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Eugene Heath, Byron Kaldis and Alexei Marcoux
The discipline of business ethics continues to expand institutionally, geographically, and intellectually. During the past five decades, scholars in business ethics have developed and deepened their enquiries into the morals of commercial and corporate conduct. As markets have advanced globally, so have universities throughout the world sought to develop courses and research programs devoted to business ethics. As a result, scholars from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas confer at international conferences, contribute to the same journals, and learn from one another. As commerce expands in both geographical reach and novelty, so do business norms come into tension with other social norms, raising fresh questions about the ethical contours of business practice.
There exists, therefore, a growing global audience for a single volume that examines the discipline as a whole, situates chief concerns within a larger economic and theoretical framework, and sets forth themes and concepts in a clear, engaging, balanced, and analytical fashion. This volume fulfills this aim. Its various chapters provide a lucid and comprehensive account of business ethics and place the relevant concepts, arguments, and themes within a larger context of economics, politics, and law. In so doing our authors provide fresh insights and analyses and do not shrink from exploring omissions and unsupported claims, or from suggesting new avenues of research. The volume offers, therefore, a frank assessment of the state of business ethics worldwide.
Such an assessment is, in fact, exactly what a reader should want and expect. After all, as a “companion” the volume should fulfill some of the features of any good companion, even of a friend. Aristotle suggested that friendship might exemplify pleasure, utility, or virtue, with the last manifesting true friendship. In a similar way, this volume should provide pleasures of discovery and enlightenment and promote the utility born of knowledge. Yet, in another extended sense, this volume offers a version of true companionship, at least for the reader who shares with the editors and contributors these aims: to discern what is good and right about exchange, production, and commerce; to learn about how and whether commercial societies may not only be productive but good; and to examine the state and character of business ethics across the globe.
Many of these subjects are, no doubt, contestable and worthy of a thoughtful and deliberate sifting. One of the editors’ motivating concerns has been that too much of contemporary business ethics proceeds as if certain leading ideas and topics are mounted permanently at the center of the discipline—in no need of contestation, challenge, or reconsideration. Scholarly explorations simply cite some leading figure or figures and then proceed as if all were settled. Yet such assumptions have a way of discouraging robust inquiry and new perspectives; they lead to treading circular paths of affirmation and celebration, not to blazing new trails of thought and analysis. Certainly, the leading ideas of a discipline deserve a clear and fair hearing, but so do worthy challenges to these ideas. If business ethics is to continue forward, then its commitment should be less to leading figures of the discipline than to ideas, arguments, and analyses.
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The Companion offers a broad and unmatched overview of the discipline of business ethics—what it is and what it may become. The authors, who hail from across the globe and from distinct generations, have been selected not only for their expertise but also because of their abilities to address business ethics in a balanced, fresh, and critical manner. In the almost forty chapters gathered in this volume our authors examine salient topics within or related to the discipline, note nascent themes, and provide a critical appreciation of significant ideas as well as an assessment of unexamined concepts, unexplored assumptions, or relevant subjects that have received insufficient attention from business ethics scholars. Notably, some chapters explore the larger context of economic institutions or the history of ideas as these relate to business ethics; others focus chiefly on law and ethics, or on practical aspects of business ethics, whether within the firm or across the globe; still others explore particular ethical issues arising in regions in which commercial engagements and business ethics are advancing. Each chapter offers a full bibliography, as well as a selection of “Essential readings”—works that provide the reader with a basis for further exploration of the topic at hand. In addition, each chapter also notes where in this volume the reader might turn if he or she wishes to find a related or complementary discussion.
The Companion consists of eight thematic units. The first includes chapters that introduce the discipline, recount its history, and take up central questions of pedagogy. The chapters in the second section address how ethical theories (e.g., deontological, consequentialist, as well as social contract, virtue, feminist theories, and religious perspectives) have been applied to the field of business; the third delves into normative theories specific to business (e.g., stakeholder theory, social responsibility, Integrative Economic Ethics). A fourth part explores essential conceptual considerations regarding business as an organization; the genesis, identity, and nature of the corporation; alternative conceptions of business organization; the varieties of ethical entrepreneurship; and the ways in which economic models may affect the arguments and conclusions of business ethicists. In the fifth division, the chapters focus on the institutions and operations of markets: property as the basis of exchange; money and finance; commercial and political decision-making and the role of regulation and rent seeking in competitive markets; business and the environment; innovation and productivity; and the nature of economic crises, using the financial collapse of 2008 as the focus. The sixth section takes up specific roles within business, with chapters focusing on management ethics (one chapter devoted to theoretical issues, and a second to practical questions), employee responsibilities and rights, the question of exploitation, the ethics of entrepreneurship, sales and advertising, accounting ethics, corporate governance, and leadership. The seventh section offers several chapters devoted to salient concerns of globalization: management across divergent cultures and outlooks; bribery and corruption across the globe; the role of multinational corporations and social responsibility in the global economy; and the globalization of business ethics. The eighth section offers chapters that describe the practice and scholarship of business ethics in countries and regions in transition.
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What do the chapters of the Companion reveal? Most notably, the Companion exhibits the broad and interdisciplinary nature of business ethics and its relation to philosophy, management, economics, politics, law, and history. In a sense, of course, business ethicists already knew these facts about their discipline. However, the reminder is salutary and important: The attentive business ethicist must cast an eye not only on some specific problem or issue but on how that problem or issue relates to underlying institutions, ethical and economic assumptions, as well as legal or cultural questions. These facts testify to the enduring importance of business ethics and the depth of its topics. The Companion reveals secondly how business ethics is not simply a North American phenomenon but also a European, South American, Asian, and African concern. Finally, the Companion reminds us that many seemingly settled topics of business ethics—including notions of corporate social responsibility, stakeholderism, even the very nature of business—remain avenues of exploration rather than alleys of assumptions. In this way, the Companion encourages a wide array of authors, a great variety of viewpoints, and a genuinely probing assessment of contentions too often regarded as incontestable. Through these effects the Companion aims to furnish what friends and companions provide: a steady and genuine resource from which to sift and to explore in an on-going attempt to realize goodness and to live rightly and well.