Business Ethics and Extant Social Contracts
本文探讨了源自社区的现存社会契约如何构成商业伦理规范的重要来源，并分析了这些契约产生的遵守义务以及解决冲突的优先规则，为商业伦理的规范与实证研究提供了框架。
Extant social contracts, deriving from communities of individuals, constitute a significant source of ethical norms in business. When found consistent with general ethical theories through the application of a filtering test, these real social contracts generate prima facie duties of compliance on the part of those who expressly or impliedly consent to the terms of the social contract, and also on the part of those who take advantage of the instrumental value of the social contracts. Businesspeople typically participate in multiple communities and, as a consequence, encounter conflicting ethical norms. Priority rules can be devised to resolve such conflicts. The framework of extant social contracts merges normative and theoretical research in business ethics and specifies a domain for empirical studies.