Julian Friedland

Beyond Empiricism: Realizing the Ethical Mission of Management

Research into the proper mission of business falls within the context of theoretical and applied ethics. And ethics is fast becoming a part of required business school curricula. However, while business ethics research occasionally appears in high‐profile venues, it does not yet enjoy a regular place within any top management journal. I offer a partial explanation of this paradox and suggestions for resolving it. I begin by discussing the standard conception of human nature given by neoclassical economics as disseminated in business schools; showing it is a significant obstacle to an accurate conception of ethics and how this limits consideration of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR). I then examine the scope of the top management journals, showing how their empirical and descriptive focus leaves little room for ethics, which is an essentially conceptual and prescriptive discipline. Finally, I suggest avenues for research into the ethical mission of business, generally - and sustainability and CSR, in particular - by appeal to the precepts of Harvard Business School’s Master’s in Business Administration ethics oath modeled on the medical and legal professions.

Ideation and Appropriation: Wittgenstein on Intellectual Property

This paper provides a critique of the contemporary notion of intellectual property based on the consequences of Wittgensteins “private language argument”. The reticence commonly felt toward recent applications of patent law, e.g., sports moves, is held to expose erroneous metaphysical assumptions inherent in the spirit of current IP legislation. It is argued that the modern conception of intellectual property as a kind of natural right, stems from the mistaken internalist or Augustinian picture of language that Wittgenstein attempted to diffuse. This view becomes persuasive once it is shown that a complete understanding of the argument against private language must include Wittgensteins investigation of the role of the will in the creative process. It is argued that original thought is not born by decree of the will, but engendered by a public context of meaning and value. What marks a person as a genius is, therefore, according to Wittgenstein, not some sovereign capacity of conceptual world-making, but merely a propitious dose of intellectual courage.

Wittgenstein and the Challenge of Global Ethics

Wittgenstein took ethics extremely seriously. In fact, he took it so seriously that he gave away the bulk of his inherited family fortune to needy artists including the poets Rainer Maria Rilke and Georg Trakl, who he thought might make better use of it than himself as a salaried professor (Monk, 1990, p. 108). Paradoxically, however, he was highly critical of the academization of philosophy in general and of ethics in particular. He therefore did precious little work in ethics, traditionally conceived as an attempt to define the good and/or apply it to specific real- world contexts such as business. This is because for Wittgenstein, ethics is bound up with our natural history. It compels us by being the very lens through which we see the world (Wittgenstein, 1921, § 1, 1.1, 2.04). Hence, “man is the microcosm”(Wittgenstein, 1961, p. 84). As such, philosophy cannot itself discover and lead people to what is good (Wittgenstein, 1980, p. 3e). For we cannot, for Wittgenstein, get by means of language behind the very foundations of common sense.