Introduction

pp. 1-10

in: Claus Dierksmeier, Reframing economic ethics, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

Recent economic crises have further fueled the debate over the social impact of economics and management education (Krugman 2009; Shiller 2010; Ötsch und Kapeller 2010). Former fixtures of the conventional wisdom of the economics discipline—such as the macroeconomic quest for ever more growth and the microeconomic pursuit of profit—are now held responsible for many social, ecological, and moral failings of the present economic system (Pirson and Steinvorth 2014). Behind this critique and propelled by it, a deeper shift in economic thought is arguably happening. After about 200 years of imitating the methods of the natural sciences and their positivistic approach, and after decades of relegating any and all normative considerations to the margins of business theory, a paradigm shift appears possible in the direction of a more realistic and thus more relevant framework for economics, i.e. humanistic management (Amann 2011).