Business Ethics: Four Spheres of Executive Responsibility

tion among men should as surely destroy some men morally as battle destroys some physically. This is a grim observation. It flies in the face of our widespread celebration of business leadership, entre-preneurial achievement, and tbe triumphal march of capitalism into Asia and now Eastern Europe. Barnards view also seem unrealistic. Manage-ment life is surely not, after all, a series of anguishing moral dilemmas. And when ethical issues do arise, the right answer, morally and legally, is often clear. Tbe typical challenge is finding practical ways to do tbe right thing, not discerning what is rigbt. Tbe investment bankers who met in dark garages to exchange inside information for suitcases of cash were not struggling on tbe horn of moral dilemmas but were breaking the law and violating their clients trust. Yet in other cases, the central challenge is deciding what is right. In 1988, for example, the executives of Roussel UCLAF, a French pharmaceu-tical company, had to decide whether to market a new drug called RU 486.