Situating and evaluating institutions in the common good : Common good and neo-liberalism perspectives

Abstract

Business Institutions play a fundamental role in ensuring and preserving the common good of society. The underlying philosophy of global society and its institutions half a century after the Second World War still remain largely divided between capitalism and socialism. The capitalists seemed to have won when the ‘iron curtain’ fell in 1989. Was this the case? Not everyone has progressed since the end of the Cold War. Since 1990 some 55 countries have had declining per capita incomes, while inequality has risen within and between countries. It is too soon to say whether global capitalism will be saved from itself. This thesis is a theoretical analytical attempt at providing an assessment of business institutions from the perspective of the social common good as understood in the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophic tradition.