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ABSTRACT. During the past twenty years, there has been an explosion of new interest in entrepreneurs and their activities. Yet only recently has serious research attention been devoted to the ethical problems encountered by entrepreneurs and their organizations. Entrepreneurs face uniquely complex moral problems related to basic fairness, personnel and customer relationships, distribution dilemmas, and other challenges. This essay surveys contemporary research in entrepreneurial ethics, examines the kinds of ethical dilemmas entrepreneurs confront, identifies major research topics and methodological approaches, and discusses possible directions for future research.
KEY WORDS: entrepreneurial morality, entrepreneurial organizations, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship research, startups
Introduction
Since the days of classical Greece, entrepreneurs have been praised for their important contributions to economic life. Yet many have also been strongly criticized for significant ethical lapses. In the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (c. 520 B.C.E.) the mythical entrepreneur Hermes - depicted as a skilled inventor and merchant - is dishonest, and he is described as an "unethical trickster and thief " concerned only with his own interests and gain.1 While today entrepreneurs are likewise greatly admired, many of these business leaders are also often perceived as willing to do almost anything to succeed. In his well-known book The Achieving Society (1961), David McClelland was among the first contemporary scholars to ask serious ethical questions about entrepreneurship. Issuing a call for more study, McClelland observed that "we do not know at the present time what makes an entrepreneur more or less ethical in his dealings but obviously there are few problems of greater importance for future research."2
Entrepreneurs today encounter uniquely challenging ethical problems. They typically operate in stressful business environments and they often struggle to find time and perspective for focused ethical reflection. Entrepreneurs make choices and take actions that affect many persons, usually without the moral guidance available in established organizations. Their decisions can strengthen or seriously weaken a firm's future business viability. Working long hours and sometimes isolated from others, entrepreneurs may not adequately consider the ethical consequences of their own decisions and their firm's activities. Yet entrepreneurs face complex ethical problems related to basic fairness, personnel and customer relationships, honesty in communications, distribution dilemmas, and other challenges. Because of the nature of startups, many of these ethical problems are often new...