Leadership and Business Ethics

This collection of essays helps to refocus our conceptual work about commerce and business practices in this new century of global enterprise. It invites us to examine our own mind sets about corporate responsibility and the future of free enterprise.

This book points to a necessary relationship between ethics and business; the success of such an alliance depends directly on sound business leadership. Without the sort of leadership that upholds the dignity and rights of employees and clients, as well as the interests of shareholders, even the most meticulously prepared ethics statements are destined to founder, as evidenced at Enron and elsewhere. Over the past 30 years or so, since business ethics became established as a discipline in its own right, much progress has been made in the ethical conduct of business at all levels. In short, business people, like politicians, doctors and church leaders, have come to realize that it is not possible to avoid involvement in ethics, for much of what business people do and cannot do may be subject to ethical evaluation. While the history of business ethics as currently practised may be traced to the medieval and ancient periods; our principal concern is with developments in the ? eld over recent decades. A consideration of how the topic has been treated by the Harvard Business Review, the business world'sleadingprofessionaljournal, provideshelpful insights into past progress and present challenges. In 1929, just as business ethics was beginning to evolve, Wallace B.

Business Ethics: Europe Versus America. - Individual Level Business Leadership. - Using Discernment to Make Better Business Decisions. - The Virtuous Manager: A Vision for Leadership in Business. - Business Ethics Beyond the Moral Imagination: A Response to Richard Rorty. - Socratic Questions and Aristotelian Answers: A Virtue-Based Approach to Business Ethics. - Inspirational Leadership in Business and Other Domains. - People in Business: Context and Character. - Responsible Leadership beyond Managerial Rationality: The Necessity of Reconnecting Ethics and Spirituality. - Organizational Level Business Leadership. - How Losing Soul Leads to Ethical Corruption in Business. - Corporate Culture and Organisational Ethics. - Values in the Marketplace: What Is Ethical Retailing? . - Societal Level Business Leadership. - The Marketing of Human Images as a Challenge to Ethical Leadership. - Alternative Business Ethics: A Challenge for Leadership. - The UN Global Compact: The Challenge and the Promise. - Corporate Citizenship: The Dark-Side Paradoxes of Success. - Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Moral Responsibility, and Systems Thinking: Is There a Difference and the Difference it Makes.