problematize how

the very ideas that justify corporate business ethics

are masculine and patriarchal, such that values asso-

ciated with love, care and affectual relationships are

castigated as being feminine and at best secondary

to life in corporations. Corporate business ethics is

charged with placing a ‘crown of glory’ (Agamben

2011, p. 147) on the corporate head so as to enable

the corporation reign without its virility being ques-

tioned. Acknowledging this, we are able to theorize

corporate business ethics in relation to the subordina-

tion of ‘substantive, ethical, human values and ends’

to a ‘calculating rationality’ (Bologh 1990, p. 122)

albeit through a non-rational means. In this vein re-

search in the tradition of critical business ethics can,

we hope to show, be extended through forms of in-

quiry that destabilize the ethical glorification of the

corporation, and displace its masculinist privilege.

Critical business ethics

In reviewing the literature on critical business ethics,

we focused primarily on articles published in schol-

arly journals (although some books and chapters were

included) whose purpose was to question the way in

which ethics had been used in business. Our intention

was not consider the wealth of ethical theories and

traditions that have been used in business ethics re-

search, but rather to restrict our attention to research

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