Defining ‘business ethics’: Like nailing jello to a wall
Tóm tắt
Business ethics is a topic receiving much attention in the literature. However, the term ‘business ethics’ is not adequately defined. Typical definitions refer to the rightness or wrongness of behavior, but not everyone agrees on what is morally right or wrong, good or bad, ethical or unethical. To complicate the problem, nearly all available definitions exist at highly abstract levels. This article focuses on contemporary definitions of business ethics by business writers and professionals and on possible areas of agreement among the available definitions. Then a definition is synthesized that is broad enough to cover the field of management in a sense as full as most managers might conceive of it.
Tài liệu tham khảo
Abelson, Raziel and Nielsen Kai: ‘History of Ethics’, inEncyclopedia of Philosophy 3 (1967), 81–117.
Bahm, Archie J.: ‘The Foundations of Business Ethics’,Journal of Business Ethics 2 (1983), 107–110.
Baumhart, Raymond C.: ‘How Ethical Are Businessmen?’,Harvard Business Review 39 (1961), 6–8, 10–19, 156–176.
Baumhart, Raymond C.:An Honest Profit: What Businessmen Say About Ethics in Business, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968, pp. 13–15.
Blumenthal, W. M.: ‘Business Ethics: A Call for A Moral Approach’,Financial Executive (January 1976), 32–33.
Bowman, James S.: ‘Managerial Ethics in Business and Government’,Business Horizons (October 1976), 48–54.
Brenner, Steven N. and Molander, Earl A.: ‘Is the Ethics of Business Changing?’Harvard Business Review 55 (1977), 57–71.
Byron, William J.: ‘The Meaning of Ethics in Business’,Business Horizons (November 1977), 31–34.
Carlisle, Howard M.:Management: Concepts and Situations, Science Research Associates, Inc., 1976, pp. 221–223.
Carroll, Archie B.: ‘Linking Business Ethics to Behavior in Organizations’,S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal (Summer 1978), 4–11.
Cavanagh, Gerald F., Moberg, Dennis J., and Velasquez, Manuel: ‘The Ethics of Organizational Politics’,The Academy of Management Review 6 (1981), 363–374.
Druker, Peter F.: ‘Ethical Chic’,Forbes 28 (1981), 160–173.
‘Ethics: New Study Probes Gifts to Buyers’,Purchasing 86, (1979), 19.
Fritz, David J. and Becker, Helmut: ‘Linking Management Behavior to Ethical Philosophy — An Empirical Investigation’,Academy of Management Journal 27 (1984), 166–175.
Fulmer, Robert M.: ‘Business Ethics — Present and Future’,Personnel Administration 34 (1971), 48–55.
Goodpasture, Kenneth E.: ‘The Concept of Corporate Responsibility’,Journal of Business Ethics 2 (1983), 1–22.
Guth, William D. and Tagiuri Renato: ‘Personal Values and Corporate Strategy’,Harvard Business Review 43 (1965), 123–132.
Hill, Ivan, ‘Compromise and Conviction — The Ethical Dilemma’,Vital Speeches of the Day 48 (1982), 437.
Holmes, Robert, ‘The Concept of Corporate Responsibility’, In Tom Beauchamp and Norman Bowie (eds.),Ethical Theory and Business, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1979, pp. 151–160.
Kavka, Gregory S., ‘When Two “Wrongs” Make a Right: An Essay on Business Ethics,”Journal of Business Ethics 2 (1983), 61–66.
Laczniak, Gene R., Lusch, Robert F. and Murphy, Patrick E.: ‘Social Marketing: Its Ethical Dimensions’,Journal of Marketing 43 (1979), 29–36.
Lewis, Phillip V. and Reinsch, Jr., N. L.: ‘The Ethics of Business Communication’,People and Information: The Intermix for Successful Communication, Proceedings of the 1981 American Business Communication Association, pp. 1–22.
Miller, Samuel H.: ‘The Tangle of Ethics’,Harvard Business Review,38 (1960) 38, No. 1 (January–February 1960).
Schuette, Thomas E.: ‘Executives’ Perception of Business Ethics’,Journal of Purchasing (May 1965), pp. 38–52.
Steiner, George A. and Steiner, John F.,Business, Government, and Society: A Managerial Perspective, Random House, Inc., 1980, pp. 362–363, 383–389.
White, Bernard J. and Montgomery, B. Ruth: ‘Corporate Codes of Conduct: A Survey of Current Practice’,Academy of Management Proceedings '80, pp. 346–350.