How Would Confucian Virtue Ethics for Business Differ from Aristotelian Virtue Ethics?

Abstract

Confucianism is potentially relevant to business ethics and business practice in many ways. Although some scholars have seen Confucian thought as applicable to corporate social responsibility (Wang and Juslin in Journal of Business Ethics 88(3):433–451, 2009) and to corporate governance (Low and Ang in International Journal of Business and Management 8(4):30–43, 2013), only a few business ethicists (Koehn in Local insights, global ethics for business. Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2001a; Business Ethics Quarterly 11(3):415–431, 2001b; Journal of Business Ethics 116(4):703–715, 2013; Romar in Journal of Business Ethics 38(1–2):119–131, 2002; Lam in The Analects, Penguin Classics, London, 2003; Chan in Journal of Business Ethics 77(3):347–360, 2008; Woods and Lamond in Journal of Business Ethics 102(4):669–683, 2011) have taken seriously the possibility that Confucius may have important insights to offer regarding virtue ethics, which has now become the most popular normative theory as evidenced by the number of recent articles published in business ethics journals (Alzola in Business Ethics Quarterly 25(3):287–318, 2017). This paper aims to help rectify this oversight. The paper focuses on several distinctive aspects of Confucian ethics, discussing both how Confucius’ approach differs from Aristotelian virtue ethics in significant ways and how these key differences suggest numerous directions for future research.