Business and Professional Ethics Journal

Volume 31, Issue 2, 2012

EABIS Decennial Issue

Managing the Social Acceptance of Business
Three Core Competencies in Business Ethics

The public support of corporations is continuously declining. The view that the system of free enterprise and profit-making are at odds with societal interests is becoming more and more prevalent. Business’s associated loss of social acceptance poses a serious threat to the future viability of the system of free enterprise. Thus, corporate leaders face the task of regaining and sustainably securing the social acceptance of business. This paper presents three interrelated business ethics competencies which corporate leaders require to be able to accomplish this task: (1) the ability to prove that business and profit-making do have a societal function, (2) the knowledge of what defines responsible business, and (3) the ability to organize responsible decisionmaking within their corporations.