BUSINESS ETHICS: THE NEWEST SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM?

Why has capitalism persistently managed to survive in spite of its inherent critical contradictions? The erudite book The New Spirit of Capitalism clearly answers this question, shining light on the dialectical dynamics between the development of capitalism and its critiques. In their book, Boltanski and Chiapello call it “the spirit of capitalism,” which is defined as “the set of beliefs associated with the capitalist order that helps to justify this order and, by legitimating them, to sustain the forms of action and predispositions compatible with it” (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2006, p. 10). In this paper, I navigate so-called “business ethics,” which has shown significant growth since the 1980s (Donaldson and Fafaliou, 2003), is the concept most appropriate for the study of the spirit of capitalism to determine whether or not it contains the characteristics of the newest spirit of capitalism. In order to address the question, I adhere to Boltanski and Chiapello’s methodology, qualitative content analysis, given that this research follows the same framework as their work. Fifteen randomly but representative managerial texts will be analyzed. The research outcome confirmed that “business ethics” can be regarded as the potential newest spirit of capitalism. On top of that, I argue this paper contributes to the study of the spirit of capitalism.