Applying neuroscience to business ethics

Introduction Understanding the mind has always been one of the main interests of humanity. Over the past decades, there has been a surge of interest in the human brain, especially in decision making and behavior. The developments of neuroimaging technologies have allowed researchers to measure brain patterns as individuals feel and think. Building on early structural imaging technologies such as computer tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which can only provide structural information about the brain, a variety of functional imaging technologies have been introduced. Among these technologies, the functional magnet resonance imaging (fMRI) has boosted the advance of neuroscience in medicine, psychology, and psychiatry by providing new possibilities to gain insights into the functioning of the human brain. These recent advances have sparked the interest of research outside of the traditional clinical setting, such as economics (Fehr and Rangel, 2011), law (Jones, Marois, Farah and Greely, 2013), marketing (Lee, Broderick and Chamberlain, 2007), or business ethics (Robertson, Voegtlin and Maak, 2016). We also witness a steadily growing interest in the application of neuroscience as a method in the management discipline in general and business ethics in particular. A database search of ABI info shows that more than 3000 articles have been published in peer-reviewed management journals. Seventy of these articles have been published in leading business ethics journals such as Business Ethics Quarterly and The Journal of Business Ethics. In this chapter we will provide a brief overview of neuroscience methodology and provide selected examples of its application in business ethics. After having introduced the most frequently used neuroimaging technologies, we review neuroscience as a research method analyzing its advantages and raising possible concerns. We then provide examples of contributions that neuroscience has made to business ethics research, in particular the role of emotions in ethical decision making. In the last section we focus on a newly emerging line of research that investigates the relationship of mindfulness and ethical decision making through the process of reperceiving. We will exemplify how neuroscience can help understand and examine this process.