Justice Failure: Efficiency and Equality in Business Ethics

This paper offers the concept of ‘‘justice failure,’’ as a counterpart to the familiar idea of market failure, in order to better understand managers’ ethical obligations. The paper takes the ‘‘market failures approach’’ (MFA) to business ethics as its point of departure. The success of the MFA, I argue, lies in its close proximity with economic theory, particularly in the idea that, within a larger scheme of social cooperation, markets ought to pursue efficiency and leave the pursuit of equality to the welfare state.