Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility: Challenges for Business Administration (Unternehmensethik und Corporate Social Responsibility: Herausforderungen fuer die Betriebswirtschaftslehre)

Abstract

Business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) sparked a new debate in the field of business administration as well as in economic practice. The question if and how the field should integrate this topic in teaching and research is again fiercely discussed. Introductory, this article presents different backgrounds and dimensions regarding the scope of this topic. With examples demonstrating four actual positions in the scholarly literature, various possibilities are discussed to anchor business ethics and CSR within the field. Against this background, this article expresses several challenges and unanswered questions to the field of business administration. Subsequent, the articles published in this special issue will be shortly introduced. Those articles were intensely discussed during a common workshop of the academic commission "organization" and "philosophy of science" in the Verband der Hochschullehrer fur Betriebswirtschaft (VHB) and are concerned with the mentioned challenges.