Virtue-Based Compatibility of Business and Profession

Abstract

It is widely believed that ethical obligation in business is owed to stockholders, who are the investors but in the practice of a profession such an ethical obligation is owed to clients or community. The apparent conflict in the nature of ethical obligation is clear but it is also true that both business and profession cannot be separated as for instance engineering and journalism are businesses or today even many educational institutions and medical facilities are businesses. It appears to be ethically important then to examine the conflict in the nature of ethical obligation as such and to elucidate the nature of conflict resolution in the light of virtue-based view of business. In this regard, an analysis of virtue-based approach to business and profession begins with the nature and practical applications of virtue ethics and goes on to examine and propose certain ethical reasons based on virtue-based analysis of real-life cases to spell out the revised stakeholders's view of business to establish the compatibility of business and profession.