Abstract
Whereas a range of business and management scholars have argued that business is
in an ethical crisis, Nietzsche makes it possible to see that it is ethics itself that is in
crisis, and that only as the crisis in ethics is dealt with can ethics in specific areas such
as business be addressed. Nihilism is the name that Nietzsche gives to the crisis in
ethics. The failure to fully appreciate nihilism and its pervasiveness as the root cause
of the problem, as evident in the perpetual quest to obliterate nihilism through the
creation of ethical frameworks and foundations, has plunged business and ethics
scholarship in the field, ever deeper in the quagmire of nihilism. In response to nihilism, Nietzsche offers a re‐evaluation of all values. To re‐evaluate all values means to accept nihilism and see it as a basis for questioning taken for granted assumptions
that have supported the notion of ethics or values in order to re‐imagine an ethics
which is responsive to the crisis of nihilism. The paper thus proposes that rather than
trying to invent new ethics or ethical foundations, or figuring out “how” to be ethical,
we need to turn our attention on the “why to be” of ethics.