4. Aristotle and Ethical Choices of Clients

Management consultants can choose whether to accept particular business corporations as clients. Bad choices may mire them in ethical, reputational and legal troubles. Aristotle made few remarks about business ethics, but they have influenced much modern writing on the subject. Aristotle believed that the interests of the community of the polis should be paramount in all aspects of people’s lives, including their business dealings, and that people should not make profits out of each other. Management consultants, if they accept Aristotle’s beliefs, should expect their clients to observe the same ethical standards in their business dealings as they would in their everyday lives as members of their communities, and to serve their customers and communities rather than to maximise profits. Some modern business ethicists, however, draw additional inferences from Aristotle’s work, that is, that business corporations should be communities in which their members can find meaning and fulfilment in their lives, and that they should furthermore be seen as members of wider, global communities whose interests they should serve. Much of what modern business ethicists have inferred from Aristotle’s work, however, is misguided because it takes insufficient account of the particular social and economic conditions to which he was responding.