Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics

by Stephen R.C. Hicks

Most traditional systems of business ethics hold that business is essentially amoral or immoral. Such systems share a common assumption: that conflicts of interest—either because of scarce resources or innate human badness or sin—are basic to the human condition. That assumption of fundamental conflict is rejected in Ayn Rand's system of ethics. Rand's system, by contrast, emphasizes the power of human reason to shape one's character and beliefs, and it makes fundamental reason's power to develop new resources and cultivate win-win social relationships. In this essay, Stephen Hicks applies Rand's radical ethical perspective to key issues in business ethics and contrasts it to those perspectives based on the assumption of the amorality or immorality of business. This is essay was first published in the Journal of Accounting, Ethics, and Public Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 2003) pp. 1-26.

28 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 10, 2010

About the author

Stephen R.C. Hicks is Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Illinois, USA, Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Scholar at The Atlas Society.

Reviews

[Alan Johnson]

This book, authored by a follower of Ayn Rand, posits a fundamental opposition in business ethical theory between altruistic ethics and Rand's egoistic (rational self-interest) ethics. This is an application of Rand's critique of altruistic ethics generally. Although I agree with the author on some points (for example, the natural primacy of reason over emotion in human life), I think Rand's concept of ethics commits, inter alia, the fallacy of false dichotomy. There is another approach, which I elaborate in Reason and Human Ethics and Reason and Human Government (in progress).

(edited February 8, 2023)