This paper has outlined the theoretical framework for constructing a survey instrument designed to elicit attitudes that contribute to perceived legitimacy of corporate environmental sustainability policies or initiatives. It posits six attitudinal components of legitimacy that can be influenced independently, and that combine to yield an overall attitude regarding the legitimacy of sustainability as a factor in managerial decision-making. It discusses how a survey instrument could be developed to measure these attitudinal components, and suggests practical and pedagogical applications.

This study compares the ethical decision-making processes of Turkish, Thai, and American businesspeople, considering perceived moral intensity (PMI), corporate ethical values (CEV), and perceived importance of ethics (PIE). PMI describes the ethical decision making at the individual level, CEV assesses the influences of the organization’s ethical culture on the decisions of the individual, and PIE reveals what the businesspeople believe about the relationships among business, ethics, and long-run profitability. The survey respondents are professional marketers and businesspeople currently (...) enrolled in or graduated from MBA programs in Turkey (n = 416), Thailand (n = 605), and US (n = 446). The ANOVA results reveal that American businesspeople are more likely to perceive the unethical marketing behaviors as more serious than their counterparts in Turkey and Thailand. American and Turkish organizations are found to have higher CEV than Thai organizations. On the other hand, Thai and American businesspeople perceived ethics to be more important for business success than Turkish businesspeople. The understanding of the differences and similarities in ethical perceptions of the businesspeople from various countries is valuable for a successful and harmonious working together when engaging in global marketing activities. This study is thus believed to be useful for people who plan to invest or manage businesses in these countries, and many of the implications are thought to be valuable in international business arena. (shrink)

“Business,” wrote a professor of marketing in 1929, “is the work of the world, humanity's chiefest task.” On the doorstep of the Depression, Prof. George R. Collins was selling business, by which he meant the business economy, an economic order based on the systematic management of money. I do not intend to enter the volatile controversy between Collins and those like Aldous Huxley who accused business people of being venal and crass. Rather, I intend to trace one likely path by (...) which many in 1929 had come to regard business as a redemptive activity and the business person as a redeemer. (shrink)

The goals of this study are to test a pattern of ethical decision making that predicts ethical intentions of individuals within corporations based primarily on the ethical values embedded in corporate culture, and to see whether that model is generally stable across countries. The survey instrument used scales to measure the effects of corporate ethical values, idealism, and relativism on ethical intentions of Turkish, Thai, and American businesspeople. The samples include practitioner members of the American Marketing Association in the (...) U.S., and full-time businesspeople enrolled in executive MBA programs in Thailand and Turkey. The study is positioned within a fairly new stream that assesses patterns across countries, rather than differences between them, in a way that might be called “culture free.” The results show a generally positive influence between cultural ethical values and ethical intentions. The results also indicate that the positive effect of corporate ethical values on ethical intentions is greater for managers with low idealism and high relativism. We also discuss the implications of our results for managers of international businesses. (shrink)

Building on an existing framework concerning ethical intention, this research explores how Thai business people perceive the importance of ethics in various scenarios. This study investigates the relative influences of personal characteristics and the organizational environment underlying the Thai business people’s ethical perception. Corporate ethical values and idealism are shown to positively influence a Thai manager’s perceptions about the importance of ethics. While their ability to perceive the existence of an ethical problem is negatively influenced by relativism, it is positively (...) impacted by their existing perceptions about the importance of ethics. Results also suggest positive relationships between perceived importance of ethics and perceived ethical problems with ethical intention. These results extend research in understanding the relationship between the antecedents and consequences of perceived importance of ethics within an economically growing non-Western culture. (shrink)

How can we make businesspeople more concerned about the truth of the information they spread or allow to circulate? In this age of ‘fake news’, ‘business bullshit’ and ‘post-truth,’ the issue is of the utmost importance, especially for business trustworthiness in the internet economy. The issue is related to a kind of epistemic responsibility, that consists in accounting for one’s own epistemic wrongdoings, such as making a third party believe something false. Despite growing interest in epistemic misbehavior in the (...) literature of business ethics, the question of epistemic responsibility has been neglected. The aim of this paper is therefore to address this gap, by proposing a notion of epistemic responsibility for business, that may help regulate undesirable epistemic behavior, such as the spreading of false information. To define this notion of epistemic responsibility, I have introduced the concept of epistemic fault. Being epistemically responsible consists in being disposed to account for alleged epistemic faults. This notion of epistemic fault relies on a theoretical framework which combines a typology of eight ‘epistemic values’, a normative stance regarding these values, and a dispositional approach to epistemic virtues and vices. I use this theoretical framework to integrate the various accounts of epistemic virtues and vices found in the literature into a single explanatory scheme. Combined with the notion of epistemic responsibility itself, such an integrative framework should facilitate the practical application of an operational epistemic ethics in business, i.e., the development of virtuous epistemic practices. (shrink)

Looks at how powerful businesspeople and politicians are valuing their own greed over the welfare of future generations by blocking climate change remediation.

Although some attention has been devoted to assessing the attitudes and concerns of businesspeople toward ethics, relatively little attention has focused on the attitudes and concerns of tomorrow's business leaders, today's college students. In this investigation a national sample was utilized to study college students' attitudes toward business ethics, with the results being analyzed by academic classification, academic major, and sex. Results of the investigation indicate that college students are currently somewhat concerned about business ethics in general, and that (...) female students in particular are more concerned about ethical issues than are their male counterparts. (shrink)

Ethics instructors often use cases to help students understand ethics within a corporate context, but we need to know more about the impact a case-based pedagogy has on students’ ability to make ethical decisions. We used a pre- and post-test methodology to assess the effect of using cases to teach ethics in a finance course. We also wanted to determine whether recent corporate ethics scandals might have impacted students’ perceptions of the importance and prevalence of ethics in business, so we (...) used in-depth case studies of several of the major scandals (e.g., Enron, Tyco, Adelphia). Our results are somewhat surprising since studying ethics scandals positively impacts students’ ethical decision making and their perceptions of the ethics of businesspeople. (shrink)

Can or should God be considered a managerial stakeholder? While at first glance such a proposition might seem beyond the norms of stakeholder management theory or traditional management practice, further investigation suggests that there might be both theoretical and practical support for such a notion. This paper will make the argument that God both is and should be considered a managerial stakeholder for those businesspeople and business firms that accept that God exists and can affect the world. In doing (...) so, part one of the paper first discusses the growth of religion and spirituality within the business and academic communities. Part two raises several arguments based on stakeholder theory and business reality to support the notion of God as a managerial stakeholder. Part three addresses the arguments against God as a managerial stakeholder. Part four discusses the managerial implications of considering God as a managerial stakeholder. The paper concludes with its limitations. (shrink)

Drawing on conceptual works by Murphy (1999) and Solomon (1999), we develop a virtue ethics scale. Other ethics scales, which are grounded in deontological and teleological principles, may be used to classify people according to their beliefs about (1) the criteria they use to make ethical decisions, or (2) the ethicality of those decisions. We suggest augmenting these scales with our virtue ethics scale, which may be used to classify people according to their beliefs about the virtuous qualities of (...) class='Hi'>businesspeople. (shrink)

Extant social contracts, deriving from communities of individuals, constitute a significant source of ethical norms in business. When found consistent with general ethical theories through the application of a filtering test, these real social contracts generate prima facie duties of compliance on the part of those who expressly or impliedly consent to the terms of the social contract, and also on the part of those who take advantage of the instrumental value of the social contracts. Businesspeople typically participate in (...) multiple communities and, as a consequence, encounter conflicting ethical norms. Priority rules can be devised to resolve such conflicts. The framework of extant social contracts merges normative and theoretical research in business ethics and specifies a domain for empirical studies. (shrink)

By drawing on extensive interviews with business founders and CEOs this book explores the complexities and dynamics of business and social relations responsible for present-day China's economic vibrancy. It makes an original contribution both through its empirical richness and theoretical innovations on trust, social networks, crisis and gender.

This paper examines the resources of Kantian ethics to establish corporate moral responsibility. I defend Matthew Altman’s claim that Kantian ethics cannot hold corporations morally responsible for corporate malfeasance. Rather than following Altman in interpreting this inability as a reason not to use Kantian ethics, however, I argue that the Kantian framework is correct: business ethicists should not seek to hold corporations morally responsible. Instead, they should use Kantian resources to criticize the actions of individual businesspeople. I set forth (...) a model for decomposing business actions into their individual parts and reconstituting them in a context-specific “maxim” that Kantian ethics can evaluate. The reconstituted form of Kantian ethics that I defend is better able to manage decision-making complexity than traditional interpretations. To demonstrate the usefulness of my approach, I apply it to the recent Wells Fargo bogus-accounts scandal. (shrink)

In this paper, the issue of plant closings is analyzed from the perspective of halakhah (the Written Law of Judaism). Two levels of analysis in halakhah must be differentiated: the legal (enforced by courts) and the moral (not enforced by law, but rather framed in terms of duty to God). There is no legal mandate to keep an unprofitable plant open, but there are a number of moral imprecations (particularly "acting more generously than the law requires") that might influence an (...) employer's decision making. Using analogical reasoning to infer moral and/or legal obligations may be a fruitful means for businesspeople to analyze business situations in terms of ethical implications. (shrink)

Kant is gaining popularity in business ethics because the categorical imperative rules out actions such as deceptive advertising and exploitative working conditions, both of which treat people merely as means to an end. However, those who apply Kant in this way often hold businesses themselves morally accountable, and this conception of collective responsibility contradicts the kind of moral agency that underlies Kant's ethics. A business has neither inclinations nor the capacity to reason, so it lacks the conditions necessary for constraint (...) by the moral law. Instead, corporate policies ought to be understood as analogous to legal constraints. They may encourage or discourage certain actions, but they cannot determine a person's maxim - which for Kant is the focus of moral judgment. Because there is no collective intention apart from any intentions of the individual agents who act as members of the corporation, an organization itself has no moral obligations. This poses a dilemma: either apply the categorical imperative to the actions of particular businesspeople and surrender the notion of collective responsibility, or apply a different moral theory to the actions of businesses themselves. Given the diffusion of responsibility in a bureaucracy, the explanatory usefulness of collective responsibility may force business ethicists to abandon Kant's moral philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Whether at the executive or the line-management levels, businesspeople face moral decisions that cannot be easily resolved with reference to a shared ethos, whether because of diversity of ethea in the organization or its environment, or because the organization's ethos is inadequate for the problem at hand. These decisions are made more common by the changing norms of a pluralistic business environment, and require collective moral deliberation to be adequately resolved. Discourse ethics ideally characterizes the form of valid collective (...) moral deliberation. I argue that accommodation for the limitations of actual discourse makes discourse ethics, conceived in terms of the rules of practical discourse, practical for realizing improvements in the openness and validity of moral decision-making over states in which these rules are flagrantly violated. These rules have normative implications at the organizational level for the integrity approach to corporate ethics programs, and at the individual level for ethical leadership. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to describe a way of teaching business ethics using the creative arts, especially literature and theater. By drawing on these disciplines for both method and texts, we can more easily make the connection to business as a fully human activity, concerned with how meaning is created. Students are encouraged to understand story-telling and narrative and how these tools lend insight into the daily life of businesspeople. The paper describes two main courses, Business Ethics (...) Through Literature and Leadership, Ethics and Theater, and the rationale for each. We begin by suggesting three main leverage points that the courses engender. We then rely on the words of students who have taken the courses for insights into what they learned. We then critically assess some of the principles that have informed course design over time. We conclude by suggesting that paying attention to the creative arts gives rise to a rather different approach to business ethics, one grounded in the pragmatist tradition in philosophy. (shrink)

Discerning the motives that lead businesspeople to make ethical decisions in economic contexts is important, for it aids the moral evaluation of such decisions. But conventional economic theory has for too long assumed an egoist model of motivation, to which many contrast an altruist view of ethical choices. The result is to see business decision making as implying dilemmas. On the other hand, we argue, if one assumes multiple motives, economic and ethical, in ordinary business decisions, a more fruitful (...) model of ethical motivation in such decisions emerges. In this paper multiple motives are assumed to be the norm in a world of large organizations, complex decisions and stakeholder management. An example of a technology acquisition decision, with environmental overtones is presented in illustration of this approach. A method for discerning motives, primarily in terms of behavioural efficacy is presented. On this basis a two step approach to morally evaluating mixed motives in business decisions is proposed. First, the fit of motives with substantive ethical values should be ascertained, and then the efficacy of moral motives in yielding ethical behaviour and outcomes should be determined. This approach, we conclude, offers a much more concrete model of the actual role of moral motives in business decision making. It also signals the importance of moral learning in organizations. (shrink)

A new line of self projection magazines that started blooming in Lagos, Nigeria, about the mid-1990s defined itself by filling almost completely every issue with photographs that depict politicians, businesspeople, sports and show business stars enjoying fruits of their extraordinary achievements on festive occasions. The magazine’s cozy coverage of the rich and famous irks a lot of serious cultural and literary critics who believe that this style resembles praise singing too closely. This paper, unlike mainline criticisms of the pictorial (...) magazines, takes praise singing to be a serious subject. Its central proposition is that the Nigerian magazine culture embraced these magazines because they have successfully translated into photography the panegyric tendency that pervades popular, self-projection arts in the underlying Yorùbá cultural environment of southwestern Nigeria. The sub-genre of Yorùbá panegyric that the magazines rework into the photographic medium is oríkì bọ̀rọ̀kìnní, or praise chants of the eminent. The paper analyzes sample issues of Ovation magazine to outline ways of placing contemporary African cultural forms in a long perspective and to propose an example of how inter-mediality operates today in popular cultures. In the concluding section, the essay proposes that a “poetic” understanding of photography, as opposed to “theatricality” and or melancholic substitution, represents the best way to think about the type of festive portraiture practiced in Ovationand its imitators. (shrink)

Cigarette smoke is the most dangerous of the toxic elements in our environment. Smoking is responsible for almost 500 000 deaths each year in the United States — more than any other environmental toxin. The medical evidence is clear, mainstream and sidestream smoke kills people, and anyone who participates in the spreading of this smoke is acting unethically. Yet, when there are no governmental laws that ban smoking in public, most business-people allow smoking in their places of business. These (...) class='Hi'>businesspeople are acting in an unethical manner, a manner which endangers customers and employees. This paper examines the impact on the environment of smoking in public and concludes that businesses must move quickly to ban smoking, or we will need nationwide, uniform legal restrictions to force ethical action in this critical area. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Theravada Buddhism and The British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri LankaTerry C. MuckTheravada Buddhism and The British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By Elizabeth Harris. London: Routledge, 2006. 274 pp.Of all the facets of the multifaceted interactions among Buddhists and Christians, the one sure to generate the most heat is mission: Christians spreading the gospel, Buddhists spreading (...) the dhamma, Christians preaching and Buddhists preaching at the same time in the same places. This is the central topic of Elizabeth Harris’s Theravada Buddhism and the British Encounter: Religious, Missionary, and Colonial Experience in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka. By throwing light on this crucial encounter, Harris greatly reduces the heat generated by these competing missions and makes greater understanding possible. At least, that would be one hoped-for outcome.Harris challenges the standard postcolonial critique (SPC) of what happened to Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhists when Christian missionaries, riding on the coattails of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonialists, invaded the peaceful and pristine island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. SPC posits Western colonial missionaries gaining power through their political proxies, shaping Western understandings of Theravada Buddhism to fit their Puritan and rationalistic preconceptions, and then attempting to destroy this made-in-the-West Buddhism, using aggressive and triumphalistic mission tactics that not only failed, but generated such a backlash that still, today, Buddhist-Christian relationships in Sri Lanka are poisoned almost beyond remedy.Harris challenges the SPC not by denying the obvious truths embedded in the various elements of this version of the sad story, but by convincingly showing us that the SPC is only one side of a very complex story. The SPC, Harris argues, needs to be complexified by realizing that not all British in nineteenth century Ceylon fit the stereotypical missionary model, that Sri Lankan Buddhists had agency in shaping what became known as Protestant Buddhism in the twentieth century Buddhist revival, and that the Buddhist mission effort that corresponded to the Christian mission effort led to a system of competing mission efforts that must be factored into any attempt to understand the influence of the nineteenth century on the twentieth—and the twenty-first.British ChristiansHarris uses three paradigms to show the diversity of British interlocutors with Sri Lankan Theravada Buddhism and Buddhists. The first paradigm is an early (1796–1830), middle (1830–1870), late (1870–1900) periodization that corresponds to parts 1, 2, and 3 of the book. By means of this paradigm Harris shows that development took place in British understandings of Buddhist precept and practice. The earliest observers made mistakes, even when they based their observations on texts and [End Page 188] practicing Buddhist informants. As with most such developments, the changes and depths of understanding were uneven, with later commentators sometimes repeating the howlers and biases of the earliest commentators, even as they in some areas went far beyond them in depth of understanding. Later was not always better, but it usually was.The second paradigm one might call vocational. The British did not all come to Ceylon for the same reason. Some came as political overseers for the colonial government. Some came as merchants, looking for a way to turn the island’s abundant natural resources into pounds in their bank accounts back home. Some came simply as “tourists” looking to find out more about what was in the nineteenth century a very exotic culture indeed to European eyes. Some came as missionaries to spread the Christian gospel story. And a trickle of scholars seeking data for research topics gradually turned into a fairly broad stream by the end of the century. Each of these five groups came asking slightly different questions. Because Buddhism was so ubiquitous among the people of Ceylon, Buddhism was always part of the answer to the different questions politicos, businesspeople, travelers, Christians, and professors asked, but the different questions produced different products: statements of public policy vis-à-vis Buddhism, Southeast Asian versions of Weber’s observations about religion and economics, diaries and travelogues, theologies of religion, and... (shrink)

In today's turbulent business climate, business ethics are more important than ever. Surveys of employees show that misconduct is on the rise. Cover stories reporting indictments, prosecutions, and penalties imposed for unethical business conduct appear almost daily. Legislatures pass requirements elevating the levels of punishment and their enforcement against corporations and individuals. Organizations face pressure to design and implement effective ethics and compliance programs. As a result, businesses and businesspeople are increasingly worried that their conduct might cross lines that (...) put their wealth and reputations at risk. Business Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know ® explains what those lines are, how not to cross them, and what to do when they are crossed. Written for both businesspeople facing real-life dilemmas and students studying ethical questions, this succinct book uniquely surveys materials from moral philosophy, behavioral science, and corporate law, and shares practical advice. Experts J.S. Nelson and Lynn A. Stout cover a wide array of essential topics including the legal status of corporations, major ethical traps in modern business, negotiations, whistleblowing and liability, and best practices. Written in a short question-and-answer style, this resource provides engaging and readable introductions to the basic principles of business ethics, and an invaluable guide for dealing with ethical dilemmas. (shrink)

This paper is informed by the need for all businesspeople to forge a well-knitted collaboration against unethical business practices and immoral tendencies witnessed in the corporate world today. The scandalous revelations, of fraud, deception and other sharp practices, of many corporations all over the globe indicate that the issue of unethical business practices is pandemic in nature and should neither be localized nor treated with kid-gloves.It is a well known fact that a nation’s prosperity is entwined with the way (...) corporate entities run their businesses. The very foundation of corporate activities should firmly rest on high ethical business practices. It is a sure way to halt the spread of this leprous disease which has eaten deep into the very fabrics of the corporate world.This paper is an attempt to show that strong ethical and moral values, as against unethical and immoral values, are the major sustainable force behind continued strategic success of business enterprise. In other words, the essence of this paper is to argue that consistent ethical business practice can serve as a key to competitive advantage in an age of fierce competition where products and services look increasingly alike, and gaining customers’ trust and loyalty more important than ever. (shrink)

This article examines the contribution of nature and the sciences toward a deeper understanding of business. Integrating these disciplines with stakeholder theory opens up new avenues for thinking about business that will potentially offer greater success in addressing the disconnect between moral discretion and the behavior of businesspeople. The specific focus is on integration of modern Darwinism (evolutionary psychology) and business theory. According to modern Darwinism, there are insufficient resources for all genes to reproduce. Natural selection occurs as genes (...) compete to reproduce and those best suited for survival are able to reproduce. During the struggle, human beings are motivated by impulses intended to further reproduction, which lead them into many fruitful endeavors—such as participation in corporations. As genes strive to be passed on to the next generation, a consequence is their contribution to productivity and prosperity. By developing insight into the evolutionary process, we can create mechanisms that help us to manage human behavior in order to promote moral behavior. Connecting people with their natural selves provides for a more robust understanding of business. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Business Managers in Ancient Rome: A Social and Economic Study of Institores, 200 B.C.–A.D. 250Nicholas K. RauhJean-Jacques Aubert. Business Managers in Ancient Rome: A Social and Economic Study of Institores, 200 B.C.–A.D. 250. Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1994. xvi + 520 pp. Cloth, Gld. 220, $125.75 (US). (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, Volume XXI.)Aubert’s declared purpose in this study is to examine the (...) world of Roman business managers (institores)—their social background and status, their role as managers within business enterprises, and their ensuing relations with workers, entrepreneurs, suppliers, and customers. He pursues these themes through five chapters. Chapter 1, “Business Agents and Business Managers,” explores developments in the use and meaning of the term institor through the legal, literary, papyrological, and epigraphical source materials of Republican and Imperial Rome. Chapter 2, “Indirect Agency in Roman Law,” examines the evolution of the Roman laws of indirect agency (particularly the actiones adiecticiae qualitatis) from their inception through the classical jurists to show how Roman law was adjusted to accommodate the needs of the business community. Chapter 3, “Managers of Agricultural Estates,” traces the roots of the Roman system of indirect agency to the management of agricultural estates and to the exploitation of natural resources such as clay, quarries, and manufacturing activities on the Roman farmstead. Chapter 4, “Production and Distribution of Clay Artifacts,” examines the manager’s role in the organization of various types of workshops producing clay artifacts—bricks and tiles, amphoras, terra sigillata, and terracotta lamps—and the subsequent marketing of this production. Chapter 5, “Direct Management and Public Administration: Four Case Studies,” investigates how the vilicus-based system of management became adapted to four areas of [End Page 501] the economy and administration of the Roman empire—imperial tax collection (vectigalia), recreational facilities (including baths, libraries, theaters, amphitheaters, and circuses), the imperial communications system (roads, post, and transport services), and the imperial mint. This cursory outline of A.’s intentions serves to demonstrate the breadth and importance of the task he assumes. In my opinion he handles this with a tremendous degree of authority and even-handedness.A.’s overarching theses are 1) that indirect agency emerged through the increasing absentee management of Roman farm operations and the delegation of Roman estate management to the agent known as the vilicus, 2) that regardless of the type of industry, most managerial operations exploited the practical efficiency and accountability of this vilicus-based system, and 3) that overall developments in Roman business management progressed from a more restrictive reliance on agents directly subservient to the entrepreneur (generally young slaves or family members under the direct potestas of the proprietor) to a more liberal reliance on managers enjoying looser personal connections—freedmen, servi alieni, and freeborn nonrelatives whose services were ensured by the terms of consensual contracts. One of the main points of the first chapter, for example, is the limited quantity of information there is available for institores and the generally derogatory tone it bears. We learn later on that institores were, in fact, relatively few in number and ill-liked precisely because they were so independent (175), and that far more business managers are recorded as vilici precisely because entrepreneurs could more firmly control them.A. argues that due to its extreme formalism rooted in the archaic period, Roman law lacked the concept of direct agency, and that the praetor responded to the needs of businesspeople by creating a legal system based on existing structures of Roman society (slavery and family) with advantages similar to those direct agency could otherwise have offered. With respect to the vilicus-based managerial system this was achieved through the legal fiction of the peculium, “the juristic existence of fictitious assets pertaining de facto to the dependent, but belonging de iure to the principal” (65). Terms of employment and guarantees of liability were inherently trickier for nondependent business agents and evolved during the second and first centuries b.c. through increased reliance on formulary procedure, and particularly through the development of consensual agreements. In this regard A. stresses the importance of the emergence of the... (shrink)

Although fair trade has grown exponentially in the U.S. in recent years, we do not have a clear understanding of why small U.S. firms choose to participate in it. To answer this question, we use a qualitative case study approach and grounded theory analysis to explore the motivations of 35 small fair trade businesses. We find that shared values and the desire to help others, often triggered by a critical incident, lead social entrepreneurs to found and sustain fair trade businesses. (...) The relationship between shared values and engagement in fair trade and the relationship between altruism and engagement in fair trade are strengthened by four motivating factors: direct relationships with producers, support for social causes, the desire for the preservation of craftsmanship, and the desire to share aesthetic products. These links are strengthened by four facilitating factors : the acquisition of business knowledge, family member involvement in the firm, assistance from faith communities, and assistance from the fair trade community. Additional analysis reveals three types of fair trade social entrepreneurs: “ethics first” entrepreneurs, primarily motivated by human rights and social justice concerns; “faith first” fair traders, motivated primarily by their religious faith; and “business first” businesspeople, motivated by what they perceive to be an opportunity to build a successful business while simultaneously doing “good” and helping others. (shrink)

In this paper, the issue of plant closings is analyzed from the perspective of halakhah (the Written Law of Judaism). Two levels of analysis in halakhah must be differentiated: the legal (enforced by courts) and the moral (not enforced by law, but rather framed in terms of duty to God). There is no legal mandate to keep an unprofitable plant open, but there are a number of moral imprecations (particularly "acting more generously than the law requires") that might influence an (...) employer''s decision making. Using analogical reasoning to infer moral and/or legal obligations may be a fruitful means for businesspeople to analyze business situations in terms of ethical implications. (shrink)

Today''s business students have grown up in a society where distinctions between right and wrong have become blurred and where unethical behavior is observed and even expected in high-profile leaders. Especially troubling is the impression educators have that many students no longer view cheating as morally wrong (Pavela and McCabe, 1993). By contrast, the general public is demanding higher ethics of businesspeople. In this environment, educators are challenged to instill ethical norms in business students, especially when recent research indicates (...) that students intending to enter business fields are more likely than any other group of students to engage in cheating and other forms of academic dishonesty (McCabe and Trevino, 1995). One of the major future roles of accounting students depends on their honesty, however. For audits to have economic value, the auditors must be perceived by the public as acting with independence, integrity, and objectivity. Public accountants have adopted a Code of Professional Conduct in order to protect the integrity of the profession. In an effort to teach accounting students the importance of ethical professional conduct, the author has developed a class project wherein groups of students write proposals for a student honor code at Niagara University. (shrink)

With the advent of social networking websites, privacy concerns have reached a new high. One particularly problematic concern entails employers requesting login credentials to popular social media platforms. While many people may consider this request unethical, they may not agree on the reasons it is unethical. One reason may be to blame the behavior on egoism. Egoism, however, comes in multiple flavors, not all of which would agree that violating privacy is acceptable. In this paper, we articulate how one egoist (...) perspective provides a defense of privacy in the face of unjust information access requests. Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, offers an egoist approach to ethics that values individual privacy on rational, self-interested grounds. By applying Objectivist principles to a business context, we observe that businesspeople should not violate other people’s privacy for short-term gains. Furthermore, we observe that privacy can be protected without distinct right to privacy. Rather, Objectivism’s conception of rational self-interest suggests that long-term flourishing is the proper end of individuals and businesses, predicated on, among other things, respecting privacy and enforcing individual rights. (shrink)

This book intends to make known, in a detailed but accessible way to the general public, an old idea, but which has had a renewed interest in recent years: the proposal of attributing an unconditional basic income for all. This idea, often discarded and disqualified for allegedly belonging to the mere domain of utopia, understood in a pejorative sense as something unrealizable, has been the target of the interest of many people (academics, politicians, businesspeople, activists and, of course, all (...) citizens concerned with the common good) is presented as being feasible through several concrete experiences and pilot projects. (shrink)

Originally delivered at a conference of Marxist philosophers in China, this article examines some links, and some tensions, between business ethics and the traditional concerns of Marxism. After discussing the emergence of business ethics as an academic discipline, it explores and attempts to answer two Marxist objections that might be brought against the enterprise of business ethics. The first is that business ethics is impossible because capitalism itself tends to produce greedy, overreaching, and unethical business behavior. The second is that (...) business ethics is irrelevant because focusing on the moral or immoral conduct of individual firms or businesspeople distracts one’s attention from the systemic vices of capitalism. I argue, to the contrary, that, far from being impossible, business requires and indeed presupposes ethics and that for those who share Marx’s hope for a better society, nothing could be more relevant than engaging the debate over corporate social responsibility. In line with this, the article concludes by sketching some considerations favoring corporations’ adopting a broader view of their social and moral responsibilities, one that encompasses more than the pursuit of profit. (shrink)

Most businesses are aware of the costs associated with sexual harassment and are concerned about limiting its presence in the workplace. Although the business ethics literature contains work on sexual harassment, it has very little to say on chastity or its value in the workplace, even though unchaste behavior underlies the prevalence of sexual harassment. This article begins this investigation into chastity worth having in the workplace, taking typical company policies as a guide for what kind of chastity is worth (...) having in the workplace in particular. The first question asked in this article is: for what reasons is chastity worth having in the workplace? I consider four answers—harm prevention, respect for employee consent/dissent, respect for others’ dignity, and conflict of interest avoidance—and I examine workplace policies that enforce chaste behavior in search for a unified and underlying reason for these policies. In the process of locating the primary reason for the value of being chaste in the workplace in particular, we will be given tools to develop an account of chastity worth having in the workplace, which I will argue is primarily cognitive, rather than volitional or affective. I conclude that chastity is the disposition not to construe a coworker as a satisfier of one’s sexual interest, and I argue that chastity is valuable in the workplace because it secures coworkers’ ability to have their contributions appropriately valued. The hope is that once the reason and locus of chastity is identified, the professionals who know how to train businesspeople in developing virtues will better be able to focus their attention and efforts. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

Abstract:We have reached a rough moral consensus in the field of business ethics. We believe in capitalism with a safety net and enough regulation to deal with serious market imperfections. We favor autonomy for individuals and democracy for governments, though not necessarily for organizations. We recognize the rights of citizens and the different rights of employees. We respect a variety of possible sets of values, and so countenance a distinction between public and private. In other words, we are capitalists, pluralists, (...) and liberals. But globalization will force us and businesspeople who share our views to deal with significant stakeholders who do not. The 21st century will see the accelerating pace of globalization. The great challenge for business ethics, for its philosophers and its scholars of business, will be to identify and advocate morality that takes adequate account of globalization, and that in so doing avoids untenable parochialism without falling into relativism. (shrink)

As the expansion of the Internet and the digital formatting of all kinds of creative works move us further into the information age, intellectual property issues have become paramount. Computer programs costing thousands of research dollars are now copied in an instant. People who would recoil at the thought of stealing cars, computers, or VCRs regularly steal software or copy their favorite music from a friend's CD. Since the Web has no national boundaries, these issues are international concerns. The contributors-philosophers, (...) legal theorists, and business scholars, among others-address questions such as: Can abstract ideas be owned? How does the violation of intellectual property rights compare to the violation of physical property rights? Can computer software and other digital information be protected? And how should legal systems accommodate the ownership of intellectual property in an information age? Intellectual Property is a lively examination of these and other issues, and an invaluable resource for librarians, lawyers, businesspeople, and scholars. (shrink)

When a business has competitors that break a burdensome law, is it morally required to obey this law, or may it break the law to avoid an unfair competitive disadvantage? Though this ethical question is pervasive in the business world, many non-skeptical theories of the obligation to obey the law cannot give it a clear answer. A broadly Kantian account, by contrast, can explain why businesspeople ought to obey laws of a certain type even under competitive pressure, namely laws (...) that play a direct role in defining rights to use physical or financial resources free from substantial interference. Businesspeople must obey these laws even at the cost of allowing their businesses to fail and even when the acts proscribed are mala prohibita. This argument for obeying the law in competitive contexts has limited scope. Considerations of fairness or self-preservation may justify violating laws of other types under competitive pressure. (shrink)

A survey was conducted in the United Statesin 1998 and 1999 to determine what members of theNational Association of State Universities and LandGrant Colleges (NASULGC) and of the AmericanAssociation of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU)offered agricultural ethics as an undergraduatecourse. Of the 59 responses, the survey found 15 USuniversities that have a course on agricultural ethicsor one that includes the topic. This paper willdiscuss the survey's findings and offer six reasonsthat explain why so few universities includeagricultural ethics in their curriculum. (...) The sixreasons are: 1) lack of education in ethics andphilosophy on the part of agricultural scientists; 2)lack of institutional or disciplinary incentives foragricultural scientists to reflect on their work andits effects; 3) lack of administrative leadership incolleges of agriculture due to their failure tounderstand the benefits of agricultural ethics; 4)continuance of the prevailing assumption thatagriculture is inherently ethically correct; 5) thefelt necessity by agricultural scientists to defendthemselves against what are perceived to be unjust andinaccurate criticisms of agriculture; and 6) areluctance to engage in ethical reflection because itmay raise more problems than it solves. The paper'scentral question is why ethics is not taught in morecolleges of agriculture. Those who teach know thattheir students are tomorrow's farmers, businesspeople, professors, and policy makers. If we who nowteach and administer fail to include true ethicalstudy in our student's education, our students willstill be defensive when confronted with an ethicalissue and unable to respond except with assertionsbased on the production paradigm, the correctness ofwhich, although unexamined, we taught them. If theagricultural faculty does not recognize theopportunity and the obligation to participate in theshaping of values, then the values of agriculture willbe shaped elsewhere in the institution and insociety. (shrink)

Although music is commonly conceived of as a humanities, in a wider sense, music is a spiritually infused business – a profession redolent of priceless eternal illumination and beauty. Hence the stories of the life and work of great composers and performers are, in a profound sense, stories about businesspeople of a peculiarly enlightened and noble ilk, dedicated to the creation and perpetuation of an enduring form of incorporeal wealth that I shall designate as sapiential capital. It is notable (...) that whereas some renowned composers are not necessarily deemed to be financial successes as measured within the span of their own mortal lifetimes, the (financial and nonfinancial) heritage of their work for posterity can be colossal. Thus, seen from augmented temporal, spiritual, non-egoistic, and non-materialistic vantage points, many great musicians were (and still are) monumental successes – both qua their humanities legacies and qua their business endeavors. The thrust of the paper is to draw spiritually significant insights that are pertinent for businesspeople aspiring to venture beyond the secular confines of conventional business life attached to materialistic norms and values. The study seeks to examine – from a faith and spirituality standpoint – interdisciplinary linkages between music-qua-humanities and music-qua-business that point to higher purposes and meanings for business life and beyond. (shrink)

This study explores Islamic influences on corporate bribery practices in Indonesia. As the dominant religion in Indonesia, Islam substantially influences society in everyday life, including business practices. Although bribery issues in Indonesia have been raised in great numbers for many years, few studies have explored the role of Islamic influences in the ways businesspeople rationalize corporate bribery. This study aims to explore the lived experiences of businesspeople involved in corporate bribery. The authors conducted a phenomenological study to analyze (...) the mindsets of businesspeople who used the Islamic religion to rationalize corporate bribery. To this end, a phenomenological study was conducted based on in-depth interviews with inmates who were imprisoned for their bribery practices in Indonesia. The interview data were subsequently analyzed and revealed several ways that Indonesian businesspeople invoked Islam to rationalize their practices of bribery and render them coherent with their mindsets. The analyses in this study provide insights into how to curb the rationalization of corporate bribery via religious perspectives and point to recommendations for future research. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored longstanding fissures in China's business relationships with the West. If the West is going to develop a relationship of mutual trust, and improve business relations with China in the coming decades, it is imperative to understand how to engage with Chinese thinking on ethics in business-this book explains how. Policy-makers, businesspeople and business-ethicists have trouble communicating about issues in ethics, policy and business across the China-West divide. This book shows how to overcome the us-versus-them mindset (...) plaguing China-West relations by presenting to Western audiences an easy-to-understand yet deeply informed primer on core ideas and perspectives in Chinese cultural and philosophical thought. The book considers original texts of Chinese philosophy and religion, and applies principles from those writings to three business ethics topics of enduring interest to business executives, policy makers, and academics, namely, the protection of intellectual property, assurance of product safety and quality in the pharmaceutical supply chain, and human rights. This book is a must-read for those who want to forge constructive relationships with their Chinese counterparts based on mutual trust and understanding. The book is specifically relevant to business executives, but it should also be of interest to policymakers, educators and students who seek to communicate more effectively with their Chinese counterparts, in particular about difficult and contentious business, policy, and ethical issues. (shrink)

A unique and compact collection, Ethics at Work: Basic Readings in Business Ethics is an ideal text for courses in business ethics, business and society, or applied ethics. Bringing together eleven essays by prominent authors, it features some of the best work in the field and addresses important and provocative issues. The essays represent diverse ethical and philosophical orientations and have been edited and abridged to make them more accessible to students. The book opens with two introductory readings that discuss (...) the role of ethics in business, the relevance and importance of studying business ethics, and the basic moral responsibilities of businesspeople. The following nine essays examine various controversial moral issues in business, including corporate downsizing; overseas sweatshops; bribery; whistleblowing; drug testing; deception in sales; manipulative advertising; insider trading; and our environmental responsibilities. Students will find interesting connections and illuminating relationships between the contributors' arguments. The readings are preceded by short introductions and study questions and followed by review questions and suggestions for further reading. (shrink)

This article identifies the moral premises of contemporary business ethics. After analyzing thirty business ethics texts, the article shows that many business ethicists hold the conventional view that being moral is altruistic. This altruistic perspective logically implies a negative evaluation of self-interest and the profit motive, and business. As a result, the prevailing attitude in mainstream business ethics is that without altruistic restraints businesspeople are inclined to lie, steal, and cheat, not create and earn wealth through honest production and (...) voluntary trade. Therefore, the central concern in current business ethics is to curb businesspeople morally, not to empower them in their self-interested desire to make money. In the final analysis, the article shows how the anti-egoist assumptions manifest themselves in a moral prejudice against business, leading to a biased, unfair, and misleading account of the business world. (shrink)