The papers by Mele, Randels, and Schrag call attention to the proper work that the concept of loyalty can perform. All three authors argue that loyalty is not taken seriously enough in modern corporations. As Mele, Randels, and Schrag independently ascribe special status to the concept of loyalty, their analyses converge along numerous conceptual margins. Along these margins, a singular conception of loyalty comes into focus. Along these margins, we can see simultaneously why each author assigns extraordinary status to loyalty and why, ironically, each turns the special concept of loyalty over to the service of conventional management thinking. Mele, Randels, and Schrag leave it for us to ponder whether this ironic twist is unique to the concept of loyalty.

This paper develops and explores a pedagogical innovation for integrating virtue theory into business students’ basic understanding of general management. Eighty-seven students, in 20 groups, classified three managers’ real-time videotaped activities according to an elaboration of Aristotle’s cardinal virtues, Fayol’s management functions, and Mintzberg’s managerial roles. The study’s empirical evidence suggests that, akin to Fayol’s functions and Mintzberg’s roles, Aristotle’s virtues are also amenable to operationalization, reliable observation, and meaningful description of managerial behavior. The study provides an oft-called-for empirical basis for further work in virtue theory as an appropriate conceptual framework for the study and practice of management. The results indicate that virtue theory may be used to re-conceive our fundamental understanding of management, alongside its capacity to weigh moral judgment upon it. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

This article argues for the compatibility of casuistry and the business case method. It describes the salient features of casuistry and the case method, shows how the two methods are similar yet different, and suggests how elements of casuistry might benefit the use of the case method in management education. Toward these ends, it shows how casuistry and the case method are both inductive and practical methods of reasoning focussed on single settings and real-life situations and how both methods stress that real-life decision making is not the exclusive domain of experts. It also shows how casuistry and the case method are not identical processes but have different purposes and emphasize order and problem-resolution differently. In the end, Casuistry and the Business Case Method suggests that, despite their differences, casuistry and the case method might be brought together to benefit business management and the field of business ethics.

This paper investigates the broad ideological conflict between world views on corporate culture. Two views are identified: one encompassing standard liberal economic philosophy; the other taking broader notions of corporate culture from ethics theory. The conflict that surrounded the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle is used as an illustration of the current conflict between these views. The writings of Alasdair MacIntyre are employed as a means of elucidating and reconciling these two world views.

Communism lost the Cold War, not to pure free market capitalism, but to a range of diverse economic systems based on varying degrees and forms of social regulation of the market. Such social regulation was possible because both polities and economies were primarily national. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been rapid globalization of the economy, but not of effective social regulation. Incipient global political institutions are too weak to regulate global corporate power, while national governments no longer have sufficient reach to regulate large multinationals. Corporate self-regulation has begun, but only haltingly and mostly ineffectively.

While global prosperity has risen dramatically in recent decades, not everyone has progressed since the end of the Cold War. Since 1990 some 55 countries have had declining per capita incomes, while inequality has risen within and between countries. It is too soon to say whether global capitalism will be saved from itself by regulation, just as American national capitalism may have been saved by the New Deal reforms it opposed. As Pope John Paul II has warned, the world must not succumb to a “radical capitalist ideology” which “blindly entrusts” social problems to market forces.

Confucius’s teachings fall under four headings: “culture, moral conduct, doing one’s best, and being trustworthy in what one says” (7/25). Trust or, more precisely, being trustworthy, plays a central role in the Confucian ethic. This paper begins by examining the Confucian concept of trustworthiness. The second part of the paper discusses how the ideal of trustworthiness makes itself felt in business practices within China. The paper concludes by raising and addressing several objections to the Confucian emphasis on trustworthiness.

Business myth is generally treated in business ethics literature as a mental obstacle that must be removed in order to prepare the ground for rational thinking on the ethical aspect of business conduct. This approach, which focuses on the content of myth, does not explicate the nature and function of myth. Based on the study of myth in the fields of humanities and social sciences, this paper develops a theoretical framework and analytical tool—the revolving-door model—for researching myth in business. The proposed framework (1) offers new perspectives on myth: the consumer’s, the producer’s, the mythologist’s, and the ethicist’s; (2) explicates various distortion mechanisms of the myth; and (3) enables a redefinition of the relation of business myth to business ethics. The applicability of this framework is demonstrated by means of a real case which sets the stage for examining a set of common myths.

Loyalty within the firm, though praised by some, is criticized by others. An analysis of the historical and current significance of the concept of loyalty can aid in both understanding its critics and responding to them. Loyalty in the business world is generally understood in three ways: i) transactional retention, ii) sentimental attraction, and iii) willingness to commit oneself. In the third type, the commitment to adhere to a person, cause, or institution may contribute to human flourishing and therefore generate the human virtue of loyalty. The human virtue of loyalty is as far from fanaticism as it is from the betrayal of legitimate commitments freely undertaken. As with all virtues, its content must be rationally determined. Loyalty thus understood enhances the humanity of both persons and business firms and contributes to heightened cohesion and cooperation within the firm. Moreover, according to some recent research, managing a business on the basis of loyalty can enhance economic results.

The ethics of sales is an important, but neglected, topic in business ethics. I offer criticisms of what others have said about the moral duties of salespeople and formulate what I take to be a more plausible theory. My theory avoids the objections I raise against others and yields plausible results when applied to cases. I also defend my theory by appeal to the golden rule and offer a justification for the version of the golden rule to which I appeal. I argue that salespeople have prima facie duties to do the following: 1. warn customers of potential hazards, 2. refrain from lying and deception, 3. fully and honestly answer questions about what they are selling, and 4. refrain from steering customers toward purchases they have reason to think will harm the customers. The paper concludes with a brief appendix that discusses the implications of the ethics of sales for the social responsibilities of business.

A group of economists has recently begun addressing questions at the intersection of ethics and economics. They are preparing new definitions of individual choice that combine self-interest and other-interest, new processes of interpersonal exchange that result in cooperation rather than conflict, and new measures of social well-being that include rights as well as outcomes. This article surveys that work, and suggests areas where conceptual inputs from business ethicists are clearly needed, and where multiple opportunities for interactive research are obviously present.

Why does it matter that every negative thought you have had about car salespeople, they have likely had about you? The answer to this question opens up the distinctive challenges, and opportunities, facing business ethics. Those challenges and opportunities emerge from the significant bearing organizational reality has upon individuals’ conduct. As we consider how to assign responsibility for misconduct; how to provide guidance to organizational actors about what they ought to do; and how to develop responsive ethical theory, we need to take psychological and social forces into account. Organizations shape human behavior in ways that pose unavoidable questions about responsibility, practical guidance, and the enterprise of business ethics itself. Adopting the agents’ perspective suggests that business ethics can take a leading role in addressing these vexing questions that confront ethical inquiry and social science more broadly.

Some recent discussions of corporate loyalty have found it misguided, while others see it as crucial for financial success. There is also disagreement over the nature of loyalty. This article analyzes the concept of loyalty, arguing that it is neither a duty nor a virtue (although it has overlaps with those categories), but a passion related to various virtues (and vices). Contrary to standard accounts of capitalism, loyalty does not necessarily oppose self-interest. Furthermore, corporations can and should be communities, and insofar as they are, they are proper objects for loyalty. If corporations are not communities, then loyalty to them cannot exist.

Expectations and possibilities for employee loyalty are shifting rapidly, particularly in the for-profit sector. I explore the nature of employee loyalty to the organization, in particular, those elements of loyalty beyond the notion of the ethical demands of employee loyalty. I consider the moral significance of loyalty for the employee and whether the development of ties of loyalty to the work organization is in fact a good thing for the employee or for the employer. I argue that employees have a natural inclination to extend loyalty to the organization and that organizations consequently have an obligation to make clear to employees the degree to which the organization will recognize and reward employee loyalty.

This paper presents the results of and conclusions from a survey of 2,830 college and university undergraduate business and philosophy departments regarding their business ethics offerings. The impetus for this survey included seeking a better understanding of the problems for which business ethics courses are the solution. It was proposed that, if we knew what it is that professors teaching business ethics believe they are teaching—not in terms of content or methods, but in terms of what criteria they are using to assess students’ achievement of the course objectives—we would have a better understanding of what issues business ethics attempts to resolve. The survey focused on ranking six possible assessment criteria drawn from the literature on teaching business ethics.

In addition to disclosing the specific survey results, the paper draws conclusions based on the fact that there are statistically significant differences between the rankings assigned to the six assessment criteria by business professors as contrasted with philosophy professors. The results of the survey indicate that there is more uniformity expressed in the responses by the philosophy professors teaching business ethics than by the business professors.

The randomized response technique (RRT) is used to study the deceptive behavior of purchasing agents. We test the proposition that purchasing agents’ perceptions of organizational expectations influence their behavior. Results indicate that perceived pressure to perform and ethical ambiguity on the part of the firm are correlated with purchasing agents’ unethical behavior, in the form of acknowledged deception of suppliers.

Traditional approaches to regulating corporate behavior have not, and cannot, produce socially responsible corporations. Although many of the problems with these approaches were identified twenty-five years ago by Christopher Stone, an effective regulatory system still has not been implemented. A model of regulation is needed that is flexible enough to accommodate the variety of contexts in which corporations operate, but also makes corporations responsive to the ever-changing societal expectations of proper corporate behavior. To accomplish these goals, a reflexive law regulatory system is needed. Under this approach, corporations should be encouraged to engage in corporate social accounting, auditing, and reporting (SAAR). The development of SAAR standards informed by reflexive law theory will create a regulatory system that is consistent with the latest thinking in business ethics, including Stakeholder Theory and Integrative Social Contracts Theory.

Corporate governance is a complex and contested issue, and its ambiguities become even more problematic when ethical considerations are taken into account. This introduction attempts to address these complexities, to illuminate their ethical aspects, and to situate the eight papers presented here within what we believe to be an integrative heuristic framework.

The dominant theoretical perspective on governance relationships and their associated problems is to be found within economics, and in particular within agency theory. With the separation of ownership from control (Berle and Means 1932) a potential problem arises in the context of what is now constituted as a relationship between the owners (principals) and directors (their agents). How can the principals ensure that the agents are serving the owners’ interests rather than their own? Against the backdrop of the assumption of an essentially self-seeking, opportunistic human nature only market discipline, monitoring, and incentives can be used to align agent behavior with the interests of the distant and/or absent shareholder understood as the owner.

In recent years there has developed a perspective that runs counter to this theorization of the key governance relationship and its problem. The elaboration of so-called stakeholder views of the corporation (Freeman 1993, Blair 1995) argues both empirically and normatively that there is a wider range of relevant relationships, and thus a greater number of interests at stake in the governance of the corporation. It is not only shareholders who have made firm-specific investments in the organization, but also employees, suppliers, and customers, and their interests must therefore also be taken account of in the constitution and conduct of corporate governance. Associated with this view is a very different conception of the director as steward (Davis et al. 1997) or trustee of the corporation (Kay 1996), where the corporation is conceived, not as a set of ownership rights accruing to those who assume the residual risk of a business, but as a social institution. From this perspective the duties of directors lie in aligning and balancing a wide variety of potentially competitive interests within the corporation.

Work on stakeholder theory has proceeded on a variety of fronts; as Donaldson and Preston (1995) have noted, such work can be parsed into descriptive, instrumental, and normative research streams. In a normative vein, Phillips (1997) has made an argument for a principle of fairness as a means of identifying and adjudicating among stakeholders. In this essay, I propose that a reconstructed principle of fairness can be combined with the idea of consent as outlined in integrative social contract theory (ISCT) to bring about a more normative stakeholder theory that also has ramifications for corporate governance.

This paper describes how anticipated age discrimination in the form of disparate treatment induces behavior that in effect constitutes gender discrimination. Potential employers often exhibit a common pattern of behavior that acts to discriminate against older workers entering a specific workplace. Women, at a decision-making point early in their lives, are aware of this pattern of discrimination. They perceive that it is important for them to establish their careers before they have a family because it will be more difficult for them to enter the work force at a later age and excel at their careers. This anticipated age discrimination disparately impacts women, resulting in gender discrimination.

Organizational justice and injustice are widely noted influences on employees’ ethical behavior. Corporate ethics programs also raise issues of justice; organizations that fail to “follow-through” on their ethics policies may be perceived as violating employees’ expectations of procedural and retributive justice. In this empirical study of four large corporations, we considered employees’ perceptions of general organizational justice, and their perceptions of ethics program follow-through, in relation to unethical behavior that harms the organization, and to employees’ willingness to help the organization by reporting ethical problems and issues to management. Results show that when employees perceive general organizational justice and ethics program follow-through, there is less unethical behavior and greater willingness to report problems. General justice and ethics program follow-through also interact with each other, showing that the impact of ethics initiatives is influenced by the organizational context.