As a field of business, business and society (which
includes the topic of corporate social responsibility (CSR)) can be viewed as
falling within the rubric of the environment of business. Business and
government can as well. Indeed, the environment goes beyond stakeholders. Although
sometimes deemed as falling within this rubric, business ethics actually does
not, as it is internal to a business even as unethical policies and decisions
can impact stakeholders. In fact, business ethics and business and society are
two distinct fields, even though they share a common border and are often fused
as if they were one seamless country.
That some of the CSR literature applies ethical
principles to CSR does not mean that describing or analyzing differences
between the norms, values, and cultural attitudes and practices of a culture
and those of a business involves ethical reasoning from ethical principles. As
David Hume pointed out, you can’t get should
from is. Going from a current
state of affairs to what should be involves ethical reasoning. To obviate such
reasoning based on ethical principles and simply say that something that exists
should exist is to fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy.
So to claim that a corporation’s culture should be more in line with the society’s
overall culture requires more than describing the two cultures and how they
differ, as well as analyzing how the differences impact business as well as the
wider society and providing suggestions as to how a corporation can move closer
to societal norms, values, and mores. To go on to how things should be,
reasoning a priori from ethical principles is necessary. That is, once the
question of whether an extant, descriptive difference should exist is brought
up, the business field of business & society is left behind and the
philosophy field of ethics and the business field of business ethics are
entered.
Specifically, the philosophical field applies to ethical questions
that go beyond the business side of the equation, whereas business ethics
applies to whether a management or corporation should change to be more in line with societal norms, values,
and/or mores. This question lies beyond the field of business and society
because ethical principles rather than sociological, anthropological, or
management theory are necessary. Organizational and societal norms, values and mores fall within
the basic (not applied) disciplines and sociology and anthropology. Ethical principles and ethical reasoning fall
within philosophy. Sociology and anthropology are social sciences, whereas
philosophy is in the humanities. Treating the field of business and society as
if it were synonymous with business ethics conflates two social sciences with a
field in the humanities.
