Peter Ulrich (economist)

Peter Ulrich at the German Evangelical Church Congress 2007 in Cologne

Peter Ulrich (born May 29, 1948 in Bern ) is a Swiss economist and the founder of integrative business ethics . From 1987 to 2009 he held the (first) chair for business ethics at the University of St. Gallen and was the founder and head of the institute for business ethics there.

Life

Ulrich is the son of the business economist Hans Ulrich . From 1967 to 1971 he studied economics and social sciences at the University of Freiburg i. Ue. (Switzerland). From 1972 to 1976 he was a research assistant at the Business Administration Institute of the University of Basel (Wilhelm Hill). In 1976 he received his doctorate from the University of Basel. 1976–1979 and 1982–1984 he worked in business management consulting , between 1979–1982 as a habilitation scholarship holder of the Swiss National Science Foundation (working title of the project: "Economic Rationality and Practical Reason. Basic Problems of Practical Economic Philosophy"). He completed his habilitation at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Witten / Herdecke in 1986.

From spring 1984 to autumn 1987 Ulrich held a professorship (C4) for business administration with a social science focus at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal (Germany); from autumn 1986 he was also a lecturer at the University of Witten / Herdecke . In autumn 1987 he became the first holder of the chair for business ethics at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), the first relevant chair at a German-speaking business faculty. From autumn 1989 he was the founding director of the Institute for Business Ethics at the HSG and from autumn 2005 to autumn 2007 he was head of department ( dean ) of the cultural studies department of the University of St. Gallen.

Ulrich was a member of the Executive Committee of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN) from 1992–1996, and from 1997–2001 a member of the board of the German Network for Business Ethics (DNWE). Since 2004 he has been a co-founder and board member of SSW - Foundation for Socially Responsible Switzerland. He is also a co-initiator and member of kontrapunkt , a group of approx. 30 professors of the humanities, social and economic sciences at Swiss universities that emerged from the network “socially responsible economy NSW”, who are in the polarized political debate, each in the focus of the public Interfering questions with differentiated contributions on the "public use of reason".

Ulrich is a member of the scientific advisory board of Netzwerk Grundeinkommen , the German organization in the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) for an unconditional basic income .

theory

For Peter Ulrich, the integrative business ethics he founded is about "to clarify the literally questionable relationship between economic factual logic and ethical reason from the ground up and to redefine it in a sustainable, life-serving way" (Ulrich 2001: 20) there should be an economic ethical primacy of the point of view of usefulness over the logic of the market . There are three basic tasks of business ethics:

1. The criticism of "pure" economic reason (economism)
2. The clarification of the ethical aspects of a life-serving economy
3. The determination of the “places” of the morality of economic activity

In order to counteract the steadily advancing tendency towards economism , Ulrich sees the “criticism of economism as the most important task of basic reflection on economic ethics” (Ulrich 2001: 15).

Like Karl Homann , Peter Ulrich addresses the widespread view of the two-world conception of economic rationality on the one hand and ethical reason on the other from the start. The specific basic idea of ​​the integrative approach is to overcome this two-world concept "in an (integrative) idea of socio-economic rationality that already has the ethical point of view in itself." (Ulrich 2001: 17) It is about the economic system together with its own logic in "rational forms of political-economic decision-making" (Ulrich 2001: 335). The market forces must be integrated into the ethical-political principles of a well-ordered society. Ulrich himself writes: "One of the defining features of the integrative approach is that in this sense he understands business ethics as a piece of political ethics that embed the market economy in a well-ordered society of free people." (Ulrich 2001: 17) The integrative approach is consistent a moral point of view. He is interested in a methodically disciplined ethical reflection that comes before all socio-economic and political realities. The position of man and economy is very clearly defined: Since the economy is an instrument created by man and useful to him, no moral consideration can have it as a starting point. The starting point can only be the rational person himself.

Fonts

• The disenchanted market: an orientation based on business ethics. Herder, Freiburg 2002, ISBN 3-451-27935-5 .
• Civilized Market Economy : An Ethical Business Orientation. Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-451-05579-1
  • Updated and expanded new edition: Haupt, Bern / Stuttgart / Vienna 2010 ISBN 978-3-258-07604-1
• Integrative Economic Ethics: Foundations of a Civilized Market Economy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2008, ISBN 978-0-521-87796-1 .
• Integrative business ethics: Basics of a life-serving economy. 5th edition. Haupt, Bern / Stuttgart / Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-258-08003-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Peter Ulrich in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of the Institute for Business Ethics at the HSG
• FAZ Interview "There is an alternative to profit maximization"
• Peter Ulrich: Political Economy, reconfigured in terms of economic ethics, in zfwu 7/2 (2006), 164–182
• Peter Ulrich (Farewell Lecture 2009): The social embedding of the market economy as a core problem of the 21st century - a perspective of economic progress
• Peter Ulrich: Morals injection for the economy (video) - Interview with Roger de Weck , SF 1 Sternstunde Philosophie 2009

Individual evidence

1. ^ Basic Income Network, Scientific Advisory Board. Retrieved August 12, 2016.