New Materialism in Business Ethics The Juridical Form as Disciplinary Apparatus

This paper contributes to the philosophical approach of business ethics by inserting the current state of business ethics, which is captured by semi-legal casuistry and frameworks, and Karan Barad's posthuman theory known as 'new materialism', into a proposal for the study of business ethics. The merging of business ethics and posthuman theory results in a so-called 'posthuman approach to critical business ethics'. My proposition is that these semi-legal frameworks weaken the field of business ethics, or even make it disappear. In addition to descriptive, empirical, social-scientific business ethics, there is also philosophical, normative, critical business ethics. This paper is written in the belief that these two branches of business ethics are navel-gazing toward legal or semi-legal frameworks - such as self-regulation and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) - creating a discourse of utility and regulation, rather than a discourse of ethics.