Teaching the “Friedman vs. Freeman Debate” in a Way That Opens Students' Minds to a Wider Variety of Views on Business Ethics

Aurélien Feix et al.

Journal of Business Ethics Education2024https://doi.org/10.5840/jbee20242110article
AJG 1
Weight
0.30

What the paper says

One way in which business ethics educators can introduce business ethics to their students is through the so-called “Friedman vs. Freeman debate”. However, a growing body of literature challenges the juxtaposition of the views of Friedman and Freeman—two authors commonly seen as archetypal proponents of the “shareholder model” and the “stakeholder model” of the firm, respectively. This article argues that it can still be valuable to introduce students to the doctrines of Friedman and Freeman—provided that it is done in a way that neither overemphasizes the differences between these doctrines nor suggests that they exhaust the variety of viewpoints that exist on business ethics. We offer a pedagogical tool, in the form of a two-dimensional matrix, that can help educators do this, and discuss how the matrix can be used in the classroom to make students aware of the diversity of existing positions in business ethics.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5840/jbee20242110

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@article{aurélien2024,
  title        = {{Teaching the “Friedman vs. Freeman Debate” in a Way That Opens Students' Minds to a Wider Variety of Views on Business Ethics}},
  author       = {Aurélien Feix et al.},
  journal      = {Journal of Business Ethics Education},
  year         = {2024},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5840/jbee20242110},
}

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Teaching the “Friedman vs. Freeman Debate” in a Way That Opens Students' Minds to a Wider Variety of Views on Business Ethics

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Evidence weight

0.30

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.00 × 0.4 = 0.00
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.