Reputation: Ethics, Trust, and Relationships at Oxford
Dear All,
Please join us online on Thursday 30 October for the second R:ETRO seminar of this term, hosted by the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.
Gazi Islam (Grenoble Ecole de Management) will be presenting 'Bridging description and normativity through thick ethical concepts in business ethics.'
Thick ethical concepts are concepts that are empirically detailed and contextualized, while involving normatively valenced uses. Because of this dual-aspect, the current paper argues that analysing thick ethical concepts can help to bridge descriptive and normative approaches to business ethics. We base our theorization on the question of how ethical thickness/thinness applies to business ethics scholarship, and with what consequences for the role of normativity. To answer this question, we begin with an overview of thick ethical concepts, tracing the idea's development and key debates, after which we argue for the importance of this concept in understanding central issues in business ethics. Next, we argue that thickness, while often beneficial to understanding the ethical aspects of business, is not unequivocally desirable, and that thickness and thinness have strategic uses in research that should be justified as part of the methods of business ethics. We then propose a model of ethical thickness/thinness in business ethics scholarship, based on the central dimensions of empirical situatedness and fact-value entwinement. Finally, we use this model to propose how business ethics research, and socio-centric research more generally, can add reflexivity to its methods by positing and justifying its relation to ethical thickness.
Pippa
Event Officer, Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation
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