Integrative Social Contract Theory (ISCT)

The term Integrative Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) was coined by Tom Donaldson and Tom Dunfee, two business ethicists at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who, as a philosopher and a legal scholar, respectively, elaborated a methodology for developing norms for corporate morality on the basis of a social contract model. Analogous to classical contract theorists such as Hobbes and Locke, who used the contract model to specify conditions under which the national state can legitimately exercise its power, ISCT seeks to specify the conditions for socially responsible corporate conduct on the basis of a social contract model especially adapted for this purpose.