Business Ethics

Is business ethics a contradiction in terms? Absolutely not, says Robert Solomon. In fact, he maintains that sound ethics is a necessary precondition of any long-term business enterprise, and that excellence in business must exist on the foundation of values that most of us hold dear. Drawing on twenty years of experience consulting with major corporations on ethics, Solomon clarifies the difficult ethical choices all people in business face. He uses an "Aristotelian" approach to remind readers that a corporation--like an individual--is embedded in a community, and that corporate values such as fairness and honesty are meaningless until transformed into action. Without a base of shared values, trust and mutual benefits, today's national and international business world would fall apart. In keeping with his conviction that virtue and profit must thrive together, Solomon both examines the ways in which deficient values actually destroy businesses, and debunks the pervasive myths that encourage unethical business practices. Complete with a working catalog of virtues designed to illustrate the importance of integrity in any business situation, this compelling handbook contains a gold mine of wisdom for either the small business manager or the corporate executive struggling with ethical issues.

"Using case studies, diagrams, and a variety of charts and references, Dalla Costa sets out to show that business mirrors who we are as a society and the beliefs that we live by as individuals. Business leaders must assess their values and effect appropriate change as they function in the global economy where market forces have left the human dimension weaker while profits soared. (Dalla Costa) concludes that the economy is a wonderful invention, but that it must be managed as an instrument of humanity". -- Mary Whaley, Booklist

Typically, case histories are used to illustrate assertions or arguments or to stimulate debate about an issue within business ethics. This volume examines that role, illustrating the link between case histories and more general theoretical approaches to business ethics.

Ethical failures are rooted in leadership failure, the lack of a corporate culture in which ethical concerns have been integrated, and unresponsiveness to key organizational stakeholders. This book seeks to enhance our understanding of the causes of ethical debacles in an era when ethical missteps can often lead to corporate bankruptcies or worse.

This book takes a new approach to ethics by focusing on the kinds of dilemmas that confront people almost daily on the job. Guy presents the ten core values that surround ethical dilemmas, demonstrating the way in that personnel can sensitize themselves to the values involved in a problem and reach a solution which maximizes the important values. The author's unique contribution is to meld philosophy with everyday decision-making, offering the reader a common sense approach to making ethical decisions. Real-life case examples illustrate ethical dilemmas that involve personnel practices, organizing strategies, reporting functions, supervisory practices, whistleblowing, and more.

Using classical American pragmatism, the authors provide a philosophical framework for rethinking the nature of the corporation--how it is embedded in its natural, technological, cultural, and international environments, emphasizing throughout its pervasive relational and moral dimensions. They explore the relationship of this framework to other contemporary business ethics perspectives, as well as its implications for moral leadership in business and business education.

In the aftermath of scandals such as those at Enron and WorldCom, there is a growing suspicion of the corporate world. For this reason it is more important than ever for firms to maintain a good reputation. In Building Reputational Capital, Kevin T. Jackson offers a practical guide to taking the high road--the only path that leads to lasting success. Based on extensive research and real-world experience, Building Reputational Capital reveals basic principles of integrity and fairness with which firms can build an enduring reputation. More than image, a firm's reputation is a form of capital often neglected in the boardroom and overlooked in conventional analyses of financial statements. Speaking directly to the work experience of real people in practical business settings, Jackson couples each principle with straightforward actions that drive management systems, and he provides tested strategies--from downsizing techniques to e-commerce tips--that cultivate the hidden power of a good reputation. He outlines the advantages of a superior reputation (simply put, people want to work for, invest in, and do business with a company or person with integrity), describes the vital role the firm's leader must play, offers ways to build and protect your reputation on the Internet (from defusing Internet rumors to creating an online community), and shows how to rescue your reputation once disaster hits. Perhaps most important, he shows how to strike the right balance of virtues like authenticity, honesty, responsibility, and stewardship of the environment, employees, and the economy. Highlighted with real-life success stories--from giants like Hewlett-Packard to small firms like Thanksgiving Coffee Company (which invests part of its revenues in the Central American villages in which its beans are grown), Building Reputational Capital offers a simple but effective guide for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, legal professionals, and corporate consultants.

Decision making is the critical key to survival in the future. It is the contention of this book that we must increase our understanding of organizational decision making in general and ethical decision making in particular. Ethics underlies much of what happens in modern organizations. Organizations, which work to institutionalize ethics, develop a culture based on ethical values and consistently display them in all their activities. They derive a number of positive benefits: improved top management control, increased productivity, avoidance of litigation and an enhanced image that attracts talent and the public's good will.

Ethics and Values in Industrial-Organizational Psychology is one of the first books to integrate work from the fields of moral philosophy, moral psychology, IO Psychology and political and social economy, as well as business. It sets out to provide a "framework for moral action" and presents practical models for ethical decision making. It can serve as a textbook for ethics courses, at the graduate and doctoral level, in organizational psychology, organizational behavior, marketing, and human resource management. It is a resource to anyone interested in ethics and standards in psychology and business.

Pava calls for a new kind of organization built on a more accurate definition of what the organization is. He argues that organizations can and should satisfy not only basic human needs, but also the highest human aspirations as well. He helps us recognize that since business plays a central role in our culture, we must understand that ethics is bound up in that role inextricably, and we need to think about ethics systematically if we hope to achieve organizational change. Ultimately ethics is about creating and sustaining meaningful work environments without sacrificing legitimate concerns for the bottom line; it is not about following a set of onerous, nit-picking rules. This book is an engaging contribution to the literature on management, business and society, and the theory and practice of ethics.

"A society without truth-and the related quality of trust-will not long endure." -from the Preface Ethics in corporate America has become a bottom-line issue. Scandals such as the junk bond debacle in the late '80s and the recent bankruptcy of Orange County, California, graphically illustrate just how devastating losses from corrupt business practices can be. Closing the rift between a company's public and private face, its avowed as opposed to actual behavior, is now more than ever the concern of the accountant. Examining a firm's business records and practices has traditionally placed the accountant in the role of watchdog. And in a corporate world where ethical ambivalence can complicate even the most routine business decision, a trusted accountant can guide a company toward a revived sense of purpose, showing it how to live up to its own expressed ethical standards-leading the way to new business, increased profits, and cost savings. Ethics and the CPA details just how an accountant can assess a company's ethical health as part of a rigorous accounting regimen-and institute corrective measures. The book begins by clearly defining the accountant's role in the area of "ethical services," with specifics on establishing and performing an audit on an ethics-based program for business, governmental, and not-for-profit entities. Issues such as the specific knowledge, competencies, and attitudes essential to the professional providing ethical services are also discussed. The second part of the book takes the ethical pulse of the contemporary business environment, analyzing some notable ethical failures in well-known companies as well as the range of regulatory demands on CPAs, including the requirement for finding unethical/illegal behavior (SAS 82) and SEC oversight responsibilities. Also included are the results of an ethics survey report on CPAs given to state CPA societies, regulatory bodies, and industry. Finally, part three looks at the framework and issues surrounding developing and leading an in-house ethics program, as well as the elements of an effective ethical program, developing an ethical oversight committee, benchmarking an ethics program, marketing ethical services, and the ethical challenges in the new millennium. Ethics and the CPA is a practical handbook for the accountant on guiding one's clients toward an improved bottom line and financial stability-through impeccable conduct from the boardroom on down. Ensuring your client's continued financial prosperity -with an in-house ethics program. Keeping a firm financially healthy has become more and more a question of monitoring its ethical pulse. Assessing the on-the-job behavior of managers and employees and how closely it measures up to their expressed codes of conduct has now become part of a CPA's overall financial review function. And building an in-house ethics program that both leads and inspires has become one of the key measures of an accountant's success. Ethics and the CPA describes how to make "ethical services" part of the accounting regimen, with specifics on establishing and performing an audit on an ethics-based program for business, governmental, and not-for-profit entities. It also surveys the contemporary business environment, analyzing some notable ethical failures in well-known companies as well as the host of regulatory demands on CPAs, including selected laws and regulations illustrating the range of compliance expected in the United States. The book also provides the specifics of setting up an effective ethical program, developing an ethical oversight committee, benchmarking an ethics program, marketing ethical services, and the ethical challenges in the new millennium. The essential guidebook on how to incorporate ethical services into an existing accounting practice, Ethics and the CPA shows accountants how to make their clients' bottom line an ethical one.