Werhane's role in the development of the discipline of business ethics

a critical appreciation

Richard De George

pp. 9-27

in: R. E. Freeman, Sergiy Dmytriyev, Andrew C. Wicks (eds), The moral imagination of Patricia Werhane, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

Patricia Werhane has made an important and lasting impact on the academic field of business ethics. She was co-editor of one of the first two anthologies that helped define the field. She was one of the first officers of the Society of Business Ethics, which helped professionalize the field. She was one of the founders and the first Editor-in-Chief of the Business Ethics Quarterly, which provides a highly regarded vehicle for publication in the field. Through her publications and collaboration with a great many others she has helped stamp the field as an interdisciplinary one. Substantively, her prolific writing on and use of moral imagination, mental mind sets, and systems thinking have influenced a generation of younger scholars. And her approach to writing on normative ethics without moralizing has provided an example that many have followed. This chapter details these accomplishments, and while noting that hers is not the only approach to academic business ethics, it highlights the importance of her contributions and provides an appreciative evaluation that may help spur others on to further develop what she has begun.

Cited authors

Werhane Patricia