Teleological business ethics : formative, rationalist and transformative – illustrations and analogies

The strategic, tactical and operational levels of an organization may have different perceptions and convictions on how the organization’s behaviours and practices of business ethics should be managed in the marketplace and the surrounding society. We examine organizations’ behaviours and practices of business ethics in the marketplace and the surrounding society with the aid of complexity sciences. The objective is to describe organizations’ behaviours and practices of business ethics using different teleological approaches. Unethical behaviours and practices may be the outcome of conscious actions, but they may also be subconscious. We will discuss reasons for both possibilities of unethical behaviours and practices by organizations, their managers and employees. An important insight based upon the presented illustrations and analogies is that the different teleological approaches to business ethics in behaviours and practices may be consecutive and simultaneous within an organization. An essential subject for further research is how to deal with the durabilty and variabitlity of behaviours and practices of business ethics of organizations in the marketplace and the surrounding society.