Kurt Borg, (2026). Foucault and Business Ethics. In: Luetge, C., Thejls Ziegler, M. (eds) Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6176-6_118-1
Abstract
This chapter presents an overview of a range of analyses within business ethics which have been informed by the work of Michel Foucault. It considers work in business ethics that adopted Foucault’s ideas on discourse and power, as well as his later ideas on ethics, subjectivity, and technologies of the self. Furthermore, this chapter presents more recent work whose scope is more diagnostic or even deconstructive in its aim to foreground notions in business ethics as governmental technologies. An important aspect considered in this chapter is how Foucault’s work informs debates in business ethics through his discussion of neoliberalism, as well as how his analytical perspectives were taken up in contemporary analyses of neoliberalism and its effects, including his portrayal of homo oeconomicus and the production of the entrepreneurial self. This opens up a consideration of extensions of Foucault’s conceptual tools beyond their original field of focus, which can be seen in studies of how developing business and social realities continually raise urgent questions pertaining to algorithmic governmentality, the ethics of quantification in the workplace, and artificial intelligence. Besides an overview of these debates, this chapter presents a close reading of a select number of studies that exemplify the main thematics of different strands of Foucault-informed research in business ethics and adjacent fields.
Foucault News 