There is great danger in using political views to measure business ethics because social goals can become equated with business ethics. This is not right. Business ethics is concerned with the fair treatment of others such as customers, employees, suppliers, stockholders, and franchisees. Truth in labeling and advertising is paramount in establishing a business enterprise and is even more important than the issues of animal testing and commitment to the rain forest, as important as they may be. We see this perspective in Robert Bellah's book, The Good Society.
Liberal idealism seeks to transform society by social engineering.
This system believes in the innate goodness of mankind, the world view of enlightenment thinking, that men and women are fully capable of reasoning what is good and right, i.e., the autonomy of human reason. There is no felt need for revelation or any authority beyond themselves. Liberal idealism is marked by a lot of faith in government and the ability of organizational programs to orchestrate a healthy society. We will be contrasting this line of thought with a more bottom up view that emphasizes personal integrity and greater concern for individual moral convictions. But there is another more traditional way of looking at ethics.