Institutions and the Institutional Turn in Business Ethics

Abstract

Business ethics is in the midst of an institutional turn. This carries over into many dimensions of business ethics, including the organisation of morality. What institutional measures must be taken to ensure that the human representatives of the corporation do not act morally wrong or reprehensible – thereby causing corporations to act morally wrong or reprehensible? The theories on the psychological and sociological causes of human misconduct within the corporation are insightful but still fragmented. We suggest installing order by considering the basic reasons explaining why human agents morally succumb in an organisational context. The institutional turn also has important consequences for the moral analysis of wrong and reprehensible conduct, in particular the validity of moral excuses. It seems that we must conclude that immoral conduct can result from decisions that are all too human and perfectly explainable. We certainly do not have to presuppose sheer evilness on the part of the agent. However, the institutional turn must not lure us into thinking that an immoral deed can be excused simply because it can be explained from a sociological or psychological perspective. There is a categorical distinction between a moral justification and a moral excuse and the conditions under which moral excuse fully exculpates a person are still stern.