An Oath for Business and Animals

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria suggested that management should become a profession and specifically that business leaders should take a Hippocratic-style oath. This was subsequently taken up by a group of MBA students and became known as the MBA Oath and later the Oath Project. However, business does not just need to restore public confidence in general, it also needs to consider what its relationship ought to be with non-human animals. The oath, while excellent in elucidating the responsibilities of business leaders to human society, remains sadly animal-blind. This chapter considers the need for a business oath that considers non-human animal lives and proposes such an oath for discussion.