Wayne Eastman, Rutgers
Yes to the Moral Clarity Test and to the Implicit Association Test:
Toward Yin-Yang Critical Business Ethics and Yin-Yang Critical Business Law
Wayne Nordness Eastman
Rutgers Business School
Nicole M. Bryan
Independent Scholar
Abstract
In this interdisciplinary paper, we suggest that the applied fields of North American/European business ethics and of American business law, as well as the foundational fields of modern Western ethics and social science from which the two applied fields draw and to which they contribute, have a shared tilt toward a “yang” perspective that sees the ethical person or organization as struggling to uphold principles and/or virtues against flawed human nature, flawed organizations, flawed institutions, and, more fundamentally, against an egoistic, treachery-inducing logic of strategic action that impels selfishness in genes as well as in human beings. We contend that contemporary Western ethics and social science in general, and business ethics and business law in particular, could benefit from a greater admixture of a “yin” perspective that sees the ethical person, organization, and institution as submitting to a basically healthy human nature and to a basically benevolent logic of strategic action. Toward that end, we offer alternative understandings of human nature and of strategic action to juxtapose against what we contend are dominant understandings, and explore the relevance of such alternative understandings for normative and empirical business ethics and business law theory and practice. We suggest that Yin-Yang Critical Business Ethics (Y-Y CBE) and Yin-Yang Law (Y-Y CBL) perspectives can be born from combining the useful, relatively pessimistic understandings of the moral background derived from well-known models such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Milgram, Asch, and Zimbardo experiments, and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) with the different, relatively optimistic understandings associated with the alternative models that we describe here: the “Moral Clarity Test” (MCT), “Ethical Focal Points,” and “Fundamental Harmony.” Finally, we suggest that an appreciation of the largely parallel dilemmas and opportunities facing business ethics and business law academics could and should lead to better communication between the fields. As one way to achieve that, we suggest that the Society for Business Ethics and the Academy of Legal Studies, or subgroups (or split-offs) of both organizations, reverse the “separate if equal” stance of holding their annual conferences over the same days in different cities in favor of an “integrationist” stance of holding the national conferences, or local conferences, together.