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Jooho Lee Discusses Entrepreneurial Stewardship in Recent Article


Seaver College assistant professor of business ethics and law Jooho Lee recently published an article entitled “Entrepreneurial Stewardship: Why Some Profits Should Be Used to Benefit Others” in Business Ethics Quarterly.  

The article introduces what Lee calls “entrepreneurial stewardship,” which is the moral obligation that arises under certain circumstances to use a portion of one’s profits for the benefit of others. He defines a concept called entrepreneurial rent, which is a portion of profits that exceed the costs of capital and labor (including that of the entrepreneur), and argues that such profits are best attributed to everyone who participates in the market rather than solely the entrepreneur.

“Entrepreneurial rent is created through competition within the market process, but the spoils do not necessarily belong to the victor. Market participants have a moral right to entrepreneurial rent because they create it collectively through the market process,” the study states. 

“The market process is both competitive and cooperative,” Lee says. “Private enterprise does not take place in a vacuum, and I see entrepreneurial stewardship as an important way for us to recognize this fact.”

Jooho Lee has taught Seaver College students on topics of business ethics, the legal and regulatory environment of business, and more. His work focuses on the ethical and legal issues associated with theories of markets and firms and, in addition to Business Ethics Quarterly, has been published in Berkeley Business Law Journal, TulaneLawReview, Journal of Business Ethics, among others.

To read the full publication, visit the Pepperdine Library digital commons.