ABSTRACT
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, as well as the apparent links between business and specific results, many come to the view that business practice itself is often inherently in tension with ethics.
