Ethics Management and Governance

Men and women are not angels, nor are they devils. Nevertheless, it is human nature to be ambitious and self-serving-and, as Alexis de Tocqueville added in his classic nineteenth-century account Democracy in America (1840/2000), Americans “enjoy explaining almost every act of their lives on the principle of self-interest properly understood” (Mayer 1969, 526). The doctrine of enlightened self-interest means “every American has the sense to sacrifice some of his private interests to save the rest” (Mayer 1969, 527).