In this essay we take the rhetorical liberty of addressing our colleagues directly in hopes of persuading them – you, dear business ethics scholars – to recognize and affirm what animates our field. Are you not engaged in business ethics research because, at some level or in some way, you intend to make a positive change in and for the world? We find it difficult to imagine how or why anyone who would respond negatively to that question would be reading this publication. And yet we believe that one of the most important philosophical conceptualizations of the relationship between scientific knowledge and the world, one that connects knowledge and its objects precisely in terms of a desire to improve the human condition, remains under-appreciated within our field. Here we provide an account of John Dewey’s meliorism, connecting it directly to his epistemological instrumentalism (which would later in his work become known as pragmatism) as a way to understand scientific inquiry. Our primary objective is thereby to provide a conceptual basis on which to understand scientific inquiry into business ethics - in its theoretical and methodological plurality, including quantitative and qualitative, positivist and critical, consequentialist, deontological and virtue-focused approaches - as oriented toward the improvement of business practice. We recognize that such an aim carries the significant risk of conflating or confusing streams of research that have heretofore appeared wholly disconnected, even contradictory. Yet we suggest that the challenges facing today’s world are so great that the potential for greater coherence across our field merits consideration as a means to the end of achieving any positive changes that we might collectively seek.
