On Effective Interdisciplinary Alliances in European Business Ethics Research: Discussion and Illustration

Cooperation in business ethics research is important across disciplines, to help strengthen the base of a field which is still new in Europe. A study on recruitment interviewing in Germany, U.K. and the Netherlands is used to demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary business ethics research, particularly across cultures.     

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.     

Business Ethics: A Helpful Hybrid in Search of Integrity

What sort of connection is there between business ethics and philosophy? The answer given here: a weak one, but it may be getting stronger. Comparatively few business ethics articles are structurally dependent on mainstream academic philosophy or on such sub-specialities thereof as normative ethics, moral theory, and social and political philosophy. Examining articles recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics that declare some dependence, the author finds that such declarations often constitute only a pro forma gesture which could be omitted without detriment to the paper's content and conclusions. He also finds, however, that some authors do draw on solid philosophical work in ways that are establishing ever more meaningful interconnections between business ethics and academic philosophy. These cross-disciplinary studies, he concludes, are ground-breaking and invite creative imitation.     

Business Ethics Teaching for Effective Learning

This paper is concerned with answering thequestion: ``How can business ethics be taught tostudents so that effective learning takesplace?'' It is the contention of this paperthat the question is best answered by focusingon six areas important to teaching businessethics: goals, relevancy, experientialpedagogy, classroom climate, debriefing, andoutcomes assessment.     

A Whiteheadian Business Ethics and the Western Hemisphere

The first part of my presentation is a short outline of how a feminist, process-oriented, i.e. in a Whiteheadian tradition, business ethics may look like. In the second part, I want to apply this approach in the field of American foreign trade policy concerning the extension of the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) to a free trade zone of the Western Hemisphere. I want to focus on ethical problems for the business of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. By taking my business ethics approach into consideration, I want to open up perspectives for a Whiteheadian view of the problem of the Free Trade Area.     

Around Europe: Business Ethics in France: Framework for Future Developments

What are the economic, cultural and philosophical conditions in which French business ethics can develop and flourish? After a career in business, the author is now a Jesuit priest working in the social analysis programme PROJET in Paris.     

FOCUS: A Comparison of Business Ethics in North America and Continental Europe

The author of this major study compares the significantly different approaches to business ethics on both sides of the Atlantic and considers what they have to learn from each other. He has considerable experience of business ethics in both Europe and North America, having taught and researched the subject at the University of St Gallen in his native Switzerland before his appointment as Professor of International Business Ethics in the College of Business Administration, University of Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA. Professor Enderle was also the founding Honorary Treasurer of the European Business Ethics Network and is an Associate Editor of this Review.     

Effective Teaching of Ethics in International Business

A unique pedagogical tool using vignettes from international settings in a game format is presented to effectively teach business ethics. Using role playing, participants evaluate ethical dilemmas from the perspective of a business corporation, an employee of the organization, and as a member of the larger community. By having to recognize and adopt positions on a large variety of ethical situations, participants learn the particular, and sometimes unexpected aspects of social responsibility in international business.     

开拓西欧市场,了解商务礼俗很必要

"西欧"从地域上指英国、爱尔兰、法国、荷兰、比利时、摩纳哥,如果从经济和政治上考虑还应当把位于中欧的德国、奥地利、瑞士、卢森堡等国包括进去,这些国家都是经济发达国家,其中英国、法国、德国还属西方七大国之列.     

Sharing Out in Alliances: Trust and Ethics

Alliances are relatively new forms of relationships between businesses which allow cooperation in some areas of activity while maintaining competition in others, even in those areas where cooperation is the established procedure. Logically, this demands a mutual trust on the basis of which the cooperation can be established. The nature of this relationship is, furthermore, dynamic inasmuch as it develops over a period of time and generates new conditions which either enhance or destroy trust.This article reviews the general issues of alliances and, in particular, the special relationships between the parties. The discussion of the creation and development of trust in an alliance describes both what technical, psychological, sociological and, particularly, ethical conditions make an alliance possible and the ethical nature of the necessary step which must be taken as trust is transformed from mere possibility into the actual fact of placing trust in a partner.     

In Search of Instruments. Business and Ethics Halfway

Business ethics has gradually acquired a stable status, both as an academic discipline and as a practice. Stakeholdership is recognised as a guiding concept, business has widely accepted that it has a license to operate to win from society at large, and operational instruments such as codes of ethics and forms of ethical auditing and accounting take shape more and more. Yet lacunae remain. Three are mentioned explicitly. Business ethics has to improve its relations with business law, the concept of competition deserves much more ethical attention than it has received up to now, and the shifting relations between the market, governmental agencies and civil society require the elaboration of an institutional business ethics.     

Western Managers Working in Romania: Perception and Attitude Regarding Business Ethics

The results of our research, obtained from a survey of 50 Western managers working in Romania, show that differences exist between Western managers' ethics and those of their Romanian counterparts, especially with regard to bribery. Different backgrounds are at the basis of such divergence. Beyond the communist era and its heritage, the cultural aspect of bribery has been analyzed. Nevertheless, the results of our research suggest that culture may play a double role and the influence could come from both the home environment of Western managers and their new environment. Some Western managers who adapt to the Romanian environment appear to have been already conditioned to bribery from their home environment.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.