Business Ethics: Between Normativism, Illusion and Responsibility

Abstract

This handy but informative book is authored by the Interfaculty Group in Business Ethics of the Community of European Management Schools, an association of management schools in Europe. Many figures, tables and boxes allow for a fast orientation with respect to different approaches, case studies and agreements in the wide field of business ethics. All contributions are written on the introductory level; they are furnished with references which enable the reader to delve into issues of interest. The handbook’s editor and chairman of the Interfaculty Group in Business Ethics, Laszlo Zsolnai, presents a shortcut through the volume’s main goals and propositions in Chapter One (“A New Agenda for Business Ethics”): It is intended to present a European perspective on the issue, characterized by “respect for otherness and a dialogical attitude toward non-European values and cultures” (p. viii). According to Zsolnai (and the other authors of this volume as well), ethics are fundamental to both economic research and economic activities: With respect to the first, an attempt to basically alter economic reasoning, with respect to the second, the attempt to assure an ethicality of economic affairs beyond any curlicue or ornamentation that are attached to daily business and assumed to shy away in the case of diminishing profits. Zsolnai characterizes the book as actor- and context-centered. The stress on context and history indicates that the volume is more about everyday theory and what Fisher (1989) calls “exemplifying theory” than about “generalizing theory.” As can be e xpected by a handbook of business ethics, and further justified by the tremendous role assigned to organizations today, actors (that is, individuals and organizations) are discussed with a clear emphasis on organizations. A distinction between three levels of analysis – micro, meso and macro – is found throughout the volume and intersects with the pivotal roles both of actor and context/history mentioned above (in which the meso level is attributed to organizations and the macro level to the economic order or framework). Despite the efforts of single contributions, what we do not find in the volume is a systematic introduction into the various ethical approaches that loom large in today’s discussion. Such a kind of guide that would help the nonconversant reader to orientate themselves is missing.