The Moral Advantage

147

7 Forging a Moral Identity in Business

There are two hazards in writing about morality. The first is that readers will dismiss it as marginal to their real-world concerns, an idealistic luxury that has little to do with our daily struggles for survival or fights for fame and glory. This hazard arises from a misunderstanding about what morality is and how it works in the real world. The aim of this book is to clear up this misunderstanding with a detailed explanation of how morality creates a valuable business advantage for those who employ it consistently and imaginatively. But the second hazard is less direct and harder to combat. It is that people who speak or write about morality have a way of sounding moralistic, preachy, and, worst ...