European Business and Economic Ethics: Diagnosis – Dialogue – Debate

Abstract

The "Berlin Forum", a network of PhDs and post-docs in the field of business and economic ethics, is organising a conference on the subject "European Business and Economic Ethics: Is There a European Business and Economic Ethics Approach?" The conference will take place from September 6-8, 2007 at and in cooperation with the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Heidelberg (Germany). The focus of the conference will be academic rather than application-oriented. Economic reality in Europe today takes place not only at the level of nation-states but increasingly also at a regional, European and global level. With regard to trade, Europe is the major market for most domestic businesses. The same is true for the "economic ethical reality": economic actors, non-governmental organisations, governments and also the scientific community need to take into account the scale of a unified Europe when tackling ethical issues. There are indeed some transnational axes of discourse, of reference and of cooperation in Europe, such as the transnational discourse in German speaking Europe or the close links between the British and the Dutch approaches to business ethics. However, thus far, the vast majority of cases of cooperation and communication in business and economic ethics still primarily occur within single countries. The landscape of business and economic ethics in Europe therefore remains scattered - parallels between different countries may exist, but are of a rather coincidental kind. Considering this situation, the Berlin Forum is organising a conference on business and economic ethics, which aims to stimulate dialogue between scientists from different European countries and to strengthen scientific cooperation in the field of European business and economic ethics. In this way, the profile of a possible European business and economic ethics will be highlighted in distinction to predominant US-American approaches to business and economic ethics. The conference addresses theoretical perspectives on both economic and business ethics. The target group comprises scientists and researchers from various disciplines dealing with business and economic ethics.