Building bridges

Patricia Werhane, business ethics and health care

Sergiy Dmytriyev

Andrew C. Wicks

pp. 143-163

in: R. E. Freeman, Sergiy Dmytriyev, Andrew C. Wicks (eds), The moral imagination of Patricia Werhane, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

This paper explores Patricia Werhane's work on health care by analyzing her extensive research on this topic. We identify five main themes that cut across her work: identifying and challenging misconceptions about business in health care; adopting a stakeholder approach to health care; theorizing about health care as a complex adaptive system; applying systems thinking to health care using mental models and moral imagination; and elaborating on intellectual property rights (particularly compared to the rights to survival). While we note the substantial contributions she has made to the field, we identify opportunities to enrich her contributions, especially in applying business ethics to health care organizations. In addition, we explore whether Werhane's work on health care could provide a framework that could be used by scholars trying to connect insights from business ethics to other fields. We identify four stages along Werhane's work on health care which could serve as a model for extending business ethics theories to other fields.

Cited authors

Werhane Patricia