Background
In 1977, following a series of scandals involving bribery by U.
S. firms abroad including the Lockheed $12 million bribery case that led to the fall of the Japanese government at the time, the U.
S. government passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
The Act was historic because it was the first piece of legislation that attempted to control the a.
Business
In the West, after the fall of Rome, Christianity held sway, and although there were various discussions of poverty and wealth, ownership and property, there is no systematic discussion of business except in the context of justice and honesty in buying and selling.
We see this, for instance, in Thomas Aquinas's discussion of selling articles for mo.
Development
The field has continued to develop as business has developed.
By the mid 1980s business had clearly become international in scope, and the topics covered by business ethics expanded accordingly.
Thomas Donaldson's The Ethics of Business Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) was the first systematic treatment of international business eth.
Early history
Norman Bowie dates the birth of business ethics as November 1974, with the first conference in business ethics, which was held at the University of Kansas, and which resulted in the first anthology used in the new courses that started popping up thereafter in business ethics.12 Whether one chooses that date or some other event, it is difficult to i.
How did business ethics change during the 1970s and 1980s?
During the 1970s and 1980s, two events shaped changes in business ethics:
defense contractor scandals that became highly publicized during the Vietnam War and a heightened sense of tension between employers and employees. How did business ethics develop?
This page follows the development of business ethics through six decades, examining:
Social unrest.
Anti-war sentiment.
Employees have an adversarial relationship with management.
Values shift away from loyalty to an employer to loyalty to ideals.
Old values are cast aside.
Companies begin establishing codes of conduct and values statements . How did business ethics evolve in the Gilded Age?
The Gilded Age of the United States not only gave rise to rapid industrialization, but also the debate over business ethics.
As our economy has evolved, regulations and norms have followed in suit.
Read more about the history of business ethics in the United States.
Influence
The same is true of the Protestant tradition as of the Catholic, even though there is no central authority to issue documents such as the encyclicals.
Perhaps the most influential protestant figure in this regard was Reinhold Niebuhr whose trenchant critique of capitalism in Moral Man and Immoral Society9 became the basis for courses in seminaries .
Introduction
Corporations, finding themselves under public attack and criticism, responded by developing the notion of social responsibility.
They started social responsibility programs and spent a good deal of money advertising their programs and how they were promoting the social good.
Exactly what \\"social responsibility\\" meant varied according to the indus.
Issues
Initial discussions of business ethics introduced students to two of the basic techniques of moral argumentation, that used by utilitarians (who hold that an action is right if it produces the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people), and that used by deontologists (who claim that duty, justice and rights are not reducible to cons.
Organizations
The Society for Business Ethics was started in 1980.
The first meeting of the Society for Business Ethics was held in conjunction with the meeting of the American Philosophical Association in December in Boston.
Other societies turned increasing attention to business ethics, including the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Manag.
Origin
Marx's notion of exploitation was developed by Lenin in Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, in which he claims that the exploitation of workers in the developed countries has been lessened and the workers' conditions have improved because the worst exploitation has been exported to the colonies.
His criticism has been adapted by many cont.
Philosophy
The \\"ethics in business\\" sense of business ethics In this broad sense ethics in business is simply the application of everyday moral or ethical norms to business.
Perhaps the example from the Bible that comes to mind most readily is the Ten Commandments, a guide that is still used by many today.
In particular, the injunctions to truthfulness and .
Quotes
The second strand of the story that I shall tell has to do with business ethics as an academic field.
Common sense morality and the ethics in business approach that I described are fine for the ordinary, everyday aspect of ethics in business.
Employees shouldn't steal from their employers, and companies shouldn't cheat their customers.
No one needs.
Scope
As a field, business ethics covered the ethical foundations of business, of private property, and of various economic systems. 3) Although the field was concerned with managers and workers as moral persons with responsibilities as well as rights, most attention was focused on the corporationits structure and activities, including all the functional.
