Framing Business Ethical Discourses: How Moderation and Compromise Gravitate Towards Activism

Thejls Ziegler Marianne () and Lütge Christoph ()
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Thejls Ziegler Marianne: Peter Löscher Chair of Business Ethics Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
Lütge Christoph: Peter Löscher Chair of Business Ethics Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 2025, vol. 74, issue 1, 229-251

Abstract: The article examines the role of academic business ethics in relation to societal discourse on the relation between corporations, their stakeholders and society in general. It distinguishes between models of interaction across social and political divides. In the first communicative agency model is rooted in enlightenment ideas. The second agonistic model sees parties as interacting in relations of exploitative power relations and is rooted in Marxist ideas. The article also distinguishes three categories within business ethics: Shareholder primacy, social-liberal stakeholder theory and PCSR and Anti-corporatism. We argue that the framing of business ethics exclusively in terms of corporate responsibility and the corresponding silence with regards to civil responsibility creates a gravity of theories like Freemans original stakeholder theory and early versions of political CSR, towards fundamental and agonistic anti-corporatism.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1515/ordo-2025-2003

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