A comparative analysis of different business ethics in the perspective of the Common Good

The paper is devoted to relate ethics and business with an interdisciplinary effort considering that this rejoining is strategical for economic and human development. Alternative conceptions of ethics are examined in their main characteristics, points of strength and critical aspects (ethics of intentions, ethics of consequences, virtue ethics) relating them to the philosophical tradition in which they ground (kantian, utilitarian, aristotelic) and connecting them to the streams of economic thought and vision of economic development to which these philosophical traditions have given origin. The paper analyses the various firm’s concept and finalism with their advantages and limits, the different organizational and managerial contexts, the different way of conceiving the relations with stakeholders which can be generated connecting business to each of these different normative theories. The different attitudes to pursue Common Good together with profit are also taken into account. A connection between “virtue ethics” and “social capital” is also traced showing that some of the virtues needed to living in civil society are essential also to business, because both work to increase people’s cooperation (outside and inside the firm). Among the virtues which are emblem, in MacIntyre’s words, of human “recognized dependency”, special attention is paid to generosity (distinguishing it from other similar Thomistical virtues) for its capacity of bulding social links (inside and outside the firm) indispensable to increase firm’s competitiveness, of being useful to the production of relational goods (among which Common Good), of being able to contribute to people’s happiness and to overcome the paradoxes of happiness in economics in industrialized countries.