The Ethical Significance of Corporate Teleology

Abstract

The most common corporate reaction to public concern over the ethics of their business practices and the sensitivity of their organization to social expectations is to promote policies and rules designed to bring about a set of socially responsive behaviours and actions. The result of this corporate deontological approach is to create a teleopathic culture that relieves decision makers from the personal responsibil ity for the consequences of their actions and widens the gap between how society expects business to behave and their actual behaviour. The corporate use of a deontological approach effectively allows the substitution of corporate conscience for the moral values of individual decision makers and thus weakens the linkage between individual personal values and behaviour.