Christoph Luetge

Christoph Luetge (born 10 November 1969) is a German philosopher and economist notable for his work on business ethics, experimental ethics and political philosophy. He is Full Professor of Business Ethics at Technische Universität München, Bavaria, Germany.^[1]

Academic career

After studying philosophy and business informatics in Braunschweig, Göttingen and Paris, Luetge was a PhD student at Technical University of Berlin and Braunschweig University of Technology from 1997 to 1999. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Pittsburgh in 1997 and research fellow at the University of California, San Diego in 1998. In 1999, he received his doctorate in philosophy and became a research assistant at Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. He was visiting professor at Venice International University in 2003. From 2004, Luetge was Assistant Professor at the department of philosophy of Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, from which he also received his habilitation in 2005. Christoph Luetge was acting professor at Witten/Herdecke University from 2007 to 2008 and at Braunschweig University of Technology from 2008 to 2010. Since August 2010, he holds the newly created Peter Löscher Endowed Chair of Business Ethics at Technical University of Munich.^[2]

Philosophy

Business ethics

In his work on business ethics, Luetge advocates a contractarian approach termed „order ethics“. This approach focuses on the institutional and order framework of a society and its economy. Both formal and informal order elements are analyzed in order ethics, which especially highlights the relation of competition and ethics and reaches out into thematic fields such as Corporate Social Responsibility and Diversity.

Experimental ethics

Luetge and his team have established the „Experimental Ethics Lab“ (EEL) at Technische Universität München, in which ethically relevant behavior of real human subjects is analyzed within a controlled decision framework. These experiments are performed on a variety of different topics such as microcredit lending, compliance and whistle blowing or cheating behavior.^[3]

Political philosophy

In his work on political philosophy, „Order Ethics or Moral Surplus: What Holds a Society Together?“, Luetge takes on a fundamental problem of contemporary political philosophy and ethics. He questions the often implicit assumption of many contemporary political philosophers according to which a society needs its citizens to adopt some shared basic qualities, views or capabilities (here termed a moral surplus). Luetge examines the respective theories of, among others, Jürgen Habermas, John Rawls, David Gauthier, James M. Buchanan, and Kenneth Binmore with a focus on their respective moral surpluses. He finds that each moral surplus is either not necessary for the stability of societies or cannot remain stable when faced with opposing incentives. Binmore’s idea of empathy is the only one that is, at least partly, not confronted with this dilemma. Luetge provides an alternative view termed "order ethics", which weakens the necessary assumptions for modern societies and basically only relies on mutual advantages as the fundamental basis of society.^[4]

Distinctions and awards

In 2007 Luetge received a Heisenberg Fellowship from the German Research Foundation. He is a Member of the Senate and the Advisory Council of the Bavarian School of Public Policy, Member of the Ethics Advisory Board of the European Medical Information Framework (EMIF),^[5] Member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Governance, Leadership and Global Responsibility of Leeds Metropolitan University, and Vice chairman of the audit committee of the Bavarian Construction Industry Association.

In 2016, Luetge was appointed by Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure Alexander Dobrindt to serve on the German government’s Ethics Commission on Autonomous Driving.^[6]

Academic bodies reviewer

Luetge has done reviewing work for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Israel Science Foundation, Swiss National Science Foundation, German Research Foundation (DFG), German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), Society for Business Ethics, German National Academic Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and German Federal Environmental Foundation.

Major books

• Order Ethics or Moral Surplus: What Holds a Society Together?, Lanham: Lexington 2015, ISBN 978-0739198674.
• Experimental Ethics: Toward an Empirical Moral Philosophy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2014, (ed., with H. Rusch and M. Uhl), ISBN 978-1137409799.
• Ethik des Wettbewerbs: Über Konkurrenz und Moral. München: Beck 2014, ISBN 978-3406669644.
• Business Ethics and Risk Management, Heidelberg/New York: Springer 2014, (ed., with J. Jauernig), ISBN 978-94-007-7441-4.
• Handbook of the Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics. Heidelberg/New York: Springer 2013 (ed.), ISBN 978-94-007-1495-3.
• Einführung in die Wirtschaftsethik. 3rd ed., Münster: LIT 2013 (with K. Homann), ISBN 978-3-8258-7758-3.
• Wirtschaftsethik ohne Illusionen: Ordnungstheoretische Reflexionen. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2012, ISBN 978-3-16-151782-2.
• Entscheidung und Urteil. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht 2009 (with H. Jungermann), ISBN 978-3-525-40419-5.
• Corporate Citizenship, Contractarianism and Ethical Theory: On Philosophical Foundations of Business Ethics. Aldershot/London: Ashgate 2008 (ed., with J. Conill and T. Schönwälder-Kuntze), ISBN 978-0-7546-7383-5.
• Globalisation and Business Ethics. Aldershot/London: Ashgate 2007 (ed., with K. Homann and P. Koslowski), ISBN 978-0-7546-4817-8.
• Was hält eine Gesellschaft zusammen? Ethik im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2007, ISBN 978-3-16-149408-6.
• Ökonomische Wissenschaftstheorie. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann 2001, ISBN 978-3-8260-2017-9.

References

External links

• Christoph Lütge's Homepage at TU Munich
• Experimental Ethics at TU Munich