RT Article T1 Speaking Platitudes to Power: Observing American Business Ethics in an Age of Declining Hegemony JF Journal of business ethics VO 94 IS 2 SP 239 OP 253 A1 Marens, Richard LA English PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V YR 2010 UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1785638947 AB Over the last generation, American Business Ethics has focused excessively on the process of managerial decision-making while ignoring the collective impact of these decisions and avoiding other approaches that might earn the disapproval of corporate executives. This narrowness helped the field establish itself during the 1980s, when American management, under pressure from finance and heightened competition, was unreceptive to any limitations on its autonomy. Relying, however, on top-down approaches inspired by Aristotle, Locke, and Kant, while ignoring the consequentialism of Mill and Rawls, made the field totally reliant upon the good will of these same corporate executives for generating any impact. Trends in employee compensation, finance, regulation, government procurement, and taxpayer subsidies suggest that Business Ethics has failed to significantly influence corporate behavior, a result that would have not surprised the realists of the post-war generation of Business and Society scholars. If Business Ethics is to prove relevant in the contemporary world, the field needs to acknowledge past failures and develop new approaches. The decline of American economic hegemony coupled to the increased internationalization of the discipline may create the opportunity to do so. K1 Voluntarism K1 Utilitarianism K1 social contracting K1 Stakeholder Theory K1 Rawls K1 Mill K1 Managerialism K1 Consequentialism K1 History of ethics K1 American hegemony K1 academic history DO 10.1007/s10551-011-0754-8