Customer Integration and Beyond*: Towards a Business Economic-Ethical Theory of the Firm

Zusammenfassung

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This paper aims to make a contribution to the overcoming of what Freeman has characterized by his "separation thesis" and, based on a theory of the firm, the resources-processes-outcomes approach, developing of a business economic-ethics approach. The resources-processes-outcomes approach draws on two main theoretical concepts: integrative production and customer integration. The concept of customer integration throws light on the mutual responsibility of supplier and customer for the value-creation process and its outcomes. As regards management implications, customer integration can be interpreted as a special case of stakeholder integration. The paper outlines this program and proposes its implementation in two steps. Whereas the first step is mainly concerned with the statement, analysis and extension of the ethical dimensions of the available theory, step two shall contribute to the development of a business economic-ethical theory.

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Auszug

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Customer Integration and Beyond*: Towards a Business Economic-Ethical Theory of the Firm

1. Introduction

In business economics1 there are contributions which point out the economic-ethical dimensions of the assumptions of economic theories, or are of importance for the analysis or reflection of business-economic problems, or, from the perspective of business ethics, elaborate on the integration of business economics and ethics.2 That notwithstanding, business-economic theories usually abstain from a more intensive and systematic integration of their subject matter with that of business ethics. Still missing are business-economic theories which identify and solve economic-ethical problems, i. e., problems which evolve from a common perspective from the outset. Beyond economic ethics,3 in business economics theories which have accrued from common theory-building of business economics and ethics are far from being developed. Without such theory developments, however, the relationships between business ethics and business economics will probably remain rather sporadic.

This paper does not address the whole discipline of business economics. Its interest is limited to economic approaches subsumed to the theory of the firm.4 In this field, it sketches a theory of the firm - the resources-processes-outcomes (Haase et al. 2008) or "Leistungs" approach (Kleinaltenkamp/Jacob 2002) - based on the Gutenberg5 school within German business economics. The resources-processes-outcomes (RPO) approach's analysis of interactions between firms and their customers also draws on the new institutional economics6 and the Austrian school of economics (Ehret 2007). From the perspective of the RPO approach, supplier-buyer or (to use a similar term) provider-customer interactions are analyzed in terms of "cooperative" or "integrative production"; this analysis throws light on the contribution of the customer to the value-creation process commonly undertaken with the provider. Both parties are responsible for the output or what they owe to each other and others.

Integrative production and customer integration that follows from integrative production as a topic of analysis as well as a management task, provide an interface to ethics, particularly to the stakeholder approach. The stakeholder approach is a businesseconomic contribution to management theory.7 The paper aims at the achievement of a unified view on firm performance, value creation, and stakeholder concerns, i. e., at a contribution to the overcoming of the schism between economics and ethics that takes place at the theoretical level in business economics as well as in business practice. This is not the only, but a systematic opportunity to overcome what Freeman (1994) has labeled the "separation thesis".

Currently, the relationships...

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