The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done

by Peter F. Drucker

The fundamental axiom on which the Western tradition of ethics has always been based is: There is only one code of ethics, that of individual behavior, for prince and pauper, for rich and poor, for the mighty and the meek alike. Ethics, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is the affirmation that all men and women are alike creatures—whether the Creator be called God, Nature, or Society. There is only one ethics, one set of rules of morality, one code, that of individual behavior in which the same rules apply to everyone alike. And this fundamental axiom business ethics denies. Business ethics, in other words, is not ethics at all, as the term has commonly been used by Western philosophers and Western theologians. Business ethics assumes that for some reason the ordinary rules of ethics do not apply to business. What is business ethics then?