Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics

Ayn Rand's radical ethical perspective is applied to key issues in business ethics and contrasted to those perspectives that hold business to be essentially amoral or immoral. Special focus is given to the common assumption that conflicts of interest, either because of innate human badness or because of scarce resources, are fundamental to the human condition. That assumption is rejected in Rand's system, based on her emphasis on the power of human reason to shape one's character and beliefs and its power to develop new resources and cultivate win-win relationships. This is a reprint edition of an essay first published in the Journal of Accounting, Ethics, and Public Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-26, Winter 2003.