An Exploration Of Necessary Ethic Qualities For Business Success In AYN Rand’s Atlas Shrugged

In her most influential novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand presents readers herinsightful views in business field, highly praising the qualities of heroic businessleaders, emphasizing the importance of technological innovation, and highlighting aneconomy on the basis of free competition without government interference. Throughinterpreting the novel, the present thesis intends to explore the ethic qualities forbusiness success through answering three questions at both the macro and microscopiclevels. Meanwhile, it takes a new look at the business ethics through analyzingliterature work.Initially, the theory of Rational Economic Man has been used to discuss differenttypes of business people in the novel and answered the first question that what theethical business is. In the book, the heroic business people such as Dagny and Hankare all representatives of rational economic man and it is ethical for these people tocreate as much value as possible.Second, the thesis analyzes the ethical leadership and defines the qualities forethical business leaders. Studies show that certain personal traits are crucial for beingan ethical leader. Particularly, Responsibility, honesty and capability are of mostimportance.Finally, the thesis presents an ethical decision making model. The model involvesthe theory of Rand’s rational egoism. Through analyzing the novel, the model isproved to be helpful for decision makers to make ethical business decisions.As China is in its course of market economy, the ethical points in the book couldbe really insightful. For instance, the role of government and public institutes, theobjectives of Chinese corporations and the principles for ethical decision makingprocess are all of great significance.