Aug 2026· Ethics and Society· Vol 20· 0 citations· 62 references
Abstract
This paper challenges the dominant utilitarian paradigm of innovation, which reduces technology development to measures of patentability, profitability, and efficiency. Drawing on influential figures in the field of technology philosophy, including Heidegger, Ellul, Feenberg, Ihde, and Stiegler, it makes the case that innovation needs to be reinterpreted as an ethical and ontological endeavour rather than just a technical or financial one. By closely examining seminal patent decisions like Chakrabarty, Myriad, and Mayo, the paper demonstrates how legal regimes actively define the metaphysical parameters of what constitutes invention, frequently omitting moral, cultural, and ecological factors. In the name of legal uniformity, it further criticises the TRIPS Agreement as a global epistemic framework that marginalises non-Western knowledge systems. The paper proposes a normative model for innovative governance, grounded in ontological pluralism, ethical reflexivity, and democratic accountability, to transcend instrumentalism. Participatory evaluation approaches, ethical committees, and curriculum change in scientific and engineering education are examples of practical recommendations. In an era of global crises, this interdisciplinary intervention advocates for a fundamental change in the way society, policy, and law understand and govern innovation.
This paper advocates for a humanistic transformation of business education, drawing on three converging scholarly traditions: the capabilities approach (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2011), the humanistic management tradition (Melé 2003; Pirson 2017; Dierksmeier 2019), and Pope Francis’s vision of integral ecology (
Laudato Si’
, LS 137–139). It offers a philosophical and pedagogical critique of the technocratic paradigm that dominates sustainability discourse in business schools — a paradigm that Critical Management Studies (Alvesson & Willmott 1992; Spicer & Alvesson 2025) has shown to be structurally resistant to transformation, operating through the slow formation of identity and desire rather than through explicit instruction alone. Through a normative lens, the paper re-centers practical reason, affiliation, and moral imagination as the foundations of transformative leadership formation. It argues that genuine reform is obstructed by structural barriers — accreditation pressures, ranking systems, and market forces — that systematically incentivize instrumental over ethical formation. At the same time, it identifies emerging alternatives in business education that point toward viable pedagogical reform. In response to both this diagnosis and these possibilities, it proposes principles for an education capable of forming leaders with the practical wisdom, relational depth, and moral imagination that a crisis-ridden world demands.
Manuel Sotomayor· Humanistic Management Journa...· 0 citations
This paper aims to examine how the notion of the common good has evolved within the social sciences, with a particular focus on its application in business ethics and corporate social responsibility. Although scholars often cite the concept, they frequently use it ambiguously or without critical reflection. This study clarifies those shifts and positions the common good as a unifying ethical framework to confront contemporary business and societal challenges.
This paper analyzes 1,690 Web of Science documents (1960–2022) using citation mapping and co-word analysis. This method tracks intellectual structures, thematic clusters and research trends, providing a systematic view of how continuities and transformations shape the discourse on the common good.
This paper identifies three coherent foundational clusters: virtue ethics, Catholic Social Thought and procedural/institutional ethics. Newer interpretations display greater diversity but weaker integration. Six thematic clusters expose persistent tensions between moral agency and structural equity, universal principles and contextual adaptability and ethical imperatives and instrumental outcomes. Sustainability and digital ethics emerge as promising yet underexplored frontiers. Influential works drive much of the debate, but contributions remain uneven across regions and disciplines.
Because of the chosen methodology, the study may underrepresent Global South perspectives and oversimplify complex philosophical debates.
The findings encourage organizations to adopt ethical frameworks beyond environmental, social and governance compliance and urge policymakers to balance grassroots input with institutional accountability.
This paper pioneers bibliometric methods to trace the evolution of the common good, highlighting its coherence and fragmentation and advocating revitalization through interdisciplinary and non-Western perspectives.
J. Belso-Martínez, M. López-Sánchez, Alicia Mas-Tur et al.· International Journal of Eth...· 0 citations
The ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) regime has consolidated as the principal normative architecture of corporate activity in Europe. Academic critique of the phenomenon has been predominantly technical—divergence among rating agencies, agency problems, and empirical ineffectiveness—ethical critique remains pending. This article advances such a critique from the convergence of three traditions: the libertarian ethics of natural law in its Rothbardian formulation; Hayekian spontaneous order theory and its economic correlate in the Austrian theories of dynamic efficiency and synergasia (Ravier); and Catholic Social Doctrine, from Rerum Novarum to Caritas in Veritate. The principal conceptual contribution consists in coining the analytical category of soft collectivism to name how the ESG regime operates: it subjects the firm through conditioning rather than command, hollowing out the content of rights without altering their juridical form. The mechanics of this subjection operate through soft law, institutional isomorphism, the spiral of silence, and the bootleggers-and-baptists coalition within a state culture that Bagus's counterfactual criterion identifies as indirect coercion. The convergence between Catholic subsidiarity and Hayekian spontaneous order—two formulations of the same formal structure—yields a unanimous verdict against the ESG regime. Against the bureaucratic simulacrum of social responsibility, the article posits genuine entrepreneurial responsibility—voluntary, prudential, subsidiary, and oriented to real service—as the only coherent alternative within the converging ethical demands established by the analysis.
This “Against the Day” dossier discusses the destructive impact of authoritarian and neoliberal higher education policy regimes on universities but also underlines the surprising resilience of academic communities. This question is explored through the lens of surplus, which designates a constitutive excess rather than a residual remainder. It names the impossibility of reducing the university to any single regime of valuation—whether market, state, or institutional governance. As such, surplus is not only what is appropriated, but also what escapes appropriation: an irreducible excess that is continuously attempted to be appropriated and reclaimed through economic, epistemic, and commoning-based practices. More specifically, the thesis put to debate is that the violent interventions against academia are structured by two constitutive paradoxes: The first pertains to the appropriation of the epistemic and normative surplus produced within the university. The second paradox concerns the university's increasingly precarious double role as a mechanism of class reproduction and as a site of commons-based practices. Drawing on insights from Karl Polanyi, Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu, and Antonio Gramsci, it is argued that as the tensions play out through these paradoxes, the university becomes a prime object of political intervention in recognition of both its indispensability to and uncontrollability by the dominant political regimes.
Ceren Özselçuk, Fikret Adaman, E. Erdem· The South Atlantic Quarterly· 0 citations
This paper aims to conceptualize ethical infrastructure overconfidence (EIO) as a form of moral disengagement that arises when organizations overestimate the objectivity and self-correcting capacity of digital technologies.
This conceptual theory-building article relies on logical deduction and mechanism elaboration to integrate macro-organizational scholarship with behavioral ethics. This study uses comparative illustrative vignettes drawn from archival records exclusively as secondary theoretical exemplars to clarify the plausibility of the framework. These vignettes function as deductive conceptual anchors rather than empirical casework or qualitative fieldwork.
The analysis identifies three mechanisms through which EIO functions as moral disengagement: moral justification, displacement of responsibility and ethical escalation latency, the delayed recognition of ethically relevant anomalies. EIO also suppresses perceived behavioral control, reducing individuals’ ability and willingness to escalate concerns. These effects intensify in institutionally fragile environments.
The framework highlights emerging ethical risks in AI-mediated organizations and offers actionable constructs for diagnosing failures of internal oversight and responsible technological governance.
This study advances a behavioral-ethical explanation for technology-driven ethical failures, integrating moral psychology, digital governance and institutional theory.
O. Kuran, L. Khabbaz· Society and Business Review· 0 citations
This editorial introduces the inaugural issue of the Journal of Design and Craft Studies (JDCS) and outlines its vision as an inclusive forum for advancing scholarship, practice, and knowledge exchange across design and craft. Against a backdrop of rapid technological, environmental, economic, and cultural change, it considers how these fields have evolved beyond their traditional foundations to become important drivers of innovation, cultural identity, social transformation, and environmental sustainability. The editorial emphasises knowledge sharing and collective innovation as essential to developing more collaborative, interdisciplinary, and socially responsive approaches to contemporary challenges. It also affirms practice-based research and the processes of making, experimentation, material exploration, and reflection, as a rigorous mode of knowledge production that complements established forms of academic inquiry. By bringing together diverse disciplinary, professional, cultural, and geographical perspectives, JDCS seeks to create a shared intellectual space in which ideas, methods, and practices can be critically examined and collectively advanced. The editorial concludes by inviting researchers, practitioners, educators, policymakers, students, entrepreneurs, and creative professionals to contribute to this inclusive and dynamic community capable of shaping the future of design and craft.
Ginn Bonsu Assibey, Kyungeun Sung· Journal of Design and Craft...· 0 citations
