The term 'business' is understood in a wide sense to include all systems involved in the exchange of goods and services, while 'ethics' is circumscribed as all human action aimed at securing a good life.
Since its initiation in 1980, the editors have encouraged the broadest possible scope. The Journal of Business Ethics publishes original articles from a wide variety of methodological and disciplinary perspectives concerning ethical issues related to business. These externalities range from the benefits of invention and ingenuity to the exercise of charity and philanthropy, all of which flourish in developed capitalist societies. People use the particular products and services they get in market exchanges in ways that benefit others in ways not at all foreseen by the agents to those transactions at the time. This is both because the sum of the benefits of innumerable transactions, which are beneficial to both parties, is very great, but also and especially because of Positive Externalities. Nevertheless, when all transactions are voluntary to both parties, that is exactly what we can expect to happen. The key is that the morality of the market forbids only force and fraud it does not require people to do good to others.
This article proposes an analysis of why this is so.
Get invisible hand free#
The argument of the "Invisible Hand" is that the system of free enterprise benefits society in general even though it is not the aim of any particular economic agent to do that.