Competition and Corporate Reputation
Competition and Corporate Reputation

Summary/Abstract: Competition is relatively seldom discussed in present-day business ethics. Reasons could be that the social contract and stakeholders paradigms, central in business ethics, do not easily make room for competition and competitors. Reflective contributions concerning the issue of competition refer to its function in a civilisation process and in social progress. More directly related to ethical considerations are remarks made by Frank H. Knight (1923), Tom Sorrell (Sorrell - Hendry 1994) and Norman E. Bowie (1999). The paper summarises these contributions, and then presents recent discussions concerning basic institutions of the social fabric, viz. the market, government and civil society. The thesis of the paper is that, in order to regulate competition in a morally legitimate way, interventions are needed by representatives of these basic institutions, working together in alternating alliances, and referring to moral norms that are inherent in the market system itself as well as to external, overarching norms, derived from human morality at large.

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