Business ethics is a site of contestation, both in theory and practice. For some it serves as a salve for the worst effects of capitalism, giving businesses the means self-regulate away from entrenched tendencies of malfeasance and exploitation. For others business ethics is a more personal matter, concerning the way that individuals can effectively wade through the moral quagmires that characterise so many dimensions of business life. Business ethics has also been conceived of as a fig leaf designed to allow business-as-usual to continue while covering over the less savoury practices so as to create an appearance of righteousness.
Across these and other approaches, what remains critical is to ensure that the ethics of business is the subject of incisive questioning, critical research, and diverse theoretical development. It is through such scholarly inquiry that the increasingly powerful purview of corporations and business activity can be interrogated, understood and, ultimately, reformulated. This series contributes to that goal by publishing the latest research and thinking across the broad terrain that characterised business ethics.
The series welcomes contributions in areas including: corporate social responsibility; critical approaches to business ethics; ethics and corporate governance; ethics and diversity; feminist ethics; globalization and business ethics; philosophical traditions of business ethics; postcolonialism and the ethics of business; production and supply chain ethics; resistance, political activism and ethics; sustainability, environmentalism and climate change; the ethics of corporate misconduct; the politics of business ethics; and worker’s rights.
By Garrett W. Potts
January 29, 2024
Amidst the exponentially growing interest in "work as a calling," contemporary discussions have taken an individualistic turn away from the earlier prosocial character that once marked this orientation to work. Now, discussions about "work as a calling" mostly prioritize personal fulfilment via the...
Edited
By Stefan Markovic, Adam Lindgreen, Nikolina Koporcic, Milena Micevski
August 25, 2023
Following recent growth of ethical consumerism, customers and other stakeholders increasingly pressure organizations to be socially responsible and minimize their negative impact on the environment. Accordingly, a plethora of firms have integrated corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the center...
By Matej Drašček, Dana Mesner Andolšek, Adriana Rejc Buhovac
April 21, 2023
Moral pragmatism has been largely ignored in Business Ethics, despite its natural attraction and the fact that it is prominent in philosophy and socio-economic theories. The main premise of the book is that the complexity of today’s business world does not permit a grand ethical theory, ...
By Carl Rhodes
June 02, 2020
21st century Western neoliberalism has seen the transformation of self-interest from an economic imperative to a centrally constitutive part of dominant modes of subjective existence. Against this celebration of competitive individualism, Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy stands as a haunting reminder ...
Edited
By Marianna Fotaki, Gazi Islam, Anne Antoni
December 17, 2019
Care is a human ability we all need for growing and flourishing. It implies considering the needs and interests of others, and the quality of how we relate to each other is often defined by care. While the value of care in private life is widely recognized, its role in the public sphere is ...
By Bernard Mees
December 05, 2019
In 1973, Daniel Bell argued that corporations in post-industrial societies increasingly needed to behave in accord with widely accepted social norms, particularly in terms of ethical behavior and social responsibility. Yet widespread criticism of business behavior was not an invention of the 1960s ...
By Ruth Yeoman
December 02, 2019
There is an urgent need to understand how private and public organisations can play a role in promoting human values such as fairness, dignity, respect and care. Globalisation, technological advance and climate change are changing work, organisations and systems in ways which foster inequality, ...
By Edward Wray-Bliss
February 28, 2019
The use of non-secular, religious, concepts in contemporary managerial discourse to legitimise leadership, organisation and work has been undertheorised. Concepts such as organisational soul, Spiritual Leadership, a wider deification (and demonisation) of leaders, and the mantra of individual ...
Edited
By Christopher Cowton, James Dempsey, Tom Sorell
January 28, 2019
The global financial crisis (GFC) that began in 2007 concentrated attention on the morality of banking and financial activities. Just as mainstream businesses became increasingly defined by their financial performance, banks, it seemed, got themselves – and everyone else – into trouble through an ...
By Cosmina Lelia Voinea, Cosmin Fratostiteanu
July 04, 2018
Over the last few decades, emerging markets have increased their share in world GDP and have come to play a prominent and growing role in global business. Their period of impressive growth was triggered by major global advances such as economic liberalization and governance reforms and deregulation...
Edited
By Deirdre Shaw, Michal Carrington, Andreas Chatzidakis
June 08, 2018
Ethical consumerism is on the rise. No longer bound to the counter-cultural fringes, ethical concerns and practices are reaching into the mainstream of society and being adopted by everyday consumers – from considering carbon miles to purchasing free-range eggs to making renewable energy choices. ...
Edited
By Marc Orlitzky, Manjit Monga
July 26, 2017
This book highlights the interconnectedness of integrity with philosophical history, leadership, managerial decision-making, and organizational effectiveness in a wide variety of contexts (e.g., time theft in organizations and family business). Well-known researchers in business ethics from all ...