Looking Forward to the Past of Business Ethics

Speculates on what a retrospective view of the next ten years of the development of business ethics might look like. First characterizes management knowledge as transient and recyclable, in the nature of a fashionable commodity. Puts forward a retrospective view based on the expectation that the current interest in business ethics will follow this pattern. Second, this leads to the argument that interest in business ethics will be superficial rather than real. In the third part suggests that this is inevitable, given the need to be seen to be ethical while at the same time prioritizing profit.