LYNN SHARP PAINE

In recent years, many corporate leaders have begun to pay serious attention to
ethics. ¹ Some have introduced special ethics or values programs in their organiza-
tions. Many have created corporate ethics offices, board-level ethics committees, or
company task forces to deal with difficult ethical issues their companies are facing.
Training programs to heighten awareness of ethical issues and integrate ethical con-
siderations into decision making are becoming more common. Such company initia-
tives vary widely in their design and effectiveness. But most of them rest on the idea
that attention to ethics will strengthen the organization and contribute to its per-
formance in the marketplace. In short, many are coming to believe that ethics is good
for business.

These initiatives defy conventional wisdom which says that ethics and business
are inimical, that business ethics is a contradiction in terms, or that business is a
moral "free-zone" where ethics has no place. They also fly in the face of arguments
purporting to show that moral thinking by corporate decision makers is illegitimate,
a violation of their fiduciary duty to shareholders. Recent interest in business ethics
has even prompted some experts to become concerned that companies are embrac-
ing ethics for the wrong reason. According to these critics, ethics is something com-
panies should care about because it is right, not because it will enhance their effec-
tiveness. It is said to be naive and career-threatening or, alternatively, incompatible
with a truly moral perspective to believe that moral thinking can contribute to busi-
ness success.

I want to argue that the business leaders who are taking ethics seriously are on
the right track. I am not suggesting that every company ethics initiative is effective,
or that the right thing to do is always the most profitable thing to do. But I will argue
that the basic idea behind these initiatives is correct: moral thinking is an essential

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