Pages: 57

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 6

This chapter introduces two major conceptions of democracy crucial for understanding how business functions in the kind of capitalistic democracy the U.S. and many modern nations have or aspire to have. Both conceptions of democracy include liberty and a kind of basic political equality as each is essential for democracy. But they differ in both their emphasis on these standards and their interpretations of them in relation to free enterprise. Understanding this difference paves the way for understanding different views of the moral responsibilities of business.

Pages: 6

In this chapter we compare what are sometimes called free market views of business ethics, for which maximizing profit is the primary aim of management, with what may be called welfare capitalist views. Both perspectives are important in America and elsewhere. Each is shown to recognize degrees of governmental power and to prefer allowing different kinds and degrees of such power. That power concerns preventing fraud, enforcing agreements, and regulatory authority over business, including rules for public safety, and taxation to fund entitlements for citizens. The chapter sets the stage for presenting—in later chapters—a business ethics that balances economic freedom with fulfillment of the moral ideal to which ethically sound democracies are committed.

Pages: 15

This chapter characterizes five kinds of often overlapping ethical theories characterized in ways intended to facilitate ethical approaches to business: 1. utilitarianism, for which maximization of the good is central; 2. Kantian ethics, in which (moral) duty and respect for persons are central; 3. rights-based ethics, centered on the obligation of individuals and businesses to act within their rights, which include, for management, maximizing profits within the rule of law; 4. virtue ethics, which takes realization of virtue—personal and institutional—as morally central; and 5. common-sense intuitionism, which offers a plurality of intuitive everyday moral principles as central and affirms no sweeping “master principle” supposed to determine all our moral obligations.

Pages: 10

This chapter sketches the constituencies of business—those groups for which it has ethical responsibilities. It contrasts this multiple-constituency view of business with overlapping “stakeholder” conceptions and explains some of the obligations of businesses to their constituencies, especially owners, employees, customers, suppliers, creditors, and the relevant community. These groups may be large or small and national or even international. Business ethics, as described in later chapters, seeks to guide treatment of these constituencies and to balance the sometimes conflicting responsibilities a business may have to them.

Pages: 18

Decision-making is central in good management. This chapter shows how the common-sense moral principles it stresses—such as those calling for justice, honesty, and beneficence—that are present in some way in all the leading ethical theories, can be used in a strategy of deliberation. Five steps in ethical deliberation are described in a way that organizes the essential moral variables, identifies conflicts of obligations that businesses often face, and leads to rationally defensible managerial decisions. Particular emphasis is given to cases of competing legitimate interests, such as profitability versus retention of employees in hard times or where automation enables replacing people with machines or artificial intelligence.

Pages: 40

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 7

Business depends on its environment, natural and humanly constructed. This chapter explains both the kind of intrinsic value the natural environment has and its instrumental value, which is independently important and should not be underemphasized. Defacing it is contrary to its intrinsic value; wasting its resources is contrary to finding efficient means to human needs. We describe the responsibility of both management and employees for conservation of resources, avoidance of pollution, and reduction of elements likely to contribute to negative climate change, such as global warming.

Pages: 6

In this chapter we explore ethical responsibilities of both businesses and individuals not to harm persons or darken the future of life on earth. It describes the importance both of avoiding such harms as pollution and, positively, of conducting business in ways that make it both ethical and sustainable. Businesses and even individuals can do environmental and other harms that kill people who are yet to exist. Ethics is shown to take account of such wrongs even when the identity of those who will suffer them is not known. The ethics of achieving sustainability without causing such harms is explored. It is shown to have a basis not only in long-term profitability but also in contributing to the meaningfulness of work in sustainable enterprises.

Pages: 15

Marketing ethics is described here in relation to five major dimensions ranging from the question who is to do it, to how—by what methods—marketing is to be done, to the selection of a target audience or consumer, to what is to be marketed in the first place. As a kind of promotional representation of what is marketed, advertising is especially important and often reaches children as well as adults. Advertising must be monitored for the truthfulness of its claims (implicit and explicit), for the safety of what it promotes, and for avoidance of exploiting persons and (especially with sales of clothing) degrading human images.

Pages: 10

This chapter explains how accounting is important in capitalistic democracies, and it describes some of the difficulties of conducting it both effectively for the multitude of businesses that employ accountants and for the public that accounting information must serve. The chapter explains numerous problems accountants confront in representing their clients, including the difficulty of making judgments where financial data are limited or ambiguous. The chapter proposes several standards for making accounting judgments consistently with sound ethical standards of financial representation to business owners, to the public, and to government.

Pages: 70

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 19

Recent times have seen vast changes in employment and compensation standards. This chapter analyzes moral problems businesses face—some of them political as well as ethical or economic—not only in relation to executive compensation but also in seeking to diversify their personnel where this may result in giving weight to controversial non-competence-based preferences in hiring or compensation or both. The chapter also addresses the problem of what some consider massively excessive compensation of high executives, and it proposes some principles for appraising both compensation and hiring policies.

Pages: 12

Many kinds of employment responsibilities are considered in this chapter. Some businesses require dangerous work, but even apart from serious hazards, safety of employees is always a moral responsibility of businesspeople. Healthcare responsibilities are a further concern, and the chapter stresses preventive care as having high priority and overall healthcare responsibilities as both an internal concern and special in depending substantially on what government provides to residents of the society in question. Mission statements are related to all of these concerns and should be tailored to the business they should govern and extend well beyond affirming commitment to abide by the law.

Pages: 10

With business applications in view, this chapter brings to bear the idea—emphasized in the U.S. Constitution—of separation of church and state. The idea applies in different ways to different businesses, but is especially pertinent to ethical standards for accommodating religious practices in publicly held companies. The chapter formulates principles for structuring this accommodation. All of these take account of the importance of religious liberty, but the principles differ in privately held companies as opposed to those publicly owned and traded. Governments also do business, and the ethical framework outlined here applies to the huge segment of business that governments do.

Pages: 13

Ethics transcends ethos, but both are important in corporate culture, which in turn is an element in the success of most businesses. The chapter sketches ways management can achieve strong, positive leadership which—especially through role modeling that embodies good ethics—can yield a professionally and morally supportive corporate culture that contributes to a company’s success. Here leadership is contrasted both with forced compliance and with being at the top of a rigid hierarchy. The chapter proposes a number of variables that bear on achieving ethical leadership and creating a culture that supports both commitment and innovation.

Pages: 14

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a growing factor in business. Advocates of AI claim that it will make labor more efficient, increase profits, improve medical diagnoses and treatment, make transportation safer, and provide more leisure. AI skeptics maintain that the new technology will replace workers, degrade the environment, deepen class divides, and weaken human cognition. A comprehensive approach to AI is needed, and toward this end we describe some growing challenges AI poses and offer—here and in earlier chapters—an approach that combines a multiple constituency view of business with common-sense pluralism about moral obligation. This approach aims to help both those who develop AI and managers who guide its applications to advancing technology.

Pages: 31

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 8

In a globalized world, international standards for business become increasingly important. Ethics calls for international understanding, scrupulous control or even elimination of child labor, minimum standards to protect employees and others from injury or disease, and, even more than in domestic business, distinguishing gift-giving from bribery and avoiding the latter. A number of obstacles to realizing the needed standards are examined, and some principles for meeting these standards are proposed.

Pages: 16

This chapter considers outsourcing, including offshoring, as challenges to businesses in meeting their responsibilities to their own countries. These responsibilities are complicated for multinational companies, but even those may be over-influenced by a “my country first” orientation. Ethics has a cosmopolitan side and requires ethical treatment of all constituents, domestic or foreign. The chapter explores standards for ethical conduct in offshoring, negotiation, arbitration, and technology transfer. We stress the value—for domestic businesses as well as multinational companies—of supporting international ethical standards and selected non-governmental institutions that uphold them.

Pages: 5

We have considered business ethics in four broad areas: its place in a free democracy, the importance of its public face, its guiding role in the management of companies, and its function as a set of regulative standards for international business. Business ethics reflects a certain tension that derives from the different and sometimes competing thrusts of ethical standards themselves. This tension is also reflected in the foundations of democracy. On one side are liberty and the rights that go with it; on the other side is equality in basic rights among persons, with the restrictions on extreme liberty that it imposes. Business ethics must provide standards that safeguard economic freedom—including free competition—while also protecting the vulnerable from its exercise in exploitive ways.