{"title":"Questioning Corporate Codes of Ethics","authors":"M. Painter-Morland","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2010.01591.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2010.01591.x","url":null,"abstract":"This paper argues that corporate Codes of Ethics lose their ability to further moral responsiveness because of the narrow instrumental purposes that inform their adoption and use. It draws on Jacques Derrida's reading of Emmanuel Levinas to argue that, despite the fact that all philosophical language entails a certain violence, corporate Codes of Ethics could potentially play a more meaningful role in furthering ethical questioning within corporations. The paper argues that Derrida's reading of Levinas' notion of ‘the third’ could precipitate the emergence of a broader sense of ethical responsibility towards multiple others within corporations. Codes may also present the opportunity for corporations to engage in the reconsideration of their own purposes in the light of questions of justice towards multiple others. How these changes in the establishment and use of Codes may be accomplished is explored towards the end of the paper.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"73 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2010-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86244608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Summons to the Consuming Animal","authors":"J. Desmond","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2010.01589.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2010.01589.x","url":null,"abstract":"This paper considers Derrida's principal works on the animal as comprising a summons to the consuming animal, the human subject. It summarizes, firstly, Derrida's accusation that the entire Western philosophic tradition is guilty of a particularly pernicious disavowal of its repudiation of the animal. This disavowal underpins what he calls the ‘carnophallogocentric order’ that privileges the virile male adult as a transcendental subject. The paper shows how he calls this line of argument into question by challenging the purity of the predicates that are presumed to secure human self-presence, such as capacity of response. This questioning is extended to consider marketing discourse in relation to the animal. In the second part of the paper, Derrida's arguments from the points of view of ‘animalseance’ (which here is referred to as ‘animalmalaise’) and ‘limitography’ are compared and contrasted with those of animal ethicists, Peter Singer and Tom Regan, and with Emmanuel Levinas. Finally, some implications are discussed for what it might mean to eat well.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2010-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85495587","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rorty, Caputo and Business Ethics Without Metaphysics: Ethical Theories as Normative Narratives","authors":"Andrew Gustafson","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2010.01582.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2010.01582.x","url":null,"abstract":"Using the works of Richard Rorty and John Caputo, I want to suggest that we might be better off treating the traditional ethical theories of Kant, Mill, Aristotle and Hobbes as normative narratives rather than as justificatory schemes for moral decision making to be set up against one another. In a spirit akin to Husserl's ‘bracketing’ of metaphysics, when discussing ethical theories in business ethics, we can easily avoid metaphysics and use an approach that sees ethical theory as socially convincing normative narratives – narratives that unify us with others insofar as they describe our phenomenological experiences in a way with which many of us mutually resonate. I will do this by attempting to show how John Caputo's thinking in Against Ethics and Rorty's postmodern pragmatism might be appropriated to some extent by us in business ethics.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"132 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2010-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86816751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Comparison of Business Ethics Commitment in Private and Public Sector Organizations in Sweden","authors":"G. Svensson, G. Wood, Michael Callaghan","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2010.01585.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2010.01585.x","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports the results of a study of the top 500 private sector organizations and the top 100 public sector organizations in Sweden. It is a replication of the study by Svensson et al. (2004). The aim of the study was to describe and compare the business ethics commitment of organizations across the two sectors. The empirical findings indicate that the processes involved in business ethics commitment have begun to be recognized and acted upon at an organizational level in Sweden. Some support is provided to show that codes of ethics are developing in some of Sweden's largest private and public sector organizations – although this is happening to a lesser extent in the public sector. It is noted that an effect of a code of ethics on the bottom line of the business was acknowledged by respondents in both private and public sector organizations. We believe that the supporting measures of business ethics commitment appear to be underutilized in both private and public sector organizations in Sweden (among those that possess codes of ethics), thus indicating that the commitment to business ethics in Swedish organizations has potential for future development.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"107 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2010-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90424977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Deception and Defection from Ethical Norms in Market Relationships: A General Analytic Framework","authors":"W. W. Keep, Gary P. Schneider","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01579.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01579.x","url":null,"abstract":"Market relationships built on trust and governed by commonly accepted ethical norms are generally viewed as economically positive and beneficial to both parties; however, such relationships are occasionally the situs of a variety of unexpected and ethically questionable behaviours. This study examines the narratives provided by participants who share their experience as an exchange partner in a market relationship or as a close observer of an exchange partner in a market relationship to identify the use of short-term deceptions and ethics defections in managing these relationships. The data demonstrate a number of instances in which one exchange partner is willing to deceive another. Situations identified include deceiving current customers, new customers, current suppliers, governmental bodies, and employees and managers for the purposes of: protecting an existing relationship, pursuing a new relationship, ensuring product or service quality, and exerting control over a relationship. This research develops a general analytic framework for the occurrence of deception and defection from ethical norms in market relationships from elements of the study participants' narrative reports. This framework can be used by future researchers to design studies that examine the specific antecedents of these behaviours.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"58 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2010-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88655159","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Resonance Tropes in Corporate Philanthropy Discourse","authors":"Crawford Spence","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01570.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01570.x","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores corporate charitable giving disclosures in order to question the extent to which corporations can claim that their philanthropy activities are charitable at all. Exploration of these issues is carried out by means of a tropological analysis that focuses on the different linguistic tropes within the philanthropy disclosures of 52 companies, namely metaphor and synecdoche. The results reveal a number of complex and contradictory things. Primarily, the master metaphor of ‘altruism’ projected by the corporate disclosures is ideologically at odds with the more business case-oriented discourse that shapes the disclosures. This contradiction is put into starker contrast by the existence of a root metaphor, whereby the recipients of corporate philanthropy are presented as the ‘deserving poor’. Synecdochal devices are present within the corporate disclosures, whereby employee initiatives that are independent of corporate strategies are used to confer attributes onto the disclosures that bolster the master metaphor of ‘altruism’. As such, corporate philanthropy is presented by the paper as a structurally incoherent discourse and yet one that has implications for both extracting greater value from various societal groups and in defining, on behalf of civil society, what is a worthy cause.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"288 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79400152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gibbs and the Problems of Satisfaction and Well-Being","authors":"M. Schwartz","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01572.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01572.x","url":null,"abstract":"This paper responds to a 2004 paper by Paul Gibbs in which he remonstrates that marketing currently has no concern with the notion of well-being; and furthermore that marketing lacks ‘an adequate moral grounding’. Gibbs advances the moral expectation that marketers consider not merely satisfying their actual customers, but also consider the well-being of the larger society. However, this paper contemplates whether such an expectation is not due to some confusion by Gibbs between satisfaction and exchange in marketing, and questions whether marketing could pursue such aims.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73733219","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"See No Evil: Moral Sensitivity in the Formulation of Business Problems","authors":"L. J. T. Pedersen","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01567.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01567.x","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores moral sensitivity in a learning perspective, and a framework is developed for the understanding of how moral sensitivity can be developed through reiterative problem solving in the face of diverse ethical problems. Factors that may inhibit the individual's ability to conceive of moral issues are discussed, and perspectives from moral psychology are integrated with theory on problem formulation. It is argued that (1) the individual's moral sensitivity is pivotal for ethical problem solving, because problem formulation is paramount for further reflection and behaviour; (2) ethical behaviour must be understood both (a) in terms of the individual's psychological make-up that determines psychological response to moral features and (b) in terms of external constraints on the individual's moral sensitivity; and (3) the development of moral sensitivity can be promoted by actively and consciously pursuing disciplined imagination in multi-perspective formulations of problems.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73674711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Machiavellianism in Public Accountants: Some Additional Canadian Evidence","authors":"Anamitra Shome, Hema Rao","doi":"10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01569.x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2009.01569.x","url":null,"abstract":"The current study surveys practising Canadian public accountants in Canada in both Big 4 and non-Big 4 firms to determine their orientation with respect to Machiavellianism, defined as ‘attending to one's interests much more than to others'. Results indicate that while there are no significant differences in Machiavellianism between public accountants in the upper-level positions (managers and partners), partners are significantly less Machiavellian than seniors. These results are consistent with previous studies on Canadian public accountants.","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81731249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Response to 'Gibbs and the problems of satisfaction and well-being'.","authors":"P. Gibbs","doi":"10.1111/J.1467-8608.2009.01573.X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1467-8608.2009.01573.X","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47954,"journal":{"name":"Business Ethics-A European Review","volume":"35 1","pages":"412-413"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2009-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73967283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}