Business Ethics as Practice

This book shows that in business, moral questions are not just theoretical; they arise in practice and have to be dealt with in practice. It illustrates that ‘ethics as practice’ is an important area of study because it focuses on how ethics are enacted and embedded in everyday organizational reality. In contrast to the approaches dominating mainstream literature, the authors of this thought provoking volume focus on the tensions, paradoxes and ambiguities that underpin ethics in practice.

Recent corporate scandals such as those involving Enron, Worldcom and Parmalat have brought to the fore a problem which mainstream economics and management studies have long ignored: the fact that neither rules, regulations, nor the laws of the market can ensure ethical behaviour. The authors of this fascinating book take the tension between ‘morals or money’ and ‘profits or principles’ as the starting point of their investigations into how ethical problems emerge and are managed. They show that ethics are at stake in ambiguous situations where different, often contradicting, sets of moral values and rules clash.

Business Ethics as Practice will prove a stimulating and fascinating read for scholars of organization theory, organizational behaviour, business and management, and more generally, humanities and the social sciences. Business practitioners will also find much illuminating material to reflect upon and consider within this book.