The Routledge Companion to Business Ethics

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Consequentialism and non-consequentialism

Andrew Gustafson

Business persons tend to focus on results, or consequences, so business practice is naturally consequence-driven. To engage in commerce is to act with a vision of an end to be achieved—for example, to create valuable goods and services, to make a profit, or to attain the firm’s goals for the quarter. In the academic field of business ethics, few would claim to be consequentialists, and, in fact, most find consequentialism in tension with ethics not a source of it, in part because consequentialism is often associated with a focus on either happiness or utility—oftentimes economic—rather than ethical values. Given the perceived association between consequentialism and economic utility, ...