A Nietzschean re‐evaluation of values as a way of re‐imagining business ethics

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12213
• Author: Payman Tajalli,Steven Segal
• Date: 01 April 2019
• Published date: 01 April 2019

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  wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2019;28:234–242.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1 | INTRODUCTION

Every new wave of crisis i n business and ma nagement has, at

least part ly, been attribu ted to the absence o r failing of mora lity

(Giacalone, 2 007; Mintzberg, 200 4; Pfeffer & Fong, 20 02; Swanson,

2005), and has pr ompted managem ent schools to add ress such

crises by a call for m ore ethical fo rms of behaviour (Ch an, Fung, &

Yau, 2013; Friedland, 20 09; Lau, 2010; Mint zberg, 20 09; Rubin &

Dierdorf f, 2009; Waddock, 2005; Wong, 2 009).

But what if ethic s itself is in a crisis, what if busin ess ethics suf‐

fers an “ontologic al crisis” and we have found out th at its foundation

is “rubble” (Cur tis, Harney, & Jones, 2013, pp. 65, 67) to such a n ex‐

tent that we need to ask w hether it is a “saviour or co‐conspir ator”

(Engelbrecht, 2 012, p. 339), and what if cod es of ethics have be en

undermined in w ays such that they have be come detached fr om their

foundations an d from that which gave them me aning? This is the be‐

lief underlyi ng the thought of Friedrich Nietz sche, who argues that

the death of God h eralds the death of abs olutes and hence the de ath

of the possibilit y of ethics as a “moral compass” thro ugh which ev‐

eryday life in gen eral as well as organisation al life is given direction.

In the wake of the deat h of God, it is not that s pecific valu es have

disappeare d but that the mean ing of value as both a co ncept and

phenomenon h as fragmented . The death of God to q uote Vattimo

(1989, p. 177), “has dissolved any other point of r eference, any other

basis of certai nty,” resulting in an exis tential vacuu m where there

is nothing to give mea ning to the concept of ethics itse lf—and with

this, all specif ic ethical co des. The sense a nd significa nce of ethics

as a discourse or f ield of study have been fragm ented, and a decou‐

pling of the langu age of ethics from i ts source has ta ken place. In

the wake of the death of G od, it is no longer possible to tal k about

moral imper atives, there is n othing left bu t the ruins of ethi cs, and

at best those wh o are concerned with eth ics are rummaging thr ough

its ruins.

From this perspe ctive, much of bu siness ethic s is just another

form of rummagin g through the ruins of ethics an d “the ubiquity of

the discourse o n ethics within cor porations are sy mptomatic of a lack

of actual ethic s” (Barthold, 2013, p. 401) and our “ inability to name

and strive for th e Good that char acterises today’s ethics, sh ould …

be interpreted a s nihilism” (Engelbre cht, 2012, p. 342). For e xam‐

ple, the talk of et hics in organisations is ofte n reduced to practices

of compliance (Schw artz, 20 02; Wulf, 2012), or the way in whi ch

ethics is dealt w ith in business s chools is by intro ducing stude nts

Received: 16 Janua ry 2018 

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  Revised: 16 Octob er 2018 

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  Accepted: 18 Octob er 2018

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12213

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

A Nietzschean re‐evaluation of values as a way of re‐imagining

business ethics

Payman Tajalli  | Steven Segal

Macquarie Graduate School of

Management, Macquarie University, Sydney,

New South Wales , Australia

Correspondence

Payman Tajalli, Macquarie Graduate School

of Management, Macquarie University,

Sydney, New South Wale s 2109, Australia.

Email: paymantajalli@hotmail.com

Abstract

Whereas a range of busin ess and management scholars have argue d that business is

in an ethical crisis, N ietzsche makes it p ossible to see that it is eth ics itself that is i n

crisis, and that only as t he crisis in ethics is dealt with c an ethics in specific areas such

as business be addre ssed. Nihilism is the na me that Nietzsch e gives to the crisis in

ethics. The fail ure to fully appreciate nihilism and its p ervasiveness as the root cause

of the problem, as evid ent in the perpetua l quest to obliterate n ihilism through the

creation of ethical fr ameworks and fou ndations, has plunge d business and ethic s

scholarship in the f ield, ever deeper in the quagmire of nihilis m. In response to nihil‐

ism, Nietzsche of fers a re‐evaluation of all values. To re‐evaluate all v alues means to

accept nihilism and see it as a b asis for questionin g taken for granted assu mptions

that have supported t he notion of ethics or va lues in order to re‐imagi ne an ethics

which is responsive to the c risis of nihilism. The paper thus prop oses that rather than

trying to invent new eth ics or ethical foundations, or f iguring out “how” to be ethical,

we need to turn our atte ntion on the “why to be” of ethics.