An Ethics of Care or an Ethics of Justice

A conflict within the community of those investigating business ethics is whether decision makers are motivated by an ethics of justice or an ethics of caring. The proposition put forward in this paper is that ethical orientations are strongly related to cultural backgrounds. Specifically, Hofstede's cultural stereotyping using his masculine-feminine dimension may well match a culture's reliance on justice or caring when decisions are made. A study of college graduates from six countries showed that Hofstede's dimension was remarkably accurate in predicating a justice or caring orientation for decision makers from five of the six countries.     

Legislated Ethics or Ethics Education?: Faculty Views in the Post-Enron Era

The tension between external forces for better ethics in organizations, represented by legislation such as the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), and the call for internal forces represented by increased educational coverage, has never been as apparent. This study examines business school faculty attitudes about recent corporate ethics lapses, including opinions about root causes, potential solutions, and ethics coverage in their courses. In assessing root causes, faculty point to a failure of systems such as legal/professional and management (external) and declining personal values (internal). We also found that faculty recommend external forces as a remedy more often than increased ethics educational coverage; we contextualize this finding with recent ethics education literature. We conclude by proposing that neither legislation nor ethics education alone are complete when addressing widespread unethical corporate acts and offer a multi-faceted approach to ethics educational opportunities. Jeri Mullins Beggs is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Illinois State University. She earned her Ph.D. in marketing at Saint Louis University. Her current research interests are ethics education, health care marketing, and social marketing. Her work has been presented and published at various conferences and journals including most recently the Journal of Management Education, Marketing and Public Policy conference and the Consumer Satisfaction, Dissatisfaction, and Complaining Behavior conference. She also recently served as co-editor of a special issue of Journal of Management Education on Teaching Business ethics. Kathy Lund Dean is a member of the management department at Idaho State University. She earned her Ph.D. in organizational behavior and philosophy from Saint Louis University. Her current research interests lie in operationalizing non-traditional research methodologies, immersion pedagogies such as service-learning, and spiritual wholeness and authenticity in work place. Her research has appeared in multiple journals including Journal of Management Education, Journal of Management, Spirituality, and Religion, Journal of Organizational Change Management, International Journal of Public Administration, and Academy of Management Executive. She serves as the Associate Editor for the Journal of Management Education.     

Internationally Recognized Business Ethics or International Business Ethics (IBE)

This paper tries to illustrate that it is to some extent inaccessible to establish International Business Ethics System,say,international law,for people around the world to abide by.Intercultural business ethics frequently act as componential ingredients,which contribute their essence to the unanimous ethical standards.Above all,the author reiterates that the universally accepted business ethics are being enriched and widened through various intercultural businesses conducts in the same way that intercultur...     

FOCUS on Business Change and Ethics*: The Ethics of Change Management: Manipulation or Participation?

Managerial effort has been moving from maintaining a “steady state” to wrestling with the challenge of continuing change and the ethical dilemmas which this can present. Is it possible to formulate an “ethics of change” to guide individuals in such circumstances? The author is a senior lecturer at Cranfield University, Bedford MK43 OAL, UK, and a visiting research associate at the London School of Economics. His principal interests concern the management of organisational change in settings where technology is either the key driver of change, or is the key enabler of some aspect of organisational or process redesign.     

Getting to No. A Matter of English Ethics or Culture?

When does an English businessman's ‘yes’really mean ‘no’, ‘maybe’, ‘later’, or perhaps ‘probably not’? And how much of this is unethical stringing along or part of a puzzling English business culture? Why can't they say what they mean? Dr Djursaa is Associate Professor with responsibility for British political and social studies at the Business Language Faculty of Copenhagen Business School, Dalgas Have 15, DK-2000 Copenhagen F, Denmark. She gained her doctorate at the University of Essex and spent a period as visiting fellow at Cranfield School of Management. Her major field of research, on which she here reflects, is cultural factors in Anglo-Danish business relations.     

Ethics in bioengineering

Bioengineering, as the decisive extension of engineering action to human life itself, constitutes a fundamental enlargement of the technical realm, and calls for a commensurate expansion of ethical reflection. In fact, the engineering profession has been actively pursuing the development of new ethical codes, and the promotion of ethics by bioengineers both in the United States and on the international level deserves philosophical recognition and support.     

Ethics in regulation

This paper was given as the opening address at the 13th Annual European Business Ethics Network Conference' held in Cambridge 12–14 September 2000. The Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, Howard Davies, first outlined the background to the present approach to financial regulation in the UK. He described the principle‐based regulatory regime which is now in the process of being implemented, and the role of rules, regulations and guidelines in making this effective. However, compliance is not sufficient; for the system to work there needs to be an ethical culture at the level of the organisation, and a commitment to integrity on the part of those who work in the sector. The Financial Services Authority aims to work with the industry to build individual and corporate responsibility.     

Ethics in Business

The concept of ethics in business is presented through an examination of ethnical theories and through the application of the theories to several case incidents. A set of guidelines and implications for management, intended to stimulate ethics in the practice of business, are presented and discussed.     

Ethics in Finance

Book Reviewed in this article
Financial Decision-Making and Moral Responsibility. Edited by Stephen Frowen and Francis P. McHugh     

Teaching Business Ethics,or the Challenge of a Socratic-Nietzschean Self-Transcendence for Teachers

Business ethics courses often focus on the path toethical behaviour. This paper discusses why teachersask to themselves how to modify major aspects of thepersonality (values, virtues, moral principles) oftheir students. There are two basic motives behindsuch an obsession of results: (1) the claim that wecan modify the personal value systems of our students;(2) the desire and anxiety to be, as teachers,counter-cultural agents. We will use a philosophicalframework, and will define self-transcendence forteachers (as well as for students) as including botha Socratic radical doubt about reality and knowledge(the awareness of our illusory understanding ofreality, and the ability to question our mostcherished beliefs and values) and the Nietzschean``Overman (the ability to assess things, people andevents in focusing on their ``worth for life, ingetting rid of our will to believe and our will totruth).     

The Separation of Technology and Ethics in Business Ethics

The purpose of this paper is to draw out and make explicit the assumptions made in the treatment of technology within business ethics. Drawing on the work of Freeman (1994, 2000) on the assumed separation between business and ethics, we propose a similar separation exists in the current analysis of technology and ethics. After first identifying and describing the separation thesis assumed in the analysis of technology, we will explore how this assumption manifests itself in the current literature. A different stream of analysis, that of science and technology studies (STS), provides a starting point in understanding the interconnectedness of technology and society. As we will demonstrate, business ethicists are uniquely positioned to analyze the relationship between business, technology, and society. The implications of a more complex and rich definition of ‘technology’ ripple through the analysis of business ethics. Finally, we propose a pragmatic approach to understanding technology and explore the implications of such an approach to technology. This new approach captures the broader understanding of technology advocated by those in STS and allows business ethicists to analyze a broader array of dilemmas and decisions.     

Who's Who in Business Ethics Teaching Business Ethics in Post-Communist Prague

Management students at the Economic University of Prague have recently been introduced to the subject of Business Ethics. Lidmila Něemcová, who designed and teaches the course, describes their and her reactions.     

Ethics Programs in Global Businesses: Culture's Role in Managing Ethics

Even if there were widespread cross-cultural agreement on the normative issues of business ethics, corporate ethics management initiatives (e.g., codes of conduct, ethics telephone lines, ethics offices) which are appropriate in one cultural setting still could fail to mesh with the management practices and cultural characteristics of a different setting. By uncritically adopting widely promoted American practices for managing corporate ethics, multinational businesses risk failure in pursuing the ostensible goals of corporate ethics initiatives. Pursuing shared ethical goals by means of culturally inappropriate management practices, in short, can undermine the effectiveness of ethics management efforts. This article explicates how several important dimensions of culture can influence the effectiveness of common ethics initiatives, and recommends the development and application of a culture-structure contingency analysis in the task of encouraging ethical behavior in global businesses.     

A Role for Ethics Theory in Speculative Business Ethics Teaching

The paper discusses the role that ethics theory might play in business ethics teaching. It is noted that little attention is devoted to the explanation and application of ethics theory in business ethics textbooks, which suggests that ethics theory is held in low esteem by business ethics educators. This relative disregard has been justified by some critics on the basis of the limited usefulness of ethics theory to business ethics pedagogy. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the paper argues that ethics theory can play an important role in business ethics teaching which conforms to a speculative agenda. A speculative agenda is described, and a contribution that ethics theory can make to it is explained. This constitutes a form of immanent critique, which enables putative statements of business ethicality to be subjected to critique against the cultural values upon which their credibility rests. Ethics theory is offered as a mediating resource to facilitate such critique. Some criteria that the presentation of ethics theory needs to meet if it is to fulfill this speculative agenda are also outlined.     

FOCUS: Business Ethics in Europe Current Developments in German Business Ethics

Germany is at the leading edge of European reflection on the nature and requirements of ethical business. Two scholars in the field provide a survey of the main lines of discussion in the current German business ethics scene, and discuss three important books which are helping set the scene for further developments. Prof. Dr. Horst Steinmann holds the Chair for Business Administration and Management at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Lange Gasse 20, D-90403 Nürnberg, and Dipl.-Hdl. Brigitte Kustermann is research assistant to the same chair.