The Moral Psychology of Business: Care and Compassion in the Corporation

Abstract: The virtue of moral psychology is that it emphasizes what is most human in business, as opposed to the more bloodless concepts of “obligation,” “duty,” “responsibility” and rights.” The heart of moral psychology is to be found in such concrete phenomena as fear, love, affection, antipathy, loyalty, jealousy, anger, resentment, avarice, ambition, pride, and cowardice. In this essay, I want to explore two of the core virtues of the corporation, conceived of as a community, the “sentiments” of care and compassion. These were taken to be the very core of ethics by Adam Smith. I want to distinguish care and compassion from each other and both from the more principled and rule-bound conceptions of ethics that still dominate philosophy.