Business culture and corporate social responsibility: an analysis in the light of Catholic social teaching with an application to whistle blowing

The outcomes of a market economy depend on human behaviour within business organisations and this in turn is closely related with our conceptions of organisational culture and corporate social responsibility. Markets cannot be seen as ‘autonomous’ as is often suggested, but behaviour within markets is affected by the cultural environment within which business organisations operate. The first insight of this paper is the importance of culture in the economic sphere in influencing individual decision-making. Secondly, we point out that culture itself is shaped by the decisions of human persons: culture is not exogenous. Thirdly, we argue that an important aspect of a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy within an organisation should be the promotion of virtuous behaviour in order to help create a culture of virtue in the business sector more generally. It is concluded that both individuals and companies have a responsibility to help foster a culture of virtue within the business environment in which they operate which has ‘spillovers’ outside the organisation itself. A practical application of the ideas to the concept of ‘whistle blowing’ is proposed.