Business Ethics in Theory and Practice: Diagnostic Notes A. A Prescription for Value

A business ethics practitioner and a moral theologian discuss business ethics. Drawing from value-added accounting principles, and extending them to include the company's stake-holders, especially its employees, Welch explains their significance for the origin, formation, and direction of his company's new ethics program. Primeaux responds to Welch from a perspective rooted in the economic theory of profit maximization and its ethical implications. Among the similarities in their thinking is a serious consideration of the role of profit for business and business ethics.     

Teaching Business Ethics: Theory and Practice

Business ethics teaching can be improved when ethicists integrate the ethical theories they apply to business with the organizational design of the course. By utilizing three techniques – implementing a Total Quality Management-style survey and review, nominating and electing class virtues, and telling personal stories of moral action – classes can be organized to operate by the social contract, rights, stakeholder, and virtue theories that dominate business ethics literature. Classes then become laboratories for the practical articulation and application of the theories as well as providing real examples of the theories in action. This methodology produces benefits for the particular class and for the development and refinement of the theories themselves.This paper describes each of the three pedagogical techniques; and then explicitly relates them to these leading business ethics theories to demonstrate how the integration can lead to a community seeking and discovering moral truth in the classroom.     

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.     

The Battle for Business Ethics: A Struggle Theory

To be and to remain ethical requires struggle from organizations. Struggling is necessary due to the pressures and temptations management and employees encounter in and around organizations. As the relevance of struggle for business ethics has not yet been analyzed systematically in the scientific literature, this paper develops a theory of struggle that elaborates on the meaning and dimensions of struggle in organizations, why and when it is needed, and what its antecedents and consequences are. An important conclusion is that the greater the ethics gap and opposing forces, the greater the struggle required. Viewing business ethics as struggle has several implications for theory and practice.     

A Comparison of the Ethics of Convicted Felons and Graduate Business Students: Implications for Business Practice and Business Ethics Education

This research compares and contrasts the ethics of convicted felons in three midwestern United States prison systems with those of a cross section of MBA students from previous research. Building on and replicating seminal works in business ethics, this study identifies the differences and many similarities between students and inmates on several dimensions of ethics and values. Both groups expressed similar views of which ethical issues need attention from the business community, those constituencies that are most important to business firms, and perceptions of the ethics of other salient groups. When confronted with difficult ethical situations, inmates usually, although not always, tended to be more willing do what was asked and less willing to speak out regarding the conflict. Inmate priorities for ethical issues and constituency groups tended to be very similar to the MBA student sample. Implications for business practice and business ethics education are discussed.     

Patricia Werhane and Alan Singer,Business Ethics in Theory and Practice

Teaching Business Ethics -     

Practice Makes Profit: Business Practices and Firm Success

Which business practices set successful firms apart from others? We address this question using data from an official survey of almost 3000 New Zealand firms. Questions cover: leadership, planning practices, customer and supplier focus, employee practices, quality and process monitoring, benchmarking, community and social responsibility, innovation, IT use, business structure and the competitive environment. Some of these are internal practices reflecting a firm’s resources and capabilities; some are characteristics of the external environment. We find that capital investment choices, R&;D practices, market research and a range of employee practices are positively associated with firm success; industry structure is also a key determinant of success. The association between specific business practices and firm success is mostly independent of firm size, age and industrial sector, other than for export marketing.     

Technology and Business Ethics Theory

The various theories about business ethics need to take much more notice of technology, realising that technology has its own increasing momentum which is driving business, and that, whereas business people think they control technology as a simple neutral means to their ends, in fact the reverse is true: business is the servant of technological development. Jacques Ellul, however, offers some hope for the future to help us 'reappropriate our humanity'. Dr Davies is a senior lecturer in Strategic Management and Business Ethics at the Buckingham Business School, Buckinghamshire College [a College of Brunel University], Newland Park Campus, Gorelands Lane, Chalfton-St-Giles, Buckinghamshire HP8 4PB (Tel 01494-874441, ext. 2240; fax 01494-874230; Email pdavie01@buckscol.ac.uk). His background is in mining and production engineering and he would like to hear from others interested in the new field of engineering ethics.     

Sandra B. Rosenthal and Rogene A. Buchholz,Rethinking Business Ethics: A Pragmatic Approach

Teaching Business Ethics -     

Business Ethics Training: Insights from Learning Theory

This paper explores research in educational psychology and learning theory in a search for insights to enhance business ethics training Useful educational principles uncovered are then applied to the development of an ethics training initiative for sales professionals. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research to help enrich business ethics training.

Cognitive Theory and Moral Behavior: The Contribution of F. A. Hayek to Business Ethics

This paper shows how business ethics as a concept may be approached from a cognitive viewpoint. Following F. A. Hayek's cognitive theory, I argue that moral behavior evolves and changes because of individual perception and action. Individual moral behavior becomes a moral rule when prominently displayed by members of a certain society in a specific situation. A set of moral rules eventually forms the ethical code of a society, of which business ethics codes are only a part. By focusing on the concept of "limited" or "dispersed knowledge" that underlies the cognitive approach, I show that universal ethical norms that should lead to defined outcomes cannot exist. This approach moreover shows the limits of deliberate rule-setting. Attempts to deliberately impose universal ethical rules on societies may turn out to be harmful for societal development and lead to an abuse of governmental power.     

Ethical Theory in German Business Ethics Research

This article offers an overview over the wide scope business ethics has reached in German speaking countries; works which in their majority are not yet available in English translation. The proposed concepts range from a focus on the individual manager and a focus on moral education of managers, via the procedural model of discourse ethics to pressure group ethics and business ethics from a Christian point of view. Other authors suggest an economic theory of moral behaviour, or see ethics as an assurance for decisions under uncertainty or argue for a more enlightened concept of economic rationality.     

Teaching Business Ethics: The Role of Ethics in Business and in Business Education

The paper begins with an examination of traditional attitudes towards business ethics. I suggest that these attitudes fail to recognize that a principal function of ethics is to facilitate cooperation. Further that despite the emphasis on competition in modern market economies, business like all other forms of social activity is possible only where people are prepared to respect rules in the absence of which cooperation is rendered difficult or impossible. Rules or what I call the ethics of doing, however, constitute just one dimension of ethics. A second has to do with what we see and how we see it; a third with who we or what I describe as the ethics of being. Of these three dimensions, the first and the third have been most carefully explored by philosophers and are most frequently the focus of attention when teaching business ethics is being discussed. I argue that this focus is unfortunate in as much as it is the second dimension which falls most naturally into the ambit of modern secular educational institutions. It is here that moral education is most obviously unavoidable, and most clearly justifiable in modern secular teaching environments. I conclude by describing the importance of this second dimension for the modern world of business.     

Useful Friendships: A Foundation for Business Ethics

"Friendship", for Aristotle, is a term with "focal meaning" which denominates relationships as casual as “fellow travelers on a voyage”, as permanent as spouses, and whose motives are as various as the commercial, military, religious, sexual, political and the virtuous. What can be said of all these relationships is that they involve a solidarity, a concordat, a reciprocity, which has its foundation in a common field between the parties and which produces common actions or exchanges. All friendships tend to equality in the sense that they do not insist on ‘what is due’ as an ultimate end; friendship, like equity, surpasses justice in the fulfillment of what is owed. Because friendship fosters solidarity and justice it is politically important as a virtue-context, according to Aristotle. Is it possible that friendship can function as a virtue-context within economic life as well? Aristotle's notion of a type of useful friendship which functions through expectation of moral behavior will be shown to provide both motive and context for the performance of acts of virtue in a business setting.     

Business Students and Ethics: A Meta-Analysis

Given the proliferation of research regarding the ethical development of students in general, and business students in particular, it is difficult to draw conclusions from the contradictory results of many studies. In this meta-analysis of empirical studies from 1985 through 1994, the relationships of gender, age and undergraduate major to the ethical attitudes and behavior of business students are analyzed. The results indicate that female students exhibit stronger ethical attitudes than males. The same is also true for older versus younger students. However, the relationship with undergraduate major is still difficult to interpret.     

A Framework for Teaching Business Ethics

What ethical framework should be used as a basis for teaching business ethics? Should business ethics be taught by ethicists in a separate course, by business faculty in business courses, or perhaps by both? These are some of the issues this paper will address. The paper begins with a review of the literature concerning approaches to teaching business ethics. Next, some ethical frameworks for teaching business ethics are considered. Finally, the paper proposes that students should apply their own personal values to business ethical issues in the classroom, thus providing future business leaders with a process for resolving ethical dilemmas.