Differing National Approaches to Business Ethics

What is unique about the development of business ethics in the USA, and how does it compare with various countries of Europe and with Japan? Institutional, legal, social and cultural factors are identified by the Professor of Business and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. An earlier version of this article titled “The Globalization of Business Ethics: Why America Remains Distinctive” was published in the Fall 1992 issue of the California Management Review, Vol. 35, No. 1. Reprinted by Permission of The Regents of the University of California.     

Business and Marketing Ethics as Professional Ethics. Concepts, Approaches and Typologies

Marketing ethics is normally marketed as a sub-specialization of business ethics. In this paper, marketing ethics serves as an umbrella term for advertising, PR and sales ethics and as an example of professional ethics. To structure the paper, four approaches are distinguished, with a focus on typical professional conflicts, codes, roles or climates respectively. Since the moral climate approachis more inclusive than the other approaches, the last part of the paper deals mainly with moral climates, within the above-mentioned marketing sub-professions.     

A Constructivist Approach to Business Ethics

A recurrent challenge in applied ethics concerns the development of principles that are both suitably general to cover various cases and sufficiently exact to guide behavior in particular instances. In business ethics, two central approaches—stockholder and stakeholder—often fail by one or the other requirement. The author argues that the failure is precipitated by their reliance upon “universal” theory, which views the justification of principles as both independent of their context of application and universally appropriate to all contexts. The author develops a contextual interpretation of “constructivism” as an alternative approach, and argues that this alternative meets the above challenge.     

A Marxist Approach to Business Ethics

This paper contains a philosophical explication of some of the essentials of a Marxist approach to business ethics. A Marxist approach is construed as a moral critique of capitalism. This paper hopes to lay the groundwork for a more detailed analysis of Karl Marx's critique of capitalist economies.     

Approaches to Ethics for Corporate Crisis Management

The ethics of corporate crisis management is a seriously underdeveloped field. Among recent proposals in the area, two contributions stand out: Seeger and Ulmer’s (2001) virtue ethics approach to crisis management ethics and Simola’s (2003) ethics of care. In the first part of the paper, I argue that both contributions are problematic: Seeger and Ulmer focus on top management and propose virtues that lack substance and are in need of further development. Simola’s proposal is also fraught with difficulty, since it seems to conceive of ethics of care as a course of action that can be chosen in a crisis, something which runs contrary to the idea of caring. In the second part of the paper, I argue that Simola and Seeger and Ulmer are nevertheless on the right track, and I propose some directions for further development of the ethics of corporate crisis management. I argue that the value of codes of conduct is limited. Furthermore, I propose a way of identifying relevant virtues for corporate crisis management and discuss a problem that is prevalent in crisis management ethics (the temptation of ad hoc utilitarianism).     

From Ethics 'By Proxy' to Ethics In Action: New Approaches to Understanding HRM and Ethics

In this paper we review recent UK literature on HRM and ethics and suggest that implicit in many accounts is a perception of a 'moral hole' appearing within the employee relations landscape which is based on external, reflective observations of HRM policies and practices. We argue that the investigation of HRM and ethics could be broadened by locating HRM and ethics research more explicitly within the social and cultural realities of organizations and their employees. Finally, we outline and illustrate what a social constructivist approach might add to research in this field and how it might provide insights that help bridge the gap between theory and practice.     

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.     

国际商务准入方式及其选择

选择进入市场方式还应考虑时机问题。尤其是在经济刚刚开始起飞的新兴工业国家和正在改革转型中的前中央集权经济国家,进入越早,则进入成本越高。但是,如果进入过晚,又有可能被拒之于门外,吃“闭门羹”。如果企业必须早期进入,且成本风险高于企业承受能力,此时,则需采取合资方式。比较理想的进入时机是早期进入,但不打头炮。     

A Conflict Case Approach to Business Ethics

Departing from frequent use of moral conflict cases in business ethics teaching and research, the paper suggests an elaboration of a moral conflict approach within business ethics, both conceptually and philosophically. The conceptual elaboration borrows from social science conflict research terminology, while the philosophical elaboration presents casuistry as a kind of practical, inductive argumentation with a focus on paradigmatic examples.     

Using Inside Job to Teach Business Ethics

This article recommends the film Inside Job as an effective teaching tool for illustrating the ethical issues that surrounded the global financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent economic downturn. The study discusses issues such as the revolving door, conflicts of interest, fiduciary duty, executive compensation, and financial regulation. The presentation of each ethical issue comprises suggested questions, background information, and guides to specific sections of the film. An overview of the film is provided as well.     

From Business Ethics to the Vocation of Business Leaders to Humanize the World of Business

This article is the integral text of an inaugural lecture as professor extraordinary for business ethics at the Catholic University of Brabant at Tilburg, the Netherlands. The author is professor of ethics at the Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven) and an Associate Editor of this Review.     

构建网络伦理的多维路径

互联网已经渗透到人类社会的各个领域，并以其前所未有的影响力改变着世界。就伦理领域而言，网络给人类道德提供了新的发展机遇，为伦理学的研究注入了新的内容。目前，网络伦理建构问题已成为伦理学研究的热点。加强网络伦理建设应当从网络伦理的制度建设、技术完善和网络道德建设等三方面入手。     

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.