When education professor William Damon interviewed people who had left or longed to leave their business careers, he found one thing they shared in common: “People leaving business careers often complain that they were forced to give up the values and purposes that led them to choose business in the first place.” Part of the reason for the poor fit of morality and real business lives, he argues, comes from an impoverished view of morality. Most conceptions of morality in business, certainly including those taught in standard business ethics courses, revolve entirely around its restrictive and philanthropic dimensions. The restrictive dimension tells us what we cannot or should not do; the philanthropic tells us to give to others from the resources accumulated from business activity, but has little to do with how we work.

Damon’s view of morality is more expansive, fitting loosely into the Aristotelian tradition of ethics-as-excellence. In addition to the restrictive and philanthropic, he adds two other dimensions of morality: the generative and the empathic. While the basic ideas are not new, Damon’s book provides a detailed account of the ways in which moral purpose works, especially the generative role that moral purpose can play as a fertile source of business motivation, inspiration, and innovation. Damon first presented his moral model in the January 2002 issue of Optimize magazine. That content largely matches that of chapter 2 in his 2004 book, The Moral Advantage: How to Succeed in Business by Doing the Right Thing. However, Damon warns that he has “since reformulated many of the notions expressed” in the earlier article.

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