Seeming virtually to imply that business as well as private people may well at times have a tendency to settle for the lowest possible denominator where morality is concerned, the business ethicist goes on to urge that people should not "be embarassed by the universality of the desire to better ourselves", adding for clarification that the characteristic of "wanting more" is after all universal. Based on this concept, he sees the role of "corporate raiders who engineer take overs" as "serving valuable social ends", because although ". . .their aim is to enrich themselves. . .they do so by finding inefficiently used capital and redeploying it in more efficient ways."

The article ends by conceding that "companies could, of course, do 'good works' in the process of doing business, but they need to be answerable to their shareholders."

With the ever freer flowing world trade, the internationalising of law and order, and the increasingly accepted realisation that this planet is an interacting, interdependent whole, we must, I think, urgently consider the possible implications of this way of thinking.

Agreeing in principle that one should not expect more morality from one person or institution than another, doesn't it seem clear that a leadership in ethics can come from no other place than the individual human being, implementing the "universal desire to better ourselves" he speaks of, in acts, guided by conscience, working for the good of the whole, rather than "wanting more" for the individual self?

And considering that our world is inexorably moving towards a global neighbourhood of peoples and nations, and that every human being once born to this planet is a rightful shareholder in the common household, who should we be answerable to if not to the whole neighbourhood and every neighbour in it? "Good works" would be "good business", furthering the interests of every single shareholder and making it possible for us all to move onwards towards greater fulfilment of our human potential.