The contingency of business: Narrative, metaphor, and ethics

The purpose of this paper is to discuss rival views of business and business ethics in terms of narrative. I want to show that we can tell various stories about business, and that our worldview narratives shape our accounts of business. These narratives not only involve description, but contain normative ramifications. We can only act within the world that we perceive. To evaluate competing narratives, I suggest dialectical comparison of the narratives with important values. The second part of the paper discusses five distinct genres of worldview narratives and their implications for business: homo economicus, libertarian, conservative, liberal, and religio-philosophical.