I am a British academic philosopher living in the Netherlands. My research and teaching focuses on ethics, especially ethical issues in business, capitalism and academic economics.
Presently I am a lecturer in the Philosophical Perspectives on Politics and the Economy MA programme at Leiden Institute for Philosophy. Before coming to Leiden I held positions at the philosophy or economics departments of Erasmus University Rotterdam, the University of Groningen, Tilburg University, and the University of Witten/Herdecke.
Before that, I studied natural sciences and philosophy at the University of Durham in the UK (BA & MA) followed by an MA and PhD in philosophy and economics at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics in Rotterdam.
@article{Graafland2020b,
title = {In Adam Smith’s Own Words: The Role of Virtues in the Relationship Between Free Market Economies and Societal Flourishing, A Semantic Network Data‑Mining Approach},
author = {Johan Graafland and Thomas Wells},
url = {https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10551-020-04521-5.pdf},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04521-5},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-04-29},
journal = {Journal of Business Ethics},
abstract = {Among business ethicists, Adam Smith is widely viewed as the defender of an amoral if not anti-moral economics in which individuals’ pursuit of their private self-interest is converted by an ‘invisible hand’ into shared economic prosperity. This is often justified by reference to a select few quotations from The Wealth of Nations. We use new empirical methods to investigate what Smith actually had to say, firstly about the relationship between free market institutions and individuals’ moral virtues, and secondly about the further relationship between virtues and societal flourishing. We show with more quantitative precision than traditional scholarship that the invisible hand reading dramatically misrepresents both the nuance and the sum of Smith’s analysis. Smith paid a great deal of attention to a flourishing society’s dependence on virtues, including the non-self-regarding virtues of justice and benevolence, and he worried also about their fragility in the face of the changed incentives and social conditions of commercial society.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Among business ethicists, Adam Smith is widely viewed as the defender of an amoral if not anti-moral economics in which individuals’ pursuit of their private self-interest is converted by an ‘invisible hand’ into shared economic prosperity. This is often justified by reference to a select few quotations from The Wealth of Nations. We use new empirical methods to investigate what Smith actually had to say, firstly about the relationship between free market institutions and individuals’ moral virtues, and secondly about the further relationship between virtues and societal flourishing. We show with more quantitative precision than traditional scholarship that the invisible hand reading dramatically misrepresents both the nuance and the sum of Smith’s analysis. Smith paid a great deal of attention to a flourishing society’s dependence on virtues, including the non-self-regarding virtues of justice and benevolence, and he worried also about their fragility in the face of the changed incentives and social conditions of commercial society.
@article{Wells2019,
title = {What Adam Smith Really Thought Should Not Matter},
author = {Thomas Wells},
url = {https://bejreview.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/bejrv7n7wells.pdf},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-11-12},
journal = {Business Ethics Journal Review},
volume = {7},
number = {7},
pages = {40-46},
abstract = {Hühn and Dierksmeier argue that a better understanding of Adam Smith’s work would improve business ethics research and education. I worry that their approach encourages two scholarly sins. First, anachronistic historiography in which we distort Smith’s ideas by making him answer questions about contemporary debates in CSR theory. Second, treating him as a prophet by assuming that finding out what Smith would have thought about it is the right way to answer such questions.
(A commentary on Matthias Hühn and Claus Dierksmeier (2016), “Will the Real A. Smith Please Stand Up!” J Bus Ethics 131(1): 119–13)},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Hühn and Dierksmeier argue that a better understanding of Adam Smith’s work would improve business ethics research and education. I worry that their approach encourages two scholarly sins. First, anachronistic historiography in which we distort Smith’s ideas by making him answer questions about contemporary debates in CSR theory. Second, treating him as a prophet by assuming that finding out what Smith would have thought about it is the right way to answer such questions.
(A commentary on Matthias Hühn and Claus Dierksmeier (2016), “Will the Real A. Smith Please Stand Up!” J Bus Ethics 131(1): 119–13)
@article{Wells2012,
title = {Adam Smith’s Bourgeois Virtues in Competition},
author = {Thomas Wells and Johan Graafland },
url = {https://www.moralmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/Adam-Smith’s-Bourgeois-Virtues-in-Competition.pdf},
doi = {10.5840/beq201222222},
year = {2012},
date = {2012-04-29},
journal = {Business Ethics Quarterly},
volume = {22},
number = {2},
pages = {319-350},
abstract = { Whether or not capitalism is compatible with ethics is a long standing dispute. We take up an approach to virtue ethics inspired by Adam Smith and consider how market competition influences the virtues most associated with modern commercial society. Up to a point, competition nurtures and supports such virtues
as prudence, temperance, civility, industriousness and honesty. But there are also various mechanisms by which competition can have deleterious effects on the institutions and incentives necessary for sustaining even these most commercially friendly of virtues. It is often supposed that if competitive markets are good, more competition must always be better. However, in the long run competition enhancing
policies that neglect the nurturing and support of the bourgeois virtues may undermine the continued flourishing of modern commercial society.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}
Whether or not capitalism is compatible with ethics is a long standing dispute. We take up an approach to virtue ethics inspired by Adam Smith and consider how market competition influences the virtues most associated with modern commercial society. Up to a point, competition nurtures and supports such virtues as prudence, temperance, civility, industriousness and honesty. But there are also various mechanisms by which competition can have deleterious effects on the institutions and incentives necessary for sustaining even these most commercially friendly of virtues. It is often supposed that if competitive markets are good, more competition must always be better. However, in the long run competition enhancing policies that neglect the nurturing and support of the bourgeois virtues may undermine the continued flourishing of modern commercial society.
