Question: The Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was a ‘gadfly', executed for corrupting the youth of Athens with his dangerous ideas. Yet the Socratic approach is a useful antidote to pompousness. Ethics has now become a highly technical area. One could argue that it is of most value if it is acerbic and endlessly critical of business practice; challenging and irritating in new and innovative ways and at a fundamental level. There is a real danger that business ethics becomes self-serving; it justifies its place in business talk by providing a language and set of concepts which can be used by the powerful to justify their actions and special position.

he other side of the coin, however, is that ethics becomes so aggressively confrontational and critical of the world of the practising manager that its pronouncements are treated as idealistic by its targets. A coping strategy results whereby managers feel threatened and ignore ethical prescriptions while taking refuge in accepted practice and common sense (‘I'm no worse than anyone else, so why pick on me?'). By providing critiques with the benefit of hindsight, radical ethics offers no practical way forward for the manager operating in a context marked by current information overload and ambiguity, complex power politics, a confusing mixture of competition and co-operation and uncertainty. Any critique of business practice must be matched with humanity, personal intellectual honesty (‘would I have done any better?') and modesty. Discuss.