Taming the Moral Menace at Capitalism’s Core

Digital disruption and the climate crisis are often framed as economic or social challenges. But they force crucial moral questions. Who will be held accountable for the human cost? What will it take to transform business culture so that those costs are not treated as inevitable and acceptable?

In my view, the answers will shape not only technology’s impact on humanity and the planet but the moral foundations of democracy itself.

As a management professor who studies the calling ethic – the idea that work can be guided by principles and moral duty – I think this moment is best understood as a contest between two recurring leadership patterns.

One pattern rationalizes exploitation and disguises harm as the price of progress. Drawing on Yale law professor James Whitman’s use of the phrase “moral menace,” I use it here to name this recurring force.

In contrast, some leaders show how it’s possible to pursue principles and profits together. I call such people “moral muses”: leaders whose care and fairness promote flourishing.

The contrast is stark: Menaces dominate. Muses cultivate.

I contend the menace often wins not because it’s right, but because its practices have hardened into management orthodoxy about how to treat people. Yet its dominance can be disrupted by tracing the menace’s ancient roots and, like muses throughout history, learning how to tame it.

The menace: Normalized callousness

The menace isn’t just about greed. It’s a system of cruelty rooted in ancient Roman property law, in which wives, children, enslaved people and animals were treated as possessions and subject to abuses, including violence at the owner’s will. Whitman traces how this legal foundation evolved into a broader moral menace that became a durable template in Western capitalism that was repeatedly reproduced.

Building on that concept, I would argue that the menace adapted and became normalized in business management – from institutional alliances to empire, to everyday practices.

A pivotal development in institutionalized commercial cruelty began in the 15th century, when papal decrees gave religious sanction to menacing conquests – campaigns of land seizure, enslavement and labor theft. Contemporary accounts speak to the cruelty and exploitation that were pillars of economies of the time.

By the 17th century, Dutch traders outpaced their Spanish rivals in turning menace into efficiency. The richest 1% sent sailors on deadly voyages to amass fortunes, while leaving their fellow citizens among the poorest in Europe. Researchers studying this period, sometimes known as the Dutch Golden Age, wrote, “We did not expect to find the ‘pioneers of capitalism’ in the cradle of civil society to have been so stingy.”

Abroad, traders pioneered accounting, logistics and labor-control methods that maximized profit by brutalizing enslaved workers. Historian Caitlin Rosenthal shows how plantation owners refined these methods, the British perfected them, and Americans institutionalized them.

Once normalized, inhumanity – recast as efficiency – arguably became the defining logic of modern management: extracting ever more output to enrich owners, regardless of the human toll. Financial journalists have called this the “dark side of efficiency.” Yet the menace has a cultural halo: Popular TV series like “Billions” and “Yellowstone” valorize exploitation, dominance and dark tetrad tendencies like Machiavellianism.

Studies show that this celebrated style produces lackluster results. Is it any wonder that only 31% of employees report feeling engaged at work?

Even so, the menace has never gone unchallenged. At every stage of its advance, muses have resisted – insisting that fairness and care prevail.

The muse: Transforming institutions of menace

Throughout history, muses have done more than resist the menace; they’ve sought to transform the very institutions that sustained it. Driven by principle, their disruptive actions bent institutions toward more humane and ethical practices – even as the menace adapted to survive.

One early muse-like figure is Martin Luther, who in 1524 sparked a revolution by challenging the church’s influence on commerce. In “Trade and Usury” he condemned “unneighborly” and deceptive business practices, insisting that trade must be guided by law and conscience rather than greed. (In time, of course, Protestants themselves used religion to justify slavery and domination – a reminder that the menace reinvents itself when challenged.)

In the 18th century, American founder and businessman Gouverneur Morris advanced the muse struggle by reimagining power in the new nation. At the Constitutional Convention, he warned that “the rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest” unless restrained by law. He enshrined limits on elite domination and elevated civic principles in the preamble to the Constitution: justice, union, tranquility and general welfare. Over the centuries, other business and policy leaders advanced the ethic.

More recently, Marriott International illustrates how profitable firms operate by muse principles without sacrificing profits. Since its 1927 founding, Marriott valued “putting people first.” In 2010, Chief Global Human Resources Officer David Rodriguez institutionalized this value with the Take Care initiative. In response to the 2020 global pandemic response, under the stewardship of the late Arne Sorenson, it expanded to “Project We Care.” Due in part to its commitments, Marriott had less than half the losses of U.S. peers Hilton and Hyatt.

Empirical studies confirm what Marriott’s leaders modeled: Servant leaders generate stronger employee commitment and performance than charismatic or transformational leaders.

Notably, muse leaders typically aim at intermediate targets – reforming institutions and governance to constrain the menace. But since management itself is built on menace foundations, transformation at scale will require a critical mass of moral muses in business.

Mobilizing moral muses

One-off reforms like family-friendly policies, ESG targets and civility pledges are useful, but they cannot uproot centuries of menace. What’s required is a critical mass of moral muses who refuse to rationalize harm as progress and who lead a culture reset in guiding business logic.

That means uprooting institutionalized callousness and redefining what counts as efficiency, innovation and value. It also means enacting civic principles of care and common good, as Morris envisioned, and amplifying leaders who prove that compassion and profitability can reinforce each other.

History shows that muses are not anomalies, and their stories are instructive for us now. Across eras, they have demonstrated that prioritizing human dignity fosters trust, prosperity and social vitality. But their stories are too often buried or ignored – not by accident, but because they threaten those who profit from menace. Without sustained institutional redesign, the menace reliably reasserts itself under new moral guises.

Reclaiming and amplifying muse stories is essential for transformation. They aren’t just anecdotes of resistance; they are blueprints for a more humane and sustainable capitalism.