caa a22 4500 388074124 CHVBK 20180307125156.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199910 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/3857944 doi S1052150X00004681 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/3857944 The Hope and Limits of Legal Optimism: A Comment on the Theories of Orts and Nesteruk Regarding the Impact of Law on Corporate Ethics [Elektronische Daten] Joining the dialogue on the relationship between the law and business ethics, Jeffrey Nesteruk and Eric W. Orts have offered conceptions of the law as a positive influence rather than a negative curb on corporate behavior. While these "legal optimists” pursue a noble end in promoting higher ethical standards for corporations through the law, they may be overly optimistic in their suggestion that these more skillfully wielded legal models will influence corporate behavior for the better. Reviewing the basic tenets of their two approaches, this paper uses corporate responses to environmental statutes to suggest that while legal optimism may offer hope for promoting corporate ethics, it has definite limitations in its current stage of development. Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1999 Hoch David Hamilton J. Brooke Business Ethics Quarterly Cambridge University Press 9/4(1999-10), 677-688 1052-150X 9:4<677 1999 9 BEQ https://doi.org/10.2307/3857944 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/3857944 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Hoch David NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Hamilton J. Brooke NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Business Ethics Quarterly Cambridge University Press 9/4(1999-10), 677-688 1052-150X 9:4<677 1999 9 BEQ CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge