Norman E. Bowie


Norman E. Bowie is an American philosopher and business ethicist, known for his work in corporate responsibility and the application of Kantian ethics to business. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, where he held the Elmer L. Andersen Chair in Corporate Responsibility.
He is an important voice in ongoing debates over business ethics, in which his own voice has been in favor of the Kantian view of ethics as a Kingdom of Ends.

Education

Bowie earned his AB in Philosophy from Bates College in 1964 and his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1968.

Academic Career

In the early and mid-1970s, Bowie was a tenured professor in the Philosophy Department at Hamilton College, where he also served as Executive Director of the American Philosophical Association; at that time, the national office of the APA was located in Courtyard North.
Bowie held a joint appointment in the Department of Strategic Management and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He has also served as Dixons Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at the London Business School and was a fellow at Harvard University's Program on Ethics and the Professions.
He is a past president of the Society for Business Ethics and the American Society for Value Inquiry, and a former Executive Director of the American Philosophical Association.
Bowie has served on the editorial boards of Business Ethics Quarterly and Business and Professional Ethics Journal and is a senior contributing editor for the Journal of Business Ethics Education.
Bowie has taught business ethics in the Minnesota Carlson Executive MBA program, regular MBA courses, and the joint MBA program with the Warsaw School of Economics. In 2003, he launched an international business ethics course that includes a study trip to Europe.
In 2009, Bowie received the first Lifetime Achievement Award in Scholarship presented by the Society for Business Ethics.

Research and Contributions

Bowie is recognized for his pioneering work on Kantian ethics in business. His book Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective has been translated into Chinese and Japanese. He also co-edited Ethical Theory and Business with Tom Beauchamp, which has reached its ninth edition.
His areas of expertise include corporate responsibility, ethics, leadership, morality of markets, and sustainability. Bowie has emphasized integrating philosophical ethics into practical business decision-making.

List of books

  • 1971 Towards A New Theory of Distributive Justice, University of Massachusetts Press Translated into Spanish, 1972.
  • 1981 Ethical Issues in Government, Editor, Temple University Press
  • 1982 Ethics, Public Policy, and Criminal Justice, Co-editor with Frederick Elliston, Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain Publishers
  • 1983 Ethical Theory in the Last Quarter of the 20th Century, Editor, Hackett
  • 1985 Making Ethical Decisions, Editor, McGraw-Hill Book Co.
  • 1986 The Tradition of Philosophy, Co-editor with Harrison Hall, Wadsworth Publishing Company
  • 1988 Equal Opportunity, Editor, Westview Press
  • 1990 Business Ethics, Prentice Hall. Second Edition, Co-author with Ronald Duska, A selection has been reprinted as "Criteria for Government Regulations" Ethical Issues in Business, Michael Boylan, Editor, Harcourt Brace, 1995, pp. 434–439. First Edition single authored 1982
  • 1992 Ethics and Agency Theory, Co-editor with R. Edward Freeman, Oxford University Press
  • 1994 University-Business Partnerships: An Assessment, Rowman and Littlefield. An article based on Chapter 5, "The Clash Between Academic Values and Business Values," appeared in Business & Professional Ethics Journal, Vol. XII, 1993, pp.3–19
  • 1999 Business Ethics A Kantian Perspective, Blackwell Publishers: Also published in Chinese by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Also published in Japanese by Koyoshobo Publishers 2008
  • 2002 Guide to Business Ethics, Editor Blackwell Publishers
  • 2005 Ethical Marketing with Patrick E. Murphy, Gene R. Lazniak, and Thomas A Klein Pearson Prentice Hall, also in initial Prentice Hall SafariX Series. Translated into Chinese, Peking University Press.
  • 2005 Management Ethics with contributions from Patricia H. Werhane. Blackwell Publishers, to be translated into Chinese and published by Economic Management Publishing House. To be translated into Japanese. Publisher Koyo Shobo
  • 2008 The Individual and the Political Order: An Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy, Fourth Edition Co-authored with Robert Simon, Rowman and Littlefield Third Edition 1998, Second edition, 1985, Prentice Hall, First Edition 1977. Prentice Hall
  • 2008 Ethical Theory and Business, Eighth Edition Co-editor with Tom Beauchamp and Denis Arnold, Prentice- Hall. First Edition, 1977 Second Edition, 1983.Third Edition, 1988 Translated into Japanese. Fourth Edition, 1993. Fifth Edition, 1997. Sixth Edition 2001. Seventh Edition 2003. Ninth Edition 2013
  • 2011 Business Ethics for Dummies with Meg Schneider Wiley
  • 2013 Business Ethics in the 21st Century. Springer Books.