Institute for Business Ethics -


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	Institute for Business Ethics University of St.Gallen Guisanstr. 11 CH-9010 St.Gallen Telephone: +41/71/224 2644 Telefax: +41/71/224 2881 Search!

People

Head of Institute

Dr. oec. Ulrich Thielemann

	Function: Vicedirector Phone: 071 / 224 2642 Email: Ulrich.Thielemann@unisg.ch

Short curriculum vitae
Ulrich Thielemann was born in 1961 in Remscheid, Germany. He studied from 1982-1988 economics at the University of Wuppertal, Germany, (Dipl.-Ök.) and participated in the Doctoral Program of the University of St. Gall (1988-1989). From 1990 to 1996 he was a Scientific Assistant of Prof. Peter Ulrich, with whom he worked out a qualitative empirical study on the ethical thinking-patterns of (Swiss) managers, published as "Ethik und Erfolg" in 1992 (Paul Haupt). He wrote his dissertation-thesis on "The Market Principle - A Critique of the Logic of Economic Exchange", published in 1996 (Paul Haupt). Since 1996, he is a Visiting Scholar at the American University, Washington, D.C., pursuing his habilitation-thesis on "Competition as a Concept of Justice".

Why I participate in "Integrative Economic Ethics"
I got to know Peter Ulrich at the University of Wuppertal in 1984, who was for many students a kind of "star" among the professors, teaching Management furnished with many new, implicitly ethical insights. Overall, the spirit at the Department of Economics in Wuppertal then was particularly critical and paradigmatically open-minded. Many felt the narrowness and inappropriateness of the mainstream economic point of view.

It was, above all, the dissatisfaction and discontent I felt towards the predominant "ideologies" of market theory, promoting, quite unopposedly, "more market" everywhere, which led me to the Institute for Business Ethics, directed by Peter Ulrich. Here, I could (and one still can, of course) inquire into some of the most urgent questions of our time, under the topic they properly are to be addressed, that is as questions of business or economic ethics. It took quite a while until I found an answer to the question what is right or wrong with the market, which seems at least for me fairly satisfying. The elaborated answer is laid down in my dissertation-thesis.

Some may reproach me for being just critical and too much "negative", instead of being "positive", i.e., proposing some "ethical improvements". Assuming this might be a proper path of doing ethics academically at all, however, in view of the strong and far-reaching tendencies towards an "economization" of all possible spheres of life and even of our thinking patterns, it seems to me that there is, above all, a need for negation - well-justified negation, of course. This has to be developed with and against existing (academic and non-academic) market theories. To engage in this practical discourse with and against economics in theory and practice, so to speak with and against the market, not just in face of the market or under its conditions, that is what I understand by Integrative Economic or Business Ethics.

My most important current project
My dissertation-thesis ("Das Prinzip Markt") turned out to be a thoroughgoing critique of economism ("Ökonomismus"), i.e., the opinion that what is ethically right (legitimate, just, fair) does not have to be intended; instead, it emerges from the interplay between actions grounded in "self-interest". Correspondingly, an economistic justification of the market amounts to the thesis of its "Pareto-efficiency": everyone is better off with more market, including the (political) agent who "implements" more market, including the subject of the theory himself or herself.

The current project I am working on, my "Habilitation" (which is a kind of second dissertation), starts where my (first) dissertation ends. I still focus on theories of justification of the market nexus. But even if the paradigm of contract or exchange probably still will gain some ground for some time, there are paradigmatically different theories of market-justification in the offing which are perhaps less sophisticated and radical, but more accessible to common-sense instead. These theories more strongly focus on the competition aspect of the market than on its exchange aspect. They assert that competition, as a rule, is just, and that any restraint on competition is unjust. Thus, we are politically obliged to maintain, strengthen, or intensify competition, regardless whether this is in our own, short-term or long-term, interest or not.

This pro-competition stance is made plausible by pointing out that when competition does not rule than do powerful "monopolies" with all their "privileges", or "special interest" groups with all their "arbitrariness". Or, when markets are not "open", then others are inevitably "discriminated", for example the jobless or the people living in so called low-wages countries, especially the poor.

The questions suggested here point to one of the most important politico-economic problems of our time. Given these questions, the task of economic ethics is to contribute to the public discourse among principally republicly minded citizens on the right path of economic and competition policy by clarifying the justice claims implicitly or explicitly made, in order to give a good reasoned and deliberate answer to the beforehand open question about the role market and competition should play. Should we plead for more competition everywhere, or should we put some (partial) stop to its expansion and intensification?

Publications, sorted by type and year
(only english titles, for complete list see german version)
----- 'Berichte des Instituts' (Discussion Papers) -----

The Case against the Business Case, 2008