Abstract
It arose from the scandals that plagued Wall Street during the 1980s: a growing public support for business ethics as an object of study and teaching in America's colleges and universities. Business ethics courses are offered (and often, for business majors, required) in ever-increasing numbers. The ranks of the academy swell with professors whose principal vocation is teaching and writing in business ethics. Philanthropists endow chairs in business ethics faster than universities can fill them. Although deriving and explaining the ethical norms that support and lubricate a well-functioning market economy are worthwhile tasks, the intellectual fashion in business ethics is quite a different matter. For among business ethicists there is a consensus favoring the stakeholder theory of the firm - a theory that seeks to redefine and reorient the purpose and the activities of the firm. Far from providing an ethical foundation for capitalism, these business ethicists seek to change it dramatically.