James R. Otteson
Business Ethics and Society Program; John T. Ryan Jr. Professor of Business Ethics; Faculty Director of the Business Honors Program
- Office
- Mendoza 286
- jotteson@nd.edu
James R. Otteson is the John T. Ryan Jr. Professor of Business Ethics in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. He serves as the faculty director of Mendoza’s Business Honors Program and is also a concurrent professor of political science.
He received his BA from Notre Dame (class of ’90) from its Program of Liberal Studies, or “great books” program. He received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago and returned to Notre Dame as a faculty member in 2020. Among his recent books are Honorable Business (Oxford, 2019), Seven Deadly Economic Sins (Cambridge, 2021), and Should Wealth Be Redistributed? A Debate (with Steven McMullen; Routledge, 2023).
He specializes in business ethics, classical political economy, and eighteenth-century British moral philosophy. He is an internationally recognized expert on Adam Smith and lectures widely on Smith, the history of economic thought, and various topics in business ethics. His work has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and many other venues.