Ethical Issues in Business

Description

This widely used business ethics book begins by introducing students/readers to moral reasoning. A collection of readings and cases from both philosophical literature and business articles apply ethical theory to real-life business situations. Well-known scandals involving companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Merrill Lynch, and Parmalat have increased public awareness of business ethics, underscored its importance, and ushered in a new era of increased corporate regulation and governance.

Now, more than ever, a student planning on entering the business world, and anyone working for a corporation, investing in stock, or even interacting with businesses will benefit from a basic understanding of business ethics.

How do you teach a course where students have differing levels of familiarity with ethical theory?

• A clearly-written introduction to moral reasoning explains classical ethical theories to students. This provides students new to the discipline with a solid foundation in ethics.
• Classical and contemporary selections present students with readings from the best-known thinkers in philosophy and moral theory as well as commentaries by business practitioners.

How do you engage your students?

• Well-known case studies in business ethics on accounting, finance, marketing, and the environment illustrate real-life situations and decisions faced by managers and corporations.
• NEW – Updated and revised content throughout reflects dramatic changes that the field has undergone, including recent, news-worthy events:
• Case Studies
•  The Enron Collapse by Stewart Hamilton
• “Working at Walmart” from Nickel and Dimed byBarbara Ehrenreich
• Others topics incude:
• The Pension Plan Crisis
• “United wins approval to dump pension plans” by Mark Skertic, Chicago Tribune
• “Unkept promises hit retirees” by Barbara Rose, Chicago Tribune
• Legislative Summary of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

PART ONE General Issues in Ethics

Introduction

Section 1: The Controversy

CASE STUDY Norman Bowie and Stephanie Lenway, H.B. Fuller in Honduras: Street Children. Graduate School of Business of Columbia University but it looks like it was first published in 1993 in an earlier edition of this text by Prentice Hall.

Peter French, The Corporation as a Moral Person, American Philosophical Quarterly, 1979.

Milton Friedman, The Social Responsibility of Business is to increase its Profits, New York Times Magazine, 1970.

R. Edward Freeman, Stakeholder Theory of the Modern Corporation, No publisher indicated; used by permission of the author. 1984 is the date attributed by Wikipedia, but no citation. It may first have appeared in this text.

Section 2: General Issues in Ethics

CASE STUDY Arthur Kelly, Italian Tax Mores, Copyright 1977 by the author.

Norman Bowie, A Kantian Approach to Business Ethics, Blackwell Publishing, Ltd., 1999

Robert C. Solomon, Corporate Roles, Personal Virtues: An Aristotelean Approach to Business Ethics, Business Ethics Quarterly, 1992.

Andrew Gustafson, Utilitarianism and Business Ethics. No date or copyright information is provided by the author. (New)

John McVea, Ethics and Pragmatism: John Dewey’s deliberative approach, This is the article that has been accepted for publication but I don’t know by what journal yet. (New)

Patricia Werhane, The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Section 3: Truth Telling

CASE STUDY Emily Mead and Patricia Werhane, Cynthia Cooper and WorldCom, U. of Va. Darden School Foundation, 2005. (New)

Immanuel Kant, Ethical Duties Towards Others

George Brenkert, Trust, Morality and International Business, Business Ethics Quarterly, 1998

Sissela Bok, Whistleblowing and Professional Responsibilities, New York University Education Quarterly, 1980

Albert Carr, Is Business Bluffing Ethical?

PART TWO: Property, Profit and Justice

INTRODUCTION

Section I: Traditional Theories of Property and Profit

CASE STUDY Geeta Anand, How Drug’s Rebirth as Treatment for Cancer Fueled Price Rises, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 15, 2004

CASE STUDY T.W. Zimmer and Paul Preston, Plasma International, Southwestern Publishing Company, 1976

John Locke, The Justification of Private Property, (probably in the public domain, but from McMillan reprint, 1956)

Adam Smith, Benefits of the Profit Motive, (Reprint from U. of Chicago Press, 1976)

Karl Marx, Alienated Labor McGraw-Hill, 1963

Andrew Carnegie, Wealth, (In the public domain; North American Review, 1889)

Section 2: Contemporary Challenges to Property Rights

CASE STUDY Kristi Severance, Lisa Shapiro and Pat Werhane, W.R. Grace & Co. and the Neemix Patent, University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, 1997 (New)

Lester C. Thurow, Needed: A New System of Intellectual Property Rights, Harvard Business Review, 1997

Deborah G. Johnson, Privacy, (From Computer Ethics, Prentice Hall, 2001) (New)

Section 3: Justice

CASE STUDY Joanne B. Ciulla, The Oil Rig, University of Richmond, 1990

John Rawls, Distributive Justice, Harper and Row, 1967

Robert Nozick, The Entitlement Theory, Basic Books, 1974

Michael Walzer, Complex Equality, Basic Books, 1983

PART THREE: Corporations, Persons, and Morality

INTRODUCTION

Section 1: The Role of Organizational Values

CASE STUDY Business Enterprise Trust, Merck & Co., The Business Enterprise Trust, 1991.

Amartya Sen, Does Business Ethics Make Economic Sense? Business Ethics Quarterly, 1993.

Robert H. Frank, Can Socially Responsible Firms Survive in a Competitive Environment? Russell Sage Foundation, 1996.

Lynn Sharp Paine, Managing for Organizational Integrity, Harvard Business School Publishing Corp., 1994.

Bowen H. McCoy, The Parable of the Sadhu., Harvard Business School Publishing Corp., 1983.

Section 2: Values and the Virtuous Manager

CASE STUDY Stewart Hamilton, The Enron Collapse, International Institute for Management Development, (IMD) 2003.

Robert Jackall, Moral Mazes: Bureaucracy and Managerial Work, Harvard Business School Publishing Corp., 1983.

Frederick Bird and James Waters, The Moral Muteness of Managers, California Management Review; Regents of the University of California, 1989.

(No Attributed Author) Legislative Summary of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Ernst & Young, 2002 (New)

John C. Coffee, Jr., Limited Options, Legal Affairs, 2003.

Section 3: Issues in Employment

CASE STUDY Mark Skertic, The Pension Plan Crisis, Chicago Tribune, 2005. (New)

Barbara Rose, Unkept promises hit retirees, Chicago Tribune, 2005. (New)

CASE STUDY Barbara Ehrenreich, Working at Walmart, Henry Holt & Co., 2001 (New)

Tara Radin and Patricia Werhane, Employment at Will, Employee Rights, and Future Directions for Employment, Business Ethics Quarterly, 2003.

Richard A. Epstein, In Defense of the Contract at Will, University of Chicago Law Review, 1984

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Employability Security, Basic Books, 1977.

Jeffrey Pfeffer, People, Profits and Perspective, Harvard Business School Press, 1998. (New)

Section 4: Diversity

CASE STUDY Thomas Dunfee and Diana Robertson, Foreign Assignment, unpublished. (New)

Judy B. Rosener, Ways Women Lead, Harvard Business Review, 1990. (New)

Peggy McIntosh, White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies, Copyright retained by author.

PART FOUR: International Business

INTRODUCTION

Section 1: Ethical Relativism

CASE STUDY R.S. Moorthy, Richard T. De George, Thomas Donaldson, William J. Ellos, S.J., Robert C. Solomon, Robert B. Textor, “What Price Safety” and “Facing Face”, Motorola University Press, 1998 (New)

James Rachels, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, McGraw-Hill, 1998.

Thomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee, A Social Contracts Approach to Business Ethics, Business and Society Review, 2000.

The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, (No publisher listed)

Section 2: Business Values Away from Home

CASE STUDY Barnaby J. Feder, Alchemist Dream Come True, New York Times, 1995 (New)

CASE STUDY Edwin M. Hartman, Gift Giving and the African Elder, (unpublished; author retains rights) (New)

Richard T. De George, International Business Ethics and Incipient Capitalism: A Double Standard?, (Unpublished; author retains rights)

Thomas Donaldson, Values in Tension Away From Home, Harvard Business Review, 1996.

PART FIVE: Contemporary Business Themes

INTRODUCTION

Section 1: Marketing

CASE STUDY Lee Fennel, Gretchen A. Kalsow, and June West, Fingerhut’s Price Stategy, University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, 2001.

Roger Crisp, Persuasive Advertising, Autonomy and the Creation of Desire, Journal of Business Ethics, Reidel, 1987

Section 2: The Environment

CASE STUDY Emily Mead, Andrew Wicks, and Patricia Werhane, ExxonMobil and the Chad/Cameroon Pipeline, University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, 2003. (New)

Julian L. Simon, Scarcity or Abundance? W. W. Norton and Company, 1994

Steven Kelman, Cost Benefit Analysis: An Ethical Critique, American Institute for Public Policy Research, 1981

William McDonough, A Boat for Thoreau, Business Ethics, 1998 (New)

Section 3: Globalization

Mark Baker, Laura Hartman and Bill Shaw, Global Profits, Global Headaches, Publisher, if any, not listed. Copyright presumably held by authors, 1999. (New)

C. K. Prahalad, Marketing from the Bottom of the Pyramid, Wharton School Publishing, 2005 (New)

Ian Maitland, The Great Non-Debate Over International Sweatshops, British Academy of Management Annual Conference Proceedings, September, 1997 (New)

Is it important to have interesting relevant articles and cases studies to use in your course?

• NEW – Updated and revised content throughout reflects dramatic changes that the field has undergone, including recent, news-worthy events:
  • Case Studies
    •  The Enron Collapse by Stewart Hamilton
    • “Working at Walmart” from Nickel and Dimed byBarbara Ehrenreich
  • Others topics include:
    • The Pension Plan Crisis
      • “United wins approval to dump pension plans” by Mark Skertic, Chicago Tribune
      • “Unkept promises hit retirees” by Barbara Rose, Chicago Tribune
    • Legislative Summary of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

For one semester/quarter courses in Business Ethics, Business and Society, and Ethical and Legal Environment of Business.

 

This widely used business ethics text begins by introducing students to moral reasoning. A collection of readings and cases from both philosophical literature and business articles apply ethical theory to real-life business situations. Well-known scandals involving companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Merrill Lynch, and Parmalat have increased public awareness of business ethics, underscored its importance, and ushered in a new era of increased corporate regulation and governance.

 

Now, more than ever, a student planning on entering the business world, and anyone working for a corporation, investing in stock, or even interacting with businesses will benefit from a basic understanding of business ethics.