Evaluate the Price of Unethical Behavior

In this article

· 1. Introduction: Business Ethics and Ideology—a Confusing Issue

· 2. A Brief History of Ideology

· 3. Business Ethics and Ideology

· Conclusion: Ideology and Moral Philosophy in Business Ethics

· Disclosure statement

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Business Ethics as Ideology?

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Abstract

Examining moral behaviour in business may be as old as business. Discussing the morality of business is one of the tasks of business ethics linking it to business and to moral philosophy. However, from the standpoint of moral philosophy, the idea of business ethics appears rather unusual. To many, business ethics might even appear as an oxymoron, being closer to business than to moral philosophy. Rather than being firmly associated with moral philosophy, business ethics might carry some connotations to something called ideology. Perhaps the danger of ideology lurks when business ethics exposes itself to losing its moral philosophical rooting. Presenting a rather challenging meta-discussion—a discussion ‘about’ business ethics—the following question emerges: is business ethics an ideology? To approximate this, the paper offers two parts: it separates moral philosophy from ideology and defines ideology by outlining two historical versions of ideology and two modern schools of thoughts. From there a threefold definition of ideology is developed leading to 12 constitutive characteristics. Upon examining standard business ethics textbooks, part two relates business ethics to those standard definitions and the 12 characteristics. A conclusion ascertains whether business ethics leans towards ideology or moral philosophy.

Keywords: Business Ethics ,  Ideology ,  Textbooks ,  Ethics ,  Morality ,  Moral Philosophy

1. Introduction: Business Ethics and Ideology—a Confusing Issue

Perhaps many have been correct in assuming that ideology touches all of us. As such the issue of ideology is not new to management. For well over fifty years ‘management and organizational scientists are especially interested in ideologies’. 1 1 J.M. Beyer, R.L.M. Dunbar and A.D. Meyer, ‘Comment: The Concept of Ideology in Organizational Analysis’, Academy of Management Review, 13:3 (1988), p. 483–489; J.L. Simon, ‘Business Ideology, Business Ethics and Business Behavior’, Business & Society, 7:2 (1967), pp. 18–32; S.R. Clegg, ‘Why is Organization Theory so Ignorant?’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 15:4 (2006), pp. 426–430; S.R. Clegg, ‘Managerialism: Born in the USA’, Academy of Management Review, 39:4 (2014), pp. 566–585; M.K. Chin et al. ‘Political Ideologies of CEOs: The Influence of Executives’ Values on Corporate Social Responsibility’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 58:2 (2013), pp. 197–232.View all notes Since its interception during the 1980s, virtually the same applies to business ethics. As a consequence, there has been a longstanding ‘intimate relationship between ideology and business ethics’—least of all because of a potential fear of being ‘imprisoned by ideology’. 2 2 T.A. Petit, The Moral Crisis of Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), p. 11; R.L. Lippke, Radical Business Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), p. 33.View all notes Given such a danger, many have sought to avoid being trapped on a ‘battleground on which many bloody ideological wars are fought’, as the former Harvard Business Review editor Joan Magretta notes. 3 3 J. Magretta, What Management Is: How it Works and Why it’'s Everyone's Business (London: Profile, 2012), p. 12.View all notes In other words, an ‘intense ideological conflict’ still rages. 4 4 J. Essers, ‘Re-writing the Organization: The Ideological Deadlock of Narrative Methodology’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 25:2 (2012), p. 334.View all notes All this indicates that Daniel Bell’s infamous ‘End of Ideology’ 5 5 D. Bell, The End of Ideology – On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960).View all notes claim has not materialized. Instead ‘the end of ideology itself has become an ideology’. 6 6 Essers, ‘Re-writing the Organization’, op. cit., p. 336; P.K. Hatemi, et al. ‘It’s the End of Ideology as we Know it’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 24:3 (2012), pp. 345–369.View all notes

While ideology has certainly not ended and ‘business ethics is a subject matter worthy of scholarly attention’, the relationship between both remains in tension. 7 7 Lippke, op. cit., p. 1; D.G. Fisher and J.T. Sweeney, ‘Morality vs. Ideology: Implications for Accounting Ethics Research’, Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research, 5 (2002), pp. 141–160; A. Wall, ‘Ethics and Management – Oil and Water’ in S. Dracopolou (ed.) Ethics and Values in Healthcare Management (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 13.View all notes Perhaps it faces an even more crucial challenge when key moral philosophers such as Alistair MacIntyre note that ‘the problems of business ethics are insoluble’. 8 8 A. MacIntyre, ‘Why are the Problems of Business Ethics Insoluble’ in B. Baumrin and B. Friedman (eds) Moral Responsibility and the Professions (New York: Haven Publishing, 1982).View all notes Whatever the case may be, business ethics and ideology cannot simply be equated to ‘ethics ideology’, nor can both be added together under: business + ethics = ideology. 9 9 T. Barnett, et al. ‘Ethical Ideology and Ethical Judgment Regarding Ethical Issues in Business’, Journal of Business Ethics, 13:6 (1994), pp. 469–480.View all notes However, in order to tackle business ethics and ideology, one must necessarily move beyond the internalities of business ethics, entering into the theory of ideology as well as moral philosophy. Such a task might challenge many deeply held assumptions about business ethics and hence this rather controversial paper is designed as a ‘discussion opener’—not as final world on the matter.

While it remains not uncommon for academics to stay inside the relative security of their chosen fields, a view from ‘within’ the field of business ethics itself is insufficient for an evaluation ‘about’ business ethics. Even though many tend to avoid venturing outside their ‘box’, a meta-debate ‘about’ business ethics demands exactly that. However, such a move is never without challenges and consequences, one of which is that one may find, for example, that ‘we scholars of business ethics have not devoted much empirical scrutiny to our field itself’. 10 10 C. Albrecht, et al. ‘Productivity and Prestige in Business Ethics Research: A Report and Commentary on the State of the Field’, Business & Society, 50:4 (2011), p. 581.View all notes This lack of self-scrutiny sits uncomfortably on top of a general absence of what might be called ‘meta-studies’. This does not come without retribution. By avoiding the meta-level, many scholars inside the field have ‘failed to provide the sort of analysis that can boost the philosophical credentials of business ethics’. 11 11 Lippke, op. cit., p. 6.View all notes

All this indicates not just a ‘business-ethics-vs-ideology’ debate but also directing attention to the question: what actually is an ideology? Several structural imperatives demand that attempting to define ideology might suggest proceeding in a sequential way: firstly, one needs to present a close approximation of a possible definition of ideology. Next, one should separate ideology from moral philosophy. Since the subject at hand—business ethics—relates directly to moral philosophy, clarification on both remains indispensable. Thirdly, once workable definitions of ideology have been established and it has been separated from moral philosophy, the vast jungle of ideas, concepts, definitions, schools of thoughts and so on within the field of ideology studies should be condensed to a manageable number of core characteristics against which business ethics can be assessed. However, before this can be conducted, a brief introductory note on the history of ideology might explain much of how it is used today.

2. A Brief History of Ideology

Perhaps early ideologies originated in Machiavelli’s deceit, Bacon’s idols and false notions, Hobbes’s religious fear and ignorance, Helvetius and Holbach’s superstition and preconceptions of priestly deceit, Condillac’s theological and metaphysical prejudices, and Comte’s irrational metaphysical imaginations. However, the precise historical origin of ideology ultimately rests with French philosopher Comte Destutt de Tracy 12 12 A.L.C.D. de Tracy, Eléments d'idéologie (Georgetown, DC: Joseph Milligan, 1829), pp. 1817–1818, http://www.bl.uk & http://www.loc.gov .View all notes (1754–1836) who saw ‘ideology as a method of knowledge in social science’. 13 13 S. Bocancea, ‘Ideology as a Means of Interpretation’, European Journal of Science & Theology, 8:3 (2012), p. 216.View all notes De Tracy defined ideology as a scientific study of ideas. Yet perhaps from the time of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) we also know that science and ideas have never been created by a ‘socially unattached intelligentsia’ as the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) once noted. Since science and ideas have never existed in a political vacuum, Tracy’s ideology started challenging authority, giving rise to today’s ideology. 14 14 S. Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso Press, 1989), p. 30f.; Petit, op. cit., p. 11; W. Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1927), p. 137; K.B. Miller, Ideology and Moral Philosophy (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), p. 27; E. Kennedy, ‘Ideology from Destutt De Tracy to Marx’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 40:3 (1979), pp. 353–368.View all notes

Perhaps all of this came about because de Tracy’s ideas on Enlightenment such as democracy and self-determination were as challenging to the ruling elite of his time as anarchism, trade unions, resistance, Occupy Wall Street and industrial democracy are for today’s political elite. During de Tracy’s time, the main opponent of new ideas was Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821), who abused those studying ideas as ideologists and ideologues, setting much of ideology’s negative connotations. Only a few years later, the Napoleonic view of ideology was made truly famous through Karl Marx’s ‘German Ideology’. 15 15 K. Marx, The German Ideology – Critique of Modern German Philosophy According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner, and of German Socialism According to Its Various Prophets, 1845, http://www.marxists.org .View all notes While this sets the path for what we know ideology to be today, ideology still suffers from ‘a great variety of definitions’. 16 16 S. Bocancea, op. cit., p. 216.View all notes

Yet out of the ‘de Tracy-vs.-Napoleon/Marx’ battle, two main schools of thoughts on ideology emerged: the first school might be called ‘everything is ideological’, assuming that every idea is ideology. This created an immediate problem, namely that when ‘everything is ideology’ perhaps—conversely—‘nothing is ideology’. With that, the concept of ideology as well as ideology-critique loses most of its critical powers. 17 17 G. Sartori, ‘Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems’, American Political Science Review, 63:2 (1969), p. 400.View all notes Today, British political scientist Michael Freeden appears to be the prime representative of the ‘everything is ideological’ approach. 18 18 M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); M. Freeden, ‘Ideology and Political Theory’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 11:1 (2006), pp. 3–22; M. Freeden (eds) The Meaning of Ideology – Cross-disciplinary Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2007); M. Freeden, The Meaning of Ideology: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2013); M. Freeden, et al. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).View all notes

The second school carries connotations to a critical understanding of ideology capable of highlighting asymmetrical power relationships and domination. The concept of ‘ideology-critique’ falls into this category. 19 19 W.F. Haug, Elemente einer Theorie des Ideologischen (Hamburg: Argument-Verlag, 1993); W.F. Haug, Umrisse zu einer Theorie des Ideologischen, http://www.wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de , 1993; S. Hall, et al., Die Camera obscura der Ideologie – Projekt Ideologie-Theorie (Berlin: Argument-Verlag, 1984); W. Nienhueser, ‘Empirical Research on HRM as a Production of Ideology’, Management Revue, 22:4 (2011), pp. 367–393; J. Rehmann, Theories of Ideology: the Powers of Alienation and Subjection (Leiden: Brill, 2013).View all notes Common to both schools is that their ideas on ideology date back to their Greek origins found in an ‘idea’ as a visual image combined with ‘logos’. However, to examine the ‘idea-logos’ (ideology) of business ethics a clear definition still remains a prerequisite. Given the rather voluminous and somewhat convoluted literature on ideology, establishing a workable definition suitable can be a daunting task. However, from the vast array of definitions, a threefold definition in line with the second school emerged. Such definitional approximations to ideology proceed in the following way: firstly, there is an academic-scholarly definition; secondly a functional definition is presented; and thirdly constitutive characteristics of ideology are offered. The first and rather scholarly explanation of ideology ‘defines ideology in relation to knowledge’ and formulates this as knowledge in the service of power. 20 20 T. Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory (London: Verso, 2006), pp. 62 and 141–162; P. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 225; N. Butler and S. Spoelstra, ‘The Regime of Excellence and the Erosion of Ethos in Critical Management Studies’, British Journal of Management, 25:3 (2014), p. 540.View all notes

Rather than focusing on knowledge, the second definition relates to ideology’s function since the task of many ideologies is to serve specific tasks. 21 21 M. Morris, Knowledge and Ideology: The Epistemology of Social and Political Critique (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).View all notes In this understanding, ideology serves three key functions: it camouflages contradictions, supports domination and prevents emancipation. 22 22 P. Zarembka (ed.) Contradictions: Finance, Greed, and Labor Unequally Paid (Bingley: Emerald, 2013); D. Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); J. Downey, et al., ‘Ideology Critique: The Challenge for Media Studies’, Media, Culture & Society, 36:6 (2014), p. 681.View all notes The final way to understand ideology condenses various definitions to key characteristics. Based on the seminal work of Peffer and more recently Rehmann, 12 signifiers of ideology have emerged as constitutive elements of ideology. 23 23 R.G. Peffer, ‘Morality and the Marxist Concept of Ideology’ in K. Nielsen and S. C. Patten (eds) Marx and Morality (Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy, 1985), p. 85; R.G. Peffer, Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 237; J. Rehmann, ‘Ideology-critique with the Conceptual Hinterland of a Theory of the Ideological’, Critical Sociology, 41:3 (2015), pp. 433–448.View all notes

Relying on these broad elements helps us escape the narrowness of the aforementioned defining specifics of ideology. Above that, it also shows how ideology functions, and how it is used and understood in a broader sense because ideological content can be detected in all 12 elements. When, for example, examining the first two of the 12 elements—organizational ideology and sympathy creation—the term ‘organization’ may not immediately appear ideological at all but once placed in the context of ideology studies, its ideological content becomes visible. Secondly, sympathy might—at first glance—appear rather positive but again once viewed from the perspective of ideology studies its ideological character becomes visible. Beyond being a more comprehensive set of elements that create ideology, the complete set of all 12 characteristics provides a useful structuring element for the proceeding analysis. Having defined and characterized ideology, the difference between ideology and moral philosophy still needs to be clarified.

One might like to distinguish between ideology and neighbouring concepts such as, for example, philosophy and moral philosophy. This comes particularly to fore since business ethics touches on moral philosophy. Perhaps one of the key defining issues separating ideology from philosophy is the view that philosophy—ϕιλοσοϕία, philosophia, the love of wisdom—exists only for itself. Meanwhile, the aforementioned definitions tell us that ideology fulfils a specific purpose. In other words, philosophy creates knowledge, truth and wisdom for itself while ideology creates knowledge for a specific purpose. Perhaps this is also why ‘philosophy still makes the strongest case for philosophy’s role in combating ideology’. 24 24 J. Grant, ‘The End of Critique? Ideology as Replication in Adorno and Jameson’, Culture, Theory & Critique, 55:1 (2013), p. 5.View all notes Yet it also makes the fault line between ideology and moral philosophy very clear. Armed with that, moral philosophy and ideology can now be contrasted. In sharp contrast to moral philosophy, ‘we take ideology to be legitimacy, which authorizes, sustains, and reproduces’ organizations, specific groups and even academic fields. 25 25 E. Chiapello and N. Fairclough, ‘Understanding the New Management Ideology: A Transdisciplinary Contribution from Critical Discourse Analysis and New Sociology of Capitalism’, Discourse & Society, 13:2 (2002), p. 187; S. Ghoshal, ‘Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices’, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4:1 (2005), p. 76; Chin, et al., op. cit., p. 201.View all notes

At this point, the following intermission can be made to conclude the first part because a definition of ideology has been produced and it has been separated from moral philosophy. The final task before engaging with business ethics is to outline ideology’s 12 constitutive characteristics. These characteristics suggest a feasible structure for the next part—assessing business ethics. The 12 characteristics are: (1) organizational—an ideology is generated within organizational settings; (2) sympathy—ideologies create sympathy for business; (3) science—ideologies use science; (4) inversions—ideology create an upside-down view of business; (5) consciousness—ideologies establish false consciousness; (6) misleading—ideologies mislead while remaining linked to reality; (7) mystifying—ideologies mystify using beliefs and fantasies; (8) interest—ideologies represent a sectarian business interest as universal; (9) status quo—ideologies maintain the current order; (10) defensive—ideologies defend business; (11) wellbeing—ideologies mitigate against human wellbeing and emancipation; and finally (12) history—ideologies are a-historical, asserting eternal values. 26 26 V. Mathoor, ‘The Ideologies of Theory’, Critique, 40:4 (2012), p. 608; E. Harcourt (ed.) Morality, Reflection, and Ideology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 2; A. Skillen, ‘Is Morality a Ruling Illusion?’, in Harcourt (ed.) Morality, Reflection, and Ideology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); D. Kellner, ‘Marxism, Morality, and Ideology’, in K. Nielsen and S.C. Patten (eds) Marx and Morality (Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy, 1985), pp. 98f. and 115; M. Fisk, Ethics and Society (Chicago, IL: Harvester Press, 1980), p. 40; J. Rancière, ‘On the Theory of Ideology’, Radical Philosophy, 7 (1974), p. 2.View all notes These characteristics can, in 12 short sections, be employed to test whether or not business ethics is an ideology.

3. Business Ethics and Ideology

The next part briefly assesses business ethics using the initial definitions. How business ethics applies to a knowledge-oriented definition—not knowledge for itself but for a specific purpose—can be shown most clearly by one of its founders—Norman E. Bowie—when highlighting ‘using ethics to increase profits’. 27 27 N.E. Bowie and M. Schneider, Business Ethics for Dummies (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2011), p. 21; N. Bowie, Business Ethics in the 21st Century (New York: Springer, 2013).View all notes This indicates that the purpose of business ethics is not philosophy’s ‘love of wisdom’ but knowledge creation for a specific purpose. 28 28 T. Donaldson, ‘Where the Facts End: Richard De George and the Rise of Business Ethics’, Journal of Business Ethics, 127:4 (2015), pp. 783–787.View all notes In itself there is nothing wrong with the statement. The problem is that it is not ethics or moral philosophy but ideology that is presented. While their view is certainly a clarifying hallmark, additional examples from the world of business ethics will show how these relate not just to key ideology definitions but also to core characteristics of ideology.

This section will rely on a few carefully selected but nonetheless representative examples—designed to exemplify what has been said rather than delivering the verifiable final empirical proof—from leading business ethics textbooks. From these examples an overall picture of business ethics emerges. In this business ethics cannot be seen as a monolithic issue but instead representing a useful ‘mirror of the nature’ of what standard business ethics textbooks present business ethics to be. 29 29 R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).View all notes The examples have been drawn from those rare places where business ethics reflects on itself, showing key assumptions and key function. These are indeed rare and exceptional places because, rather overwhelmingly, business ethics describes ethical issues in business terms (e.g. whistle-blowing, corruption, etc.). Often, these are presented largely disconnected from ethics and moral philosophy and placed after an obligatory introduction textbook chapter on ethics. However, space limitation prevents highlighting all claims made by business ethics—hence the focus on recent textbooks. What became clear, however, is that almost all standard business ethics textbooks represent a standard way indeed and that every new textbook used provided more confirmation of what is being outline here. Given all this, the following section has to rely on selected textbook samples and their relationship to ideology to illuminate key notions of business ethics. This project starts with the first ideology, e.g. the organizational backdrop of ideology.

The First Ideology: Organizational Ideologies

It remains imperative for many organizations to establish an ideological link between organizational members and organizations. 30 30 Rancière, op. cit., p. 2.View all notes Largely because of two issues, the term ‘organizational members’ can incur ideology: firstly, it pretends equalization between being a member of a for-profit organization (e.g. a corporation) dedicated to competitive advantage and a voluntary social and non-profit organization such as local bird watchers associations. While both have organizational members, both are very different organizations. In sociological terms, the latter is rather inward looking and self-organizing while the former is managerially organized reflecting ‘Veblen’s assertion that the nature of business enterprise is predatory’. 31 31 R. Kemp, ‘The Business School in the Corporation of Higher Learning in the USA’, Journal of Pedagogy, 2:2 (2011), p. 291; T. Veblen, Absentee Ownership: Business Enterprise in Recent Times: the Case of America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1923).View all notes

Secondly, the term ‘organizational member’ also has the ideological capacity to equalize managerial members with non-managerial staff, camouflaging Fayol’s and Taylor’s ‘management–worker’ division, even—perhaps more so than anywhere else—when these are the hallmarks of managerial profit-oriented organizations. As the philosopher Marcuse explains

the so-called equalization of class distinctions reveals its ideological function. 32 32 H. Marcuse, One-dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 8.View all notes If the worker and his boss enjoy the same television program and visit the same resort places, if the typist is as attractively made up as the daughter of her employer, if the Negro owns a Cadillac, if they all read the same newspaper, then this assimilation indicates not the disappearance of classes, but the extent to which the needs and satisfactions that serve the preservation of the establishment are shared by the underlying population.

The ideological ‘boss-equals-worker’ 33 33 A.C. Kay and M.J. Brandt, ‘Ideology and Intergroup Inequality: Emerging Directions and Trends’, Current Opinion in Psychology, 11 (2016), pp. 110–114.View all notes theme has been perfectly expressed in Gilbert’s Ethics for Managers: 34 34 J. Gilbert, Ethics for Managers – Philosophical Foundations and Business Reality (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 56.View all notes

sometimes industries, especially if they have strong labour unions get caught up in the situation where they take actions almost certain to produce long-term unhappiness for many individuals. Tens of thousands of retired American auto workers now receive health insurance and pension benefits that create enormous burdens for the companies paying them, and for their current workers, investors, lenders, and customers. Even though they were granted and augmented, it might be that the greatest good for the greatest number in the long run would have been achieved if executives had denied or limited these benefits.

Why having health care and a pension after decades of assembly line work ‘produce long-term unhappiness for many individuals’ remains an open secret. Furthermore, Gilbert claims that auto ‘executives [should have] denied or limited these benefits’. Yet the same does not go for—some say overpaid—corporate CEOs when flying with private jets on begging missions to Washington. 35 35 J. Levs, 2008. Big Three Auto CEOs Flew Private Jets to ask for Taxpayer Money, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/11/19/autos.ceo.jets/ .View all notes Meanwhile, the author’s suggestion would expose tens of thousands of workers to what Michael Moore calls ‘Sicko’. 36 36 M. Moore, Sicko (New York: Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company, DVD 123 min., 2007).View all notes What makes all this ideological is its violation of key concepts of a moral philosophy called Utilitarianism because it grossly violates Utilitarianism’s ‘Happiness Principles’ as being denied medical care and a pension hardly creates happiness.

Yet Gilbert’s most direct example comes when noting

labour-management contracts start from an assumption that management will not treat workers properly on their own accord. 37 37 Gilbert, op. cit., p. 135.View all notes Workers unite (form labour unions) to assure that individual workers will be able to deal with management from a position of power rather than helplessness.

Overall, these examples show two things: business ethics can never escape the management/worker conflict; and business ethics, for the most part seeks to camouflage this. 38 38 P. Standwick and S. Standwick, Understanding Business Ethics (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014); L.P. Hartman, et al. Business Ethics – Decision Making for Person Integrity and Social Responsibility, 3rd edn (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014).View all notes

Perhaps somewhat even more ideological claims come from Brenkert and Beauchamp, noting that ‘business organizations have personalities’. 39 39 G.G. Brenkert and T.L. Beauchamp (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 18.View all notes Business organizations do not have personalities—human beings have. Meanwhile, business ethics writers such as Jennings note that ‘to be ethical is to follow the business as well as the cultural goals of the corporation, its owner, its employees, and its customers’. 40 40 M. Jennings, Business Ethics: Case Studies and Selected Readings, 7th edn (Morris: Cengage, 2011), p. 4; cf. Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., 95ff.View all notes This represents the ideologically motivated exchange of business with moral philosophy so that business—not moral philosophy or ethics—can set ethical parameters by which business is morally judged. Meanwhile, business ethics writer Heath advocates ‘to put in a day’s work for day’s pay’, camouflaging what is known as surplus value. 41 41 J. Heath, Morality, Competition, and the Firm: The Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 72; cf. D. Zimmerman, ‘Coercive Wage Offers’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10 (1981), pp. 121–145.View all notes Finally, business ethics writers such as Bowie and Schneider 42 42 Bowie and Schneider, op. cit. p. 332.View all notes recommend that ‘telling the whole truth goes against the company’s best interest’ even though truth telling remains—perhaps ever since Socrates—a prime example of what it means to be moral. Yet in business ethics the needs of business seem to overtake the morality of truth-telling.

The Second Ideology: Sympathy

More often than not, ideologies represent somewhat of a closed system of ideas designed to create sympathy for the plight of business operating under the pressures of competition. 43 43 O. Schilke, ‘On the Contingent Value of Dynamic Capabilities for Competitive Advantage: The Nonlinear Moderating Effect of Environmental Dynamism’, Strategic Management Journal 35:2 (2014), pp. 179–203.View all notes The ‘closed system’ ideology often leads to a closed organizational system in which Veblen’s ‘cult of business principles’ becomes the raison d'être overtaking ethics. Yet sympathy ideology is also used to invent compassion for business. 44 44 T. Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (New York: The Viking Press, 1918), p. 150.View all notes Commonly, this is supported through trust, loyalty, organizational commitment, esprit de corps, etc. One finds these in organizational cultures strongly emphasizing leadership. 45 45 D. Bolchover, The Living Dead – Switched off Zoned Out, The Shocking Truth about Office Life (Chichester: Capstone Press, 2005).View all notes

Sympathy of business leaders is also show in the aforementioned auto industry case, but not for those at the receiving end of managerial decisions when Gilbert 46 46 Gilbert, op. cit., p. 56.View all notes claims that the company got ‘caught [by] strong labour unions’ that forced it to assure health insurance and pension benefits. It does not issue sympathy for people without pension and health insurance but for the ‘enormous burdens [it creates] for companies’. In an ideological move it plays workers against workers (e.g. retired-vs-current-workers) but remains focused on ‘investors, lenders, and customers’ which are more relevant than people without heath and pension funds. In a final sympathy move towards CEOs, the author suggests that car CEOs should have denied or limited benefits. What is ideological is the rather one-dimensional sympathy for corporations and CEOs but not for people without pension and health funds. As the philosopher Nietzsche would say, it favours the strong over the weak. 47 47 T. Klikauer, Seven Management Moralities (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), p. 102ff.View all notes

However, sympathy is also created when, for example, Jennings 48 48 M. Jennings, Business Ethics, op. cit., p. 53.View all notes notes on the ‘The Baby Killer Company’ (wiki/Nestlé_boycott) ‘Nestlé has never gained the market share or reputation its quality products deserve [as] the result of one bad choice’. Business ethics presents this despite mounting evidence to the contrary. 49 49 M. Muller, Nestlé baby milk scandal has grown up but not gone away, The Guardian, 13 February 2013, http://www.theguardian.com View all notes Meanwhile business ethics writers Crane and Matten note that ‘business ethics provides the means to appreciate and understand [so] that firms can meet these ethical expectations more effectively’. 50 50 A. Crane and D. Matten, Business Ethics: Managing Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability in the Age of Globalization, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 11.View all notes Yet moral philosophy and ethics have never been about effectiveness. To diminish the role of moral philosophy even further, Brenkert and Beauchamp advocate ‘the business of business is business’—making Nestlé the judge on breastfeeding and auto-CEOs the judge of workers’ health and pension entitlements. 51 51 Brenkert and Beauchamp (eds), op. cit., p. 7.View all notes

The Third Ideology: Using Science

The goal of the use of science for Ideology is not to give objective knowledge but ‘to conceal or distort a given factual situation’. 52 52 J. Essers, et al. ‘Corporate Robespierres, Ideologies of Management and Change’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22:2 (2009), p. 133; P. Overeem and B. Tholen, ‘After Managerialism: MacIntyre's Lessons for the Study of Public Administration’, Administration & Society, 43:7 (2011), p. 737; Bocancea, op. cit., p. 217.View all notes According to management writer Ghoshal, if ‘they hide ideology in the pretence of science, they can cause much more harm’. 53 53 Ghoshal, op. cit., p. 87.View all notes Harm can be ideologically legitimized when organizational relationships are reduced a ‘matter-of-factness between human beings [as an] ideological ornamentation between them [that] treats human beings as things’. 54 54 T.W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged life (London: Verso, 2005), p. 42; cf. C.C. Bogdan, ‘The Sublime Gesture of Ideology. An Adornian Response to Žižek’, International Journal of Žižek Studies, 10:3 (2016), pp. 1–17.View all notes Much of the knowledge produced by business ethics falls into that category when producing knowledge about human ‘resources’ (assets, chattels, things) that conceal and distort the production of knowledge. 55 55 Nienhueser, op. cit., pp. 367–393.View all notes Translated into organizational action, such knowledge becomes an ‘ideological command’, shaping, pre-organizing, interpreting and reinterpreting what has passed the ‘gatekeepers of science’—journal editors fostering ‘journal fetishism’. 56 56 Žižek, op. cit., p. 43; M. Alvesson and J. Sandberg, ‘Has Management Studies Lost Its Way? Ideas for More Imaginative and Innovative Research’, Journal of Management Studies, 50:1 (2013), p. 136.View all notes By serving an ideological purpose, it reinforces the eternal treadmill of a ‘publish or perish’ rat-race in academia. 57 57 M. Hojat, et al., ‘Impartial Judgment by the “Gatekeepers” of Science: Fallibility and Accountability in the Peer Review Process’, Advances in Health Sciences Education, 8:1 (2003), pp. 76 and 81.View all notes

Even more important may be that such a rat-race fosters ideologies that exclude certain forms of knowledge when, for example, ‘official science [is] embarrassed as soon as ideology is mentioned’. 58 58 T.W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: Psychology Press, 1990), p. 49.View all notes Hence ‘discussions of ideology are akin to walking a tightrope, especially in a discipline that largely views itself as non-ideological’. 59 59 G.M. Eckhardt, et al., ‘Ideology for the 10 Billion: Introduction to Globalization of Marketing Ideology’, Journal of Macromarketing, 33:1 (2013), p. 7; cf. M.J. Carrington, et al. ‘The Ideology of the Ethical Consumption Gap’, Marketing Theory, 16:1 (2016), pp. 21–38.View all notes As a business ethics views itself as non-ideology anything ideological is an embarrassment. Meanwhile, there still is a ‘flood of meaningless contributions’. 60 60 M. Alvesson and J. Sandberg, ‘Has Management Studies Lost Its Way? Ideas for More Imaginative and Innovative Research’, Journal of Management Studies, 50:1 (2013), p. 130.View all notes

However, still one of the utmost clearest expressions of ideology comes from Brenkert and Beauchamp, 61 61 Brenkert and Beauchamp (eds), op. cit., p. 4.View all notes advocating ‘business ethics from a business orientation’ suggesting that business ethics does not come from moral philosophy and ethics but from inside business. It is a bit like asking Al Capone to define crime. Removing moral philosophy in favour of business is pure ideology. Perhaps American writer Upton Sinclair explained all this flawlessly when noting ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it’. 62 62 U. Sinclair, How I Got Licked and Why (London: T. W. Laurie 1935, reprinted by University of California Press, 1994), p. 109.View all notes

The Fourth Ideology: Inversion

Ideologies are often dream-like illusions when they constitute a ‘terminological pseudo-innovation’ conceiving ever more new realities as pseudo-realities. 63 63 Beyer et al., op. cit., p. 484.View all notes However, this also indicates that ‘ideology is a means of integrating … conflicting aspects of a business’. 64 64 J. Grant, op. cit., p. 3; cf. Simon, op. cit., pp. 18–32, at p. 25.View all notes Apart from ‘ideological fantasies masking inconsistencies’, they also create inversions because an ‘ideology shows people and their relationships upside down’. 65 65 F. Schiavone, ‘Guest Editorial – Dreams and the Organization’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26:4 (2013), pp. 1–3, p. 2.View all notes

A good example of inversion is Stanwick and Standwick’s discussion headlined the ‘citizenship principle’ in which corporate citizenship is not even mentioned. Instead we are told that ‘employees should respect the laws of the community’. 66 66 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 16.View all notes This inverts the role of business by simply eliminating it from the scene. Instead it tells employees (e.g. not business) to respect the law while simultaneously it might be business that breaks the law. 67 67 D.P. Twomey and M.M. Jennings, Anderson's Business Law and the Legal Environment, Standard Volume (Mason, OH: South-Western, 2013), p. 142; H. Croall (ed.) Corporate Crime (three-volume set) (London: Sage, 2009).View all notes What is truly ideological in many business ethics textbooks is the striking absence of business whenever ethics is mentioned. 68 68 K.S. Cameron, R.D. Ireland, R.N. Lussier, J.R. New and S.P. Robbins, ‘Management Textbooks as Propaganda’, Journal of Management Education, 27:6 (2003), pp. 711–729; N. Harding, The Social Construction of Management – Texts and Identities (London: Routledge, 2003).View all notes Meanwhile inversion ideologies continue with ‘who commits the fraud? [stating] fraud was committed by an employee’. 69 69 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 237.View all notes On the very next page we read: ‘corporations have found that it looks very good to stakeholders if they provide an ethics policy’. 70 70 Ibid., p. 238.View all notes Enron’s ethics policy always looked pristine. What also looks good in a corporation has been explained in a typical ‘camera obscura’ version by business ethics writers Hartman et al. when noting that ‘child labour can have beneficial results for bring foreign investment and money into a poor country’. 71 71 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 107.View all notes Meanwhile contemporary moral philosophy—global ethics—represents the exact opposite of justifying child labour. 72 72 T. Pogge and L. Cabrera, ‘Outreach, Impact, Collaboration: Why Academics Should Join to Stand Against Poverty’, Ethics and International Affairs, 26:2 (2012), pp. 163–182; T. Pogge and K. Horton, Global Ethics – Seminal Essays (St Paul, MN: Paragon House Press, 2008).View all notes

The Fifth Ideology: False Consciousness

Many ideologies are seen as false representations of reality because they do not generate knowledge but create belief systems—e.g. the ‘Great Corporate Leader’. 73 73 Bolchover, op. cit.View all notes To strengthen a ‘false affirmation’ to business leadership ideology has been skilfully linked to corporate culture under ‘this is how we do things here’ notion. 74 74 J. Grant, ‘The End of Critique?’, p. 2; J. Essers, ‘Re-writing the Organization’, op. cit., p. 343.View all notes They are designed to achieve the following: ‘employees who accept the organizational-ideological beliefs behave [accordingly] as a result of accepting them’. 75 75 I. Adams, The Logic of Political Belief: A Philosophical Analysis of Ideology (Savage: Barnes & Noble Books, 1989), p. 16; cf. Simon, op. cit., pp. 20 and 24; Beyer et al., op. cit., p. 484.View all notes

It creates a false consciousness about those who hold office in organizations and by conditioning employees to accept obedience. 76 76 S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority (London: Tavistock Institute, 1971); T. Blass, ‘The Man Who Shocked the World’, Psychology Today, March/April 2002, pp. 68–74; T. Klikauer, ‘Milgram and Obedience to Organizational Authority’, Organization, 21:6 (2014), pp. 947–951.View all notes On the whole, however, ideology must utilize an unconscious obedience to managerial prerogatives because ‘the real driving force which moves ideology remains unconscious, otherwise it would not be an ideological process’. 77 77 Miller, op. cit., p. 32.View all notes As such ideologies have the power to shape our often unconscious attitudes in more than one way. To shape often unconscious attitudes, business ethics textbooks appear to predominantly rely on one method: a strong prevalence of individualization. This removes the ‘structure’ and profit-making aspects of business in favour of individual agencies. Yet perhaps more often one finds a rather surprising element: diverting attention away from ethics in favour of quite often totally unrelated issues such as ‘Meatless Monday’, ‘Hollywood celebrities’ and ‘Prince Bandar Bin Sultan’. 78 78 Hartman, et al., op. cit., pp. 2–3, 7, 9f., 18, 105f., 122.View all notes Astonishingly, virtually every single business ethics textbook does this.

Meanwhile individualism seeks to take business out. 79 79 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., pp. 14–15 and 31f.; P.L. Callero, Myth of Individualism: How Social Forces Shape our Lives (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); D. De Cremer and A.E. Tenbrunsel, Behavioral Business Ethics: Shaping an Emerging field (London: Routledge, 2012).View all notes This ideology comes, for example, to fore in Hartman et al.’s ‘ethical failure [resulting in] business and personal tragedies [challenging] personal values’. 80 80 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 4.View all notes It pretends that business tries to be moral but—as Bakan’s ‘Bad-Apple’ theory goes—fails. 81 81 J. Bakan, The Corporation – The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (London: Free Press, 2004).View all notes Business also vanishes as personal values lead to personal tragedies. A few other examples signify this:

‘each decision that a business manager makes involves not only personal decisions … the action each of us takes’; and ‘individual decision making, one’s own judgment, personal integrity, and personal and professional decision making’, ‘personal character’, ‘consider your own perspective’, ‘ethics of virtue … what a person should do to who that person is’. 82 82 Hartman, et al., op. cit., pp. 63 and 104, 121, 124.View all notes

The Sixth Ideology: Misleading

Ideologies can be understood as thoughts that appear to represent an objectively truth. Yet such a truth is systematically misleading in favour of a particular interest. 83 83 Bocancea, op. cit., p. 215.View all notes Such an ‘ideology has led management research increasingly into the direction of making excessive truth-claims based on partial analysis and both unrealistic and biased assumptions’. 84 84 Ghoshal, op. cit., p. 77; cf. Nienhueser, op. cit., pp. 367–393.View all notes This becomes problematic when ‘business has a dominant impact on research’. 85 85 Kemp, , op. cit., p. 288; R.R. Locke and J.C. Spender, Confronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and their Schools threw our Lives out of Balance (London: Zed Books, 2011), p. 61ff.; T. Klikauer, Managerialism – Critique of an Ideology (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013).View all notes Simultaneously, ‘many conventional business ethicists simply assume the legitimacy of the institutions and practices of advanced capitalism and go from there … without a broader critical perspective on which to base their analysis’. 86 86 Lippke, op. cit., p. 11.View all notes Uncritically assuming ‘the given’ is an ideological pathway to misleading people.

Writers of business ethics might mislead people on ethics when stating that ‘ethics can be defined as the values that an individual uses to interpret’. 87 87 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 3.View all notes This represents a false individualization as ethics and moral philosophy have never been about what ‘individuals use to interpret’. Instead, ethics as a branch of philosophy involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong—often as complement to philosophical axiology. By cutting itself off from that, business ethics misleads. Yet the misleading continues when business ethics ‘can be defined as the collective values of a business organization that can be used to evaluate whether the behaviours of the organization’s collective members are considered acceptable and appropriate’. 88 88 Ibid., p. 3.View all notes Once moral philosophy has been eliminated, business ethics can introduce the ‘values of a business organization’ as the measure for ethical behaviour contrary to the moral philosophy of, for example, Protagoras (490–420BC), noting that ‘man is the measure of all things’. With that, business ethics has ideologically replaced moral philosophy with business as the ultimate gauge for ethical behaviour—e.g. making tobacco corporations the ultimate judge on the 100 million deaths it caused during the 20th century. 89 89 P. Benson and S. Kirsch, ‘Capitalism and the Politics of Resignation’, Current Anthropology, 51:4 (2010), pp. 459–486; P. Benson, Tobacco Capitalism: Growers, Migrant Workers, and the Changing Face of Global Industry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).View all notes

The Seventh Ideology: Mystification

Mystification occurs when imaginary entities obscure the real relationships of organizational activities. Myths are associations between the imaginative and the real, e.g. ‘good management makes good schools’. 90 90 J.S. Ball, ‘Myth: Good Management Makes Good Schools’, in B. O’Hagan (ed.) Modern Educational Myths (New York: Routldge, 2013), p. 88; cf. R. Barthes, Mythologies (New York: The Noonday Press, 1957).View all notes Yet such a ‘mythical aura’ always remains contextual and domain specific. Its function is to conceal not making something disappear. A myth is a distortion of meaning achieved through stealing and restoring. 91 91 A.M. Pettigrew, ‘On Studying Organizational Cultures’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 24:4 (1979), p. 579.View all notes It is language-robbery and the colonization of meaning as language can be both communication and ideology. 92 92 T. Klikauer, Management Communication – Communicative Ethics and Action (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), p. 42.View all notes It masks the reality of business. 93 93 P. Calefato, ‘On Myths and Fashion – Barthes and Cultural Studies’, Sign Systems Studies, 36:1 (2008), pp. 71–80; Schiavone, op. cit., pp. 1–3.View all notes As such, myths are the product of an organizational group having achieved dominance. Myths are always linked to domination as mostly certain groups, e.g. managers, have the ‘means-and-motives’ to create them. Quite often, such ‘elite-driven ideologies’ seek to assure that ‘the majority of working people are locked into a system which is dominated by what is euphemistically described as the business ethic’. 94 94 Hatemi, et al., op. cit.,, p. 348; cf. T.J. Hart, ‘Human Resource Management – Time to Exorcize the Militant Tendency’, Employee Relations, 15:3 (1993), pp. 29–36.View all notes A good example is the notion that ‘a business fulfils its social responsibility simply by obeying the law’ 95 95 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 19.View all notes—but perhaps not when this is contradicted by Hartman et al.’s own statement as business 96 96 Ibid., p. 24.View all notes

pushes the envelope of what is legal [while balancing] a risk assessment cost–benefit analysis, and ethics—what is the corporation willing to do, willing to risk? The likelihood of being challenged in court, the likelihood of losing the case, the likelihood of settling for financial damages, a comparison of those costs, the financial benefits of taking the action, and the ethical implicate of the options available.

Aligned to that is Bowie and Schneider’s claim that ‘business people have a moral obligation to obey the law and a general obligation to turn a profit’. 97 97 Bowie and Schneider, op. cit., p. 10.View all notes While maintaining there is only a ‘moral’—not a legal (sic!)—obligation to obey the law, their statement falsely equalizes the ‘general’ profit obligation set against the law. This creates myths about the legal obligation to obey the law and the drive towards profit-maximization as defined, regulated and often limited by the law. Both are not equal. It is the interest of the law to regulate business—one determines the other.

The Eighth Ideology: Interest

Interest-oriented ideologies rest on the ability to favour organizational interest over others while assisting in the domination of one group over another. To camouflage domination, it presents a sectarian and particular business interest as being universal. Perhaps, one of the best examples still comes from General Motors’ ‘what is good for our country is good for General Motors and vice versa’. 98 98 D. Chong, ‘The Relevance of Management to Society: Peter Drucker's oeuvre from the 1940s and 1950s’, Journal of Management History, 19:1 (2013), p. 66.View all notes It pretends that the interest of a corporation is synonymous with that of a nation, a people’s government and even ordinary citizens. Historically, interest-based ideology has been expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels through the following famous quote 99 99 K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, edited by C.J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1970/1845), p. 64.View all notes

the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.

The theory on interest-based ideology was significantly improved by the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937). Based on his writings, hegemony may indeed be defined as ‘a certain way of life and thought that has become dominant and in which one concept of reality is diffused throughout society in all its institutional and private manifestations, informing with its spirit all taste, morality, customs, religious and political principles, and all social relations, particularly in their intellectual and moral connotations’. 100 100 G. Williams, ‘The Concept of ‘Egemonia’ in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci: Some Notes on Interpretation’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 21:4 (1960), p. 587; cf. R. Williams, Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays (London: Verso, 1980), pp. 37ff.; M. Augoustinos, ‘Ideology, False Consciousness and Psychology’, Theory & Psychology, 9:3 (1999), p. 299; Z. Leonardo, ‘Discourse and Critique: Outlines of a Post-structural Theory of Ideology’, Journal of Education Policy, 18:2 (2003), p. 213.View all notes

A near perfect example of using hegemonic universalism in the service of business ethics has been presented by Standwick and Standwick when emphasizing ‘greed is part of human nature’. 101 101 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. xix.View all notes This almost immediately incurs the question: why human-nature and not business-nature in a textbook on business ethics? Secondly, the idea of ‘greed’ is presented as being universal as being ‘part of human nature’—without ever defining what human nature might be. This ideologically equalizes the specifics of business with a universal idea of something called ‘human nature’.

Yet the ‘human nature’ ideology is also prevalent in other business ethics textbooks. Hartman et al., for example, state: ‘ethics [is about] how human beings should properly live their lives’. 102 102 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 11.View all notes Again, ‘what happened to business?’; why isn’t it ‘how business should properly guide its activities?’; and why isn’t it related to business in a business ethics textbook? Finally, business ethics writer Jones notes that ‘the major task of business ethics is to make the world of business suitable to anybody’. 103 103 C. Jones, ‘As if Business Ethics Were Possible, “Within Such Limits” … ’, Organization 10:2 (2003), p. 238; cf. D. Stone, Stepping Stones to Business Success (Bloomington, IN: Balboa Press, 2013), p. 221.View all notes This seeks to establish a hegemonic belief in accepting business. Yet this has never been the task of ethics or moral philosophy. Perhaps Jones’s statement is one of the clearest expressions of a hegemonic ideology.

The Ninth Ideology: Maintaining the Status Quo

It remains imperative for ideology to conserve the status quo, to ‘keep them in their place’, and to asphyxiate people in the present system of organizational arrangements. 104 104 Petit, op. cit., p. 12; cf. Rancière, op. cit., p. 2; R.M. Weiss and L.E. Miller, ‘Ideas, Interests, and the Social Science of Organizations’, Academy of Management Review, 13:3 (1988), p. 491.View all notes It justifies business while deflecting unwarranted interferences. Perhaps one of the clearest expressions of this ideology comes from the Walmart corporation that is presented by business ethics writers Carroll as ‘a microcosm of America’. 105 105 A.B. Carroll, Business Ethics: Brief Readings on Vital Topics (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 76; cf. J.W. Weiss, Business Ethics: A Stakeholder and Issues Management Approach with Cases (Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage, 2009), pp. xxix, 99,472 and 473.View all notes Ferrell, Fraedrich and Ferrell write that ‘the story of Walmart exemplifies the some of the very best qualities in our country’. 106 106 O.C. Ferrell, et al., Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases, 9th edn (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2013), pp. 302 and 306.View all notes Meanwhile Walmart’s business immoralities are painfully excluded from business ethics when non-business ethics expert Leaf explains: 107 107 R. Leaf, The Art of Perception: Memoirs of a Life in PR (Chicago, IL: Atlantic Books, 2012), pp. 241f.View all notes

there is probably no greater example seeing the need for CSR and actively undertaking it than Walmart. The largest American company, Walmart was under continuous attack for its supposedly anti-social activities both in the US and abroad … one area that they used as a focus was a factory in Saipan where Chinese women brought in from the mainland were making clothing for sale in Walmart stores in the US. They listed the following reasons the women, who they claimed were paid $3 an hour could be fired and deported, they fell in love; got married; became pregnant (terminate pregnancy or be deported); participate in political or religious activities; failed to meet their daily production quota; refusal to work overtime, including unpaid ‘volunteer’ hours; participated in any activities which lessens their energy for work; refusal to lie to inspectors regarding safety conditions at work, the number of hours worked, the true number of women living in a each barracks room; asked for higher wages; and tried to organize a union.

This Charles Dickens-like horror catalogue does not seem to be of concern to business ethics when seeking to camouflage contradictions, cement domination, maintain the status quo and defend business.

The Tenth Ideology: Defending Business

In almost all cases, ideologies remain instruments that defend domination—the domination of business, for example. It seeks to camouflage the fact that business ethics has uncritically adopted ‘an ideological position [of] free enterprise and entrepreneurial activity’. 108 108 Chong, op. cit., p. 60.View all notes Again, the aforementioned individualization of virtually all ‘business-vs-ethics’ conflicts remains useful when defending business. The ideological theme of individualism is presented, for example, when Stanwick and Standwick 109 109 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 3.View all notes note: ‘as human beings, we are accountable for our action’. With that the focus shifts from business to the individuals—from structure to agency. As a near perfect ideology their statement is correct in-itself. Yet ideology comes in when the structural imperatives of business are eliminated in favour of individualizing morality.

However, both 110 110 Ibid., p. 14.View all notes go even further when noting that ‘the property principle is based on the belief that every employee should respect property and the rights of the owners of the property’. With that the frequently relied on paper-clip ‘stealing employee’ is conquered up. Meanwhile business immoralities like ‘Tyco-CEO’s $6,000 shower curtains and $15,000 umbrella stand’ vanishes into thin air. As is so often the case, the focus shifts from business onto others. Simultaneously, issues such as underpayment of wages, wage-theft and wages below minimum wage, outsourced sweatshops and slavery-like working conditions (e.g. Walmart) remain unmentioned. 111 111 A. Gupta and A.J. Wowak, ‘The Elephant (or Donkey) in the Boardroom How Board Political Ideology Affects CEO Pay’, Administrative Science Quarterly (2016), doi: 10.1177/0001839216668173 (online before print).View all notes In a Nietzschean move this version of business ethics protects the ‘strong’ against the ‘weak’ while damaging human wellbeing.

The Eleventh Ideology: Working Against Human Wellbeing

Quite often ideologies have become part of an organizational culture. This is particularly the case when organizations do not—as their core raison d'être—have wellbeing as a determinant. Such organizations tend to dehumanize people by converting human beings into usable human ‘resources’. 112 112 S.C. Bolton and M. Houlian (eds) Searching for the Human in Human Resource Management (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008); N. de Gama, at al. ‘Ethics and HRM: Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis’, Journal of Business Ethics, 111:1 (2012), p. 97.View all notes As a consequence, much of business ethics represent the opposite of Peter Drucker’s dire warning of ‘we must also consider man at work as a human being. We must, in other words, also put the emphasis on “human”’. Once the ideology of no longer being human has been accepted, ‘a single system of dehumanization determines everything that happens’. 113 113 K. Minogue, Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2009), p. 40.View all notes This goes to the core of the organizational treatment of human beings through business ethics.

A good example showing this comes from the moral philosopher Immanuel Kant’s human beings as ‘ends-in-themselves’ vs ‘being-a-means-to-an-end’ when human beings are downgraded to human resources to be managed and consumed for profit-maximization. 114 114 K. Dale, ‘The Employee as “Dish of the Day”: The Ethics of the Consuming/Consumed Self in Human Resource Management’, Journal of Business Ethics, 111:1 (2012), pp. 13–24.View all notes Kant calls his ‘moral musts’ categorical imperatives, but business ethics ideologically reengineers this in the following way: ‘to treat other individuals as the end, not the means to an end. As a result, Kant rejects the view of using heuristic “gut feelings”’. 115 115 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 10.View all notes While moral philosophers such as Korsgaard 116 116 C.M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).View all notes deliver full-fledged explanations of Kant’s ‘Creating the Kingdom of Ends’, business ethics cuts off Kant’s key insight by quickly moving on to a sideshow: ‘gut feelings’. Similarly, Hartman et al. 117 117 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 117.View all notes deal with Kantian ‘means–ends’ ethics by stating Kant’s categorical imperative but swiftly moving on to another sideshow: ‘such human rights, or moral rights, have played a central role in the development of modern democratic political systems’. As is so often the case, ideology comes in when such statements—while true in themselves—are used to eliminate what Kantian moral philosophy means for business.

The Twelfth Ideology: History

While many ideologies pretend to have no history representing eternal truths (e.g. human greed), ideologies themselves are deeply historical. Hence many ideologies have been used to legitimize the historical interest of business found in, for example, 19th century colonialism, 20th century’s imperialism and 21st century’s globalization. Given a long history of business immoralities and criminalities ranging from the infamous East India Company of the 17th century to Enron and Bernie Madoff more recently, statements such as ‘companies can be a positive force in supporting the needs of society’ appear rather hypocritical. 118 118 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. xix.View all notes For Stanwick and Standwick the statement has no historical context—colonialism and imperialism never happened. Perhaps the denial of history approach indicates a ‘real-world approach’ as Stanwick and Standwick note. Perhaps what is real is what has no history. Summing up the view of business ethics on history and moral philosophy, business ethics textbook writers Hartman et al. 119 119 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 11.View all notes explain this ideology in perfect clarity: ‘ethical theory and the history of ethics are beside the point’. Case closed.

Conclusion: Ideology and Moral Philosophy in Business Ethics

Having outlined the historical origins of ideology and key definitions, delivered defining characteristics of ideology, and related these to business ethics, the following draws some concluding insights. There are several indicators that make it reasonably safe to see some reasonably strong connotations between business ethics and ideology. Business ethics fulfils key definitions of ideology and offers ample examples supportive of the characteristics of ideology. The separation of moral philosophy from ideology has been fruitful of the above discussion. Moral philosophy—as the love of wisdom—exists only for itself. On the other hand, it might be ‘the’ ultimate signifier of business ethics. It is stated by one of the Godfathers of business ethics—Norman E. Bowie—when defining the task of business ethics as: ‘using ethics to increase profits’. While there are many supporting statements of this view in business ethics, perhaps Hartman et al.’s ‘beside-the-point’ statement typifies the aversion of business ethics to moral philosophy even more clearly. 120 120 Ibid., p. 11.View all notes This makes it hard not to conclude that business ethics does not exist for itself and is not dedicated to the love of wisdom.

Instead, the knowledge business ethics produces serves a specific power—the power of business. When ‘using ethics to increase profits’, business ethics appears to rely on virtually all the tools ideology can muster in order to camouflage contradictions, maintain domination and prevent emancipation: it camouflages contradictions at the societal and organizational level; it creates sympathy for business; it uses science for ideological purposes; it inverts reality while fostering false consciousness; it misleads people when creating myths; it follows a one-dimensional business interest cementing the status quo while defending business; and finally, it works against human wellbeing and pretends to have no history. From all this an overall picture of business ethics ‘as a whole’ emerges. It is not just for philosophers like Hegel who emphasize ‘the truth lies in the whole’ that such investigations can create an overall picture. The overall picture that emerges is that business ethics appears to carry stronger connotations to ideology than to moral philosophy and ethics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 J.M. Beyer, R.L.M. Dunbar and A.D. Meyer, ‘Comment: The Concept of Ideology in Organizational Analysis’, Academy of Management Review, 13:3 (1988), p. 483–489; J.L. Simon, ‘Business Ideology, Business Ethics and Business Behavior’, Business & Society, 7:2 (1967), pp. 18–32; S.R. Clegg, ‘Why is Organization Theory so Ignorant?’, Journal of Management Inquiry, 15:4 (2006), pp. 426–430; S.R. Clegg, ‘Managerialism: Born in the USA’, Academy of Management Review, 39:4 (2014), pp. 566–585; M.K. Chin et al. ‘Political Ideologies of CEOs: The Influence of Executives’ Values on Corporate Social Responsibility’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 58:2 (2013), pp. 197–232.

2 T.A. Petit, The Moral Crisis of Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), p. 11; R.L. Lippke, Radical Business Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), p. 33.

3 J. Magretta, What Management Is: How it Works and Why it’'s Everyone's Business (London: Profile, 2012), p. 12.

4 J. Essers, ‘Re-writing the Organization: The Ideological Deadlock of Narrative Methodology’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 25:2 (2012), p. 334.

5 D. Bell, The End of Ideology – On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960).

6 Essers, ‘Re-writing the Organization’, op. cit., p. 336; P.K. Hatemi, et al. ‘It’s the End of Ideology as we Know it’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 24:3 (2012), pp. 345–369.

7 Lippke, op. cit., p. 1; D.G. Fisher and J.T. Sweeney, ‘Morality vs. Ideology: Implications for Accounting Ethics Research’, Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research, 5 (2002), pp. 141–160; A. Wall, ‘Ethics and Management – Oil and Water’ in S. Dracopolou (ed.) Ethics and Values in Healthcare Management (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 13.

8 A. MacIntyre, ‘Why are the Problems of Business Ethics Insoluble’ in B. Baumrin and B. Friedman (eds) Moral Responsibility and the Professions (New York: Haven Publishing, 1982).

9 T. Barnett, et al. ‘Ethical Ideology and Ethical Judgment Regarding Ethical Issues in Business’, Journal of Business Ethics, 13:6 (1994), pp. 469–480.

10 C. Albrecht, et al. ‘Productivity and Prestige in Business Ethics Research: A Report and Commentary on the State of the Field’, Business & Society, 50:4 (2011), p. 581.

11 Lippke, op. cit., p. 6.

12 A.L.C.D. de Tracy, Eléments d'idéologie (Georgetown, DC: Joseph Milligan, 1829), pp. 1817–1818, http://www.bl.uk & http://www.loc.gov .

13 S. Bocancea, ‘Ideology as a Means of Interpretation’, European Journal of Science & Theology, 8:3 (2012), p. 216.

14 S. Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso Press, 1989), p. 30f.; Petit, op. cit., p. 11; W. Dilthey, Der Aufbau der geschichtlichen Welt in den Geisteswissenschaften (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1927), p. 137; K.B. Miller, Ideology and Moral Philosophy (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), p. 27; E. Kennedy, ‘Ideology from Destutt De Tracy to Marx’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 40:3 (1979), pp. 353–368.

15 K. Marx, The German Ideology – Critique of Modern German Philosophy According to Its Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stirner, and of German Socialism According to Its Various Prophets, 1845, http://www.marxists.org .

16 S. Bocancea, op. cit., p. 216.

17 G. Sartori, ‘Politics, Ideology, and Belief Systems’, American Political Science Review, 63:2 (1969), p. 400.

18 M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); M. Freeden, ‘Ideology and Political Theory’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 11:1 (2006), pp. 3–22; M. Freeden (eds) The Meaning of Ideology – Cross-disciplinary Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2007); M. Freeden, The Meaning of Ideology: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2013); M. Freeden, et al. (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

19 W.F. Haug, Elemente einer Theorie des Ideologischen (Hamburg: Argument-Verlag, 1993); W.F. Haug, Umrisse zu einer Theorie des Ideologischen, http://www.wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de , 1993; S. Hall, et al., Die Camera obscura der Ideologie – Projekt Ideologie-Theorie (Berlin: Argument-Verlag, 1984); W. Nienhueser, ‘Empirical Research on HRM as a Production of Ideology’, Management Revue, 22:4 (2011), pp. 367–393; J. Rehmann, Theories of Ideology: the Powers of Alienation and Subjection (Leiden: Brill, 2013).

20 T. Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory (London: Verso, 2006), pp. 62 and 141–162; P. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 225; N. Butler and S. Spoelstra, ‘The Regime of Excellence and the Erosion of Ethos in Critical Management Studies’, British Journal of Management, 25:3 (2014), p. 540.

21 M. Morris, Knowledge and Ideology: The Epistemology of Social and Political Critique (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

22 P. Zarembka (ed.) Contradictions: Finance, Greed, and Labor Unequally Paid (Bingley: Emerald, 2013); D. Harvey, Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); J. Downey, et al., ‘Ideology Critique: The Challenge for Media Studies’, Media, Culture & Society, 36:6 (2014), p. 681.

23 R.G. Peffer, ‘Morality and the Marxist Concept of Ideology’ in K. Nielsen and S. C. Patten (eds) Marx and Morality (Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy, 1985), p. 85; R.G. Peffer, Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 237; J. Rehmann, ‘Ideology-critique with the Conceptual Hinterland of a Theory of the Ideological’, Critical Sociology, 41:3 (2015), pp. 433–448.

24 J. Grant, ‘The End of Critique? Ideology as Replication in Adorno and Jameson’, Culture, Theory & Critique, 55:1 (2013), p. 5.

25 E. Chiapello and N. Fairclough, ‘Understanding the New Management Ideology: A Transdisciplinary Contribution from Critical Discourse Analysis and New Sociology of Capitalism’, Discourse & Society, 13:2 (2002), p. 187; S. Ghoshal, ‘Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices’, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 4:1 (2005), p. 76; Chin, et al., op. cit., p. 201.

26 V. Mathoor, ‘The Ideologies of Theory’, Critique, 40:4 (2012), p. 608; E. Harcourt (ed.) Morality, Reflection, and Ideology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 2; A. Skillen, ‘Is Morality a Ruling Illusion?’, in Harcourt (ed.) Morality, Reflection, and Ideology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); D. Kellner, ‘Marxism, Morality, and Ideology’, in K. Nielsen and S.C. Patten (eds) Marx and Morality (Guelph: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy, 1985), pp. 98f. and 115; M. Fisk, Ethics and Society (Chicago, IL: Harvester Press, 1980), p. 40; J. Rancière, ‘On the Theory of Ideology’, Radical Philosophy, 7 (1974), p. 2.

27 N.E. Bowie and M. Schneider, Business Ethics for Dummies (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley, 2011), p. 21; N. Bowie, Business Ethics in the 21st Century (New York: Springer, 2013).

28 T. Donaldson, ‘Where the Facts End: Richard De George and the Rise of Business Ethics’, Journal of Business Ethics, 127:4 (2015), pp. 783–787.

29 R. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979).

30 Rancière, op. cit., p. 2.

31 R. Kemp, ‘The Business School in the Corporation of Higher Learning in the USA’, Journal of Pedagogy, 2:2 (2011), p. 291; T. Veblen, Absentee Ownership: Business Enterprise in Recent Times: the Case of America (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1923).

32 H. Marcuse, One-dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 8.

33 A.C. Kay and M.J. Brandt, ‘Ideology and Intergroup Inequality: Emerging Directions and Trends’, Current Opinion in Psychology, 11 (2016), pp. 110–114.

34 J. Gilbert, Ethics for Managers – Philosophical Foundations and Business Reality (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 56.

35 J. Levs, 2008. Big Three Auto CEOs Flew Private Jets to ask for Taxpayer Money, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/11/19/autos.ceo.jets/ .

36 M. Moore, Sicko (New York: Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company, DVD 123 min., 2007).

37 Gilbert, op. cit., p. 135.

38 P. Standwick and S. Standwick, Understanding Business Ethics (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014); L.P. Hartman, et al. Business Ethics – Decision Making for Person Integrity and Social Responsibility, 3rd edn (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2014).

39 G.G. Brenkert and T.L. Beauchamp (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 18.

40 M. Jennings, Business Ethics: Case Studies and Selected Readings, 7th edn (Morris: Cengage, 2011), p. 4; cf. Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., 95ff.

41 J. Heath, Morality, Competition, and the Firm: The Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 72; cf. D. Zimmerman, ‘Coercive Wage Offers’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10 (1981), pp. 121–145.

42 Bowie and Schneider, op. cit. p. 332.

43 O. Schilke, ‘On the Contingent Value of Dynamic Capabilities for Competitive Advantage: The Nonlinear Moderating Effect of Environmental Dynamism’, Strategic Management Journal 35:2 (2014), pp. 179–203.

44 T. Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (New York: The Viking Press, 1918), p. 150.

45 D. Bolchover, The Living Dead – Switched off Zoned Out, The Shocking Truth about Office Life (Chichester: Capstone Press, 2005).

46 Gilbert, op. cit., p. 56.

47 T. Klikauer, Seven Management Moralities (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012), p. 102ff.

48 M. Jennings, Business Ethics, op. cit., p. 53.

49 M. Muller, Nestlé baby milk scandal has grown up but not gone away, The Guardian, 13 February 2013, http://www.theguardian.com

50 A. Crane and D. Matten, Business Ethics: Managing Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability in the Age of Globalization, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 11.

51 Brenkert and Beauchamp (eds), op. cit., p. 7.

52 J. Essers, et al. ‘Corporate Robespierres, Ideologies of Management and Change’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 22:2 (2009), p. 133; P. Overeem and B. Tholen, ‘After Managerialism: MacIntyre's Lessons for the Study of Public Administration’, Administration & Society, 43:7 (2011), p. 737; Bocancea, op. cit., p. 217.

53 Ghoshal, op. cit., p. 87.

54 T.W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged life (London: Verso, 2005), p. 42; cf. C.C. Bogdan, ‘The Sublime Gesture of Ideology. An Adornian Response to Žižek’, International Journal of Žižek Studies, 10:3 (2016), pp. 1–17.

55 Nienhueser, op. cit., pp. 367–393.

56 Žižek, op. cit., p. 43; M. Alvesson and J. Sandberg, ‘Has Management Studies Lost Its Way? Ideas for More Imaginative and Innovative Research’, Journal of Management Studies, 50:1 (2013), p. 136.

57 M. Hojat, et al., ‘Impartial Judgment by the “Gatekeepers” of Science: Fallibility and Accountability in the Peer Review Process’, Advances in Health Sciences Education, 8:1 (2003), pp. 76 and 81.

58 T.W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (New York: Psychology Press, 1990), p. 49.

59 G.M. Eckhardt, et al., ‘Ideology for the 10 Billion: Introduction to Globalization of Marketing Ideology’, Journal of Macromarketing, 33:1 (2013), p. 7; cf. M.J. Carrington, et al. ‘The Ideology of the Ethical Consumption Gap’, Marketing Theory, 16:1 (2016), pp. 21–38.

60 M. Alvesson and J. Sandberg, ‘Has Management Studies Lost Its Way? Ideas for More Imaginative and Innovative Research’, Journal of Management Studies, 50:1 (2013), p. 130.

61 Brenkert and Beauchamp (eds), op. cit., p. 4.

62 U. Sinclair, How I Got Licked and Why (London: T. W. Laurie 1935, reprinted by University of California Press, 1994), p. 109.

63 Beyer et al., op. cit., p. 484.

64 J. Grant, op. cit., p. 3; cf. Simon, op. cit., pp. 18–32, at p. 25.

65 F. Schiavone, ‘Guest Editorial – Dreams and the Organization’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26:4 (2013), pp. 1–3, p. 2.

66 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 16.

67 D.P. Twomey and M.M. Jennings, Anderson's Business Law and the Legal Environment, Standard Volume (Mason, OH: South-Western, 2013), p. 142; H. Croall (ed.) Corporate Crime (three-volume set) (London: Sage, 2009).

68 K.S. Cameron, R.D. Ireland, R.N. Lussier, J.R. New and S.P. Robbins, ‘Management Textbooks as Propaganda’, Journal of Management Education, 27:6 (2003), pp. 711–729; N. Harding, The Social Construction of Management – Texts and Identities (London: Routledge, 2003).

69 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 237.

70 Ibid., p. 238.

71 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 107.

72 T. Pogge and L. Cabrera, ‘Outreach, Impact, Collaboration: Why Academics Should Join to Stand Against Poverty’, Ethics and International Affairs, 26:2 (2012), pp. 163–182; T. Pogge and K. Horton, Global Ethics – Seminal Essays (St Paul, MN: Paragon House Press, 2008).

73 Bolchover, op. cit.

74 J. Grant, ‘The End of Critique?’, p. 2; J. Essers, ‘Re-writing the Organization’, op. cit., p. 343.

75 I. Adams, The Logic of Political Belief: A Philosophical Analysis of Ideology (Savage: Barnes & Noble Books, 1989), p. 16; cf. Simon, op. cit., pp. 20 and 24; Beyer et al., op. cit., p. 484.

76 S. Milgram, Obedience to Authority (London: Tavistock Institute, 1971); T. Blass, ‘The Man Who Shocked the World’, Psychology Today, March/April 2002, pp. 68–74; T. Klikauer, ‘Milgram and Obedience to Organizational Authority’, Organization, 21:6 (2014), pp. 947–951.

77 Miller, op. cit., p. 32.

78 Hartman, et al., op. cit., pp. 2–3, 7, 9f., 18, 105f., 122.

79 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., pp. 14–15 and 31f.; P.L. Callero, Myth of Individualism: How Social Forces Shape our Lives (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012); D. De Cremer and A.E. Tenbrunsel, Behavioral Business Ethics: Shaping an Emerging field (London: Routledge, 2012).

80 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 4.

81 J. Bakan, The Corporation – The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (London: Free Press, 2004).

82 Hartman, et al., op. cit., pp. 63 and 104, 121, 124.

83 Bocancea, op. cit., p. 215.

84 Ghoshal, op. cit., p. 77; cf. Nienhueser, op. cit., pp. 367–393.

85 Kemp, , op. cit., p. 288; R.R. Locke and J.C. Spender, Confronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and their Schools threw our Lives out of Balance (London: Zed Books, 2011), p. 61ff.; T. Klikauer, Managerialism – Critique of an Ideology (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013).

86 Lippke, op. cit., p. 11.

87 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 3.

88 Ibid., p. 3.

89 P. Benson and S. Kirsch, ‘Capitalism and the Politics of Resignation’, Current Anthropology, 51:4 (2010), pp. 459–486; P. Benson, Tobacco Capitalism: Growers, Migrant Workers, and the Changing Face of Global Industry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).

90 J.S. Ball, ‘Myth: Good Management Makes Good Schools’, in B. O’Hagan (ed.) Modern Educational Myths (New York: Routldge, 2013), p. 88; cf. R. Barthes, Mythologies (New York: The Noonday Press, 1957).

91 A.M. Pettigrew, ‘On Studying Organizational Cultures’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 24:4 (1979), p. 579.

92 T. Klikauer, Management Communication – Communicative Ethics and Action (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), p. 42.

93 P. Calefato, ‘On Myths and Fashion – Barthes and Cultural Studies’, Sign Systems Studies, 36:1 (2008), pp. 71–80; Schiavone, op. cit., pp. 1–3.

94 Hatemi, et al., op. cit.,, p. 348; cf. T.J. Hart, ‘Human Resource Management – Time to Exorcize the Militant Tendency’, Employee Relations, 15:3 (1993), pp. 29–36.

95 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 19.

96 Ibid., p. 24.

97 Bowie and Schneider, op. cit., p. 10.

98 D. Chong, ‘The Relevance of Management to Society: Peter Drucker's oeuvre from the 1940s and 1950s’, Journal of Management History, 19:1 (2013), p. 66.

99 K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, edited by C.J. Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1970/1845), p. 64.

100 G. Williams, ‘The Concept of ‘Egemonia’ in the Thought of Antonio Gramsci: Some Notes on Interpretation’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 21:4 (1960), p. 587; cf. R. Williams, Culture and Materialism: Selected Essays (London: Verso, 1980), pp. 37ff.; M. Augoustinos, ‘Ideology, False Consciousness and Psychology’, Theory & Psychology, 9:3 (1999), p. 299; Z. Leonardo, ‘Discourse and Critique: Outlines of a Post-structural Theory of Ideology’, Journal of Education Policy, 18:2 (2003), p. 213.

101 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. xix.

102 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 11.

103 C. Jones, ‘As if Business Ethics Were Possible, “Within Such Limits” … ’, Organization 10:2 (2003), p. 238; cf. D. Stone, Stepping Stones to Business Success (Bloomington, IN: Balboa Press, 2013), p. 221.

104 Petit, op. cit., p. 12; cf. Rancière, op. cit., p. 2; R.M. Weiss and L.E. Miller, ‘Ideas, Interests, and the Social Science of Organizations’, Academy of Management Review, 13:3 (1988), p. 491.

105 A.B. Carroll, Business Ethics: Brief Readings on Vital Topics (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 76; cf. J.W. Weiss, Business Ethics: A Stakeholder and Issues Management Approach with Cases (Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage, 2009), pp. xxix, 99,472 and 473.

106 O.C. Ferrell, et al., Business Ethics: Ethical Decision Making and Cases, 9th edn (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2013), pp. 302 and 306.

107 R. Leaf, The Art of Perception: Memoirs of a Life in PR (Chicago, IL: Atlantic Books, 2012), pp. 241f.

108 Chong, op. cit., p. 60.

109 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 3.

110 Ibid., p. 14.

111 A. Gupta and A.J. Wowak, ‘The Elephant (or Donkey) in the Boardroom How Board Political Ideology Affects CEO Pay’, Administrative Science Quarterly (2016), doi: 10.1177/0001839216668173 (online before print).

112 S.C. Bolton and M. Houlian (eds) Searching for the Human in Human Resource Management (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008); N. de Gama, at al. ‘Ethics and HRM: Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis’, Journal of Business Ethics, 111:1 (2012), p. 97.

113 K. Minogue, Alien Powers: The Pure Theory of Ideology (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2009), p. 40.

114 K. Dale, ‘The Employee as “Dish of the Day”: The Ethics of the Consuming/Consumed Self in Human Resource Management’, Journal of Business Ethics, 111:1 (2012), pp. 13–24.

115 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. 10.

116 C.M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

117 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 117.

118 Standwick and Standwick, op. cit., p. xix.

119 Hartman, et al., op. cit., p. 11.

120 Ibid., p. 11.

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