The Spirit of Entrepreneurship and the Qualities of Moral Decision Making: Toward a Unifying Framework

• Published in: Journal of business ethics Vol. 60; no. 3; pp. 307 - 315
• Main Authors: Buchholz, Rogene A., Rosenthal, Sandra B.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01.09.2005; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Business ethics; Creativity; Decision making; Entrepreneurs; Entrepreneurship; Ethics; Imagination; Innovation; Moral judgment; Moral particularism; Morality; Pragmatism; Social responsibility; Society; Studies; Virtue ethics
• ISSN: 0167-4544; 1573-0697
• DOI: 10.1007/s10551-005-0137-0

At the heart of entrepreneurship are imagination, creativity, novelty, and sensitivity. It takes these qualities to develop a new product or service and bring it to market, to envision the possible impacts a new product may make and come up with novel and creative solutions to problems that may arise. These qualities go to make up what could be called the spirit of entrepreneurship, a spirit that involves the ability to handle the experimental nature of entrepreunerial activity. These same qualities are crucial for moral decision making, and an ethical approach which emphasizes imagination, creativity, and has an experimental thrust is much better adapted to the entrepreneurial activity and much more relevant to the unique situations that entrepreneurs face. In this sense, the process approach to ethics developed in this article is a unifying framework that brings together the activity of entrepreneurship and moral decision making.