history of business ethics

Hoffman, Michael, and Jennifer Moore, 1962. Organizational meetings had taken place during the previous two years. The notion of ethics in business can be traced back to the earliest forms of bartering, based on the principle of equal exchange. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Then, thanks to government legislation, ethics have been incorporated into businesses, reflected today in corporate social responsibility strategies and codes of conduct. However one comes out in that dispute, the philosophical branch of academic business ethics emphasized the normative aspects of business ethics, and the social sciences branch emphasized the descriptive aspects of business ethics, looking at and describing the practices actually found in businesses. Later Popes have developed Catholic social thought, embracing a defense of the worker. At other times academic business ethics follows public sentiment or reacts to business practices. Self-regulation, moreover, is not necessarily antithetical to governmental regulation, and the two are most effective when they work together, e.g., to abolish oppressive child labor. With large industry, especially the enormous growth of chemical petroleum- based industries, pollution on a large scale became a problem. The philosophers came in the 1970s and 1980s and intruded on territory that those in social issues of business had in some sense staked out as their own. [1] For the purpose of this section, let’s examine a few of the strands he has identified to ensure we get more of a “whole picture” perspective. Nonetheless, by 2011 business ethics was no longer considered an oxymoron. Centesimus annus: On the hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. The rise since the 1970s of what is called business ethics followed the tumultuous period of the 1960s. 6 Although what is included in the notion of ethics-in-business varies in different countries, depending on the socio-economic-historic conditions, everywhere there is a basic sense that ethics has a place in business as in other areas of life. Freeman argues that corporations have obligations to all of its stakeholders—its shareholders, its employees, its suppliers, its customers, and all others who have a stake in the corporation. The philosophers who began the endeavor typically started from a comprehensive ethical framework supplied by ethical theory. The next level is the national level, and here there are issues of legislation, controls on business activities, the protection of workers and consumers, limitations on pollution, the prevention of child labor and exploitation, and so on. It is related to economic history. During Vietnam, Americans became hypercritical of ongoing government and business operations. The notion of business ethics as ethics-in-business continues to this day. History of Ethics provides an understanding of the various ethical philosophies and why they were developed, examining issues and lessons learned, management and organizations might be able to begin to change behavior in a positive manner. Although widely accepted, CSR is a somewhat nebulous concept and is often adopted by companies in response to external criticism, without any overarching framework or set of values. The association provided a network and a forum for members to exchange ideas and strategies on ethics and on legal compliance. The second branch of the ethics-in-business strand, i.e., the religious, also has a long history, and similarly has filtered down and influenced general thinking about ethics in business. We’d love your input. But the third strand of business ethics—the incorporation of ethics, or at least the trappings of ethics, into businesses in the United States on a large scale—was given the greatest impetus by government legislation. As we continue through this module, you will learn how companies actually can enforce business ethics and why it is so important and impactful to the success of their company. Business ethics is the use of ethical values to guide business behaviour. As an academic field, ethics can be considered as the study of morality. Gentile, Mary C. 2010. De George, Richard T. 1993. But the battles are fought in national and regional political venues. The philosophical approach was normative and looked critically at the moral justification of private property, the proper role of government and government regulation of business, and the morality of business practices. The first meeting was held on April 25, 1980, in Detroit, in conjunction with the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Western Division. Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (V, 5), wrote of justice being the exchange of equals for equals and in the Politics (I, 8–10) he discusses “the art of acquisition,” trade, and usury as part of the ethics of the household. Weber, Max. The relationship of social issues in business or social issues in management and business ethics is a contentious one, with social-issues advocates claiming business ethics as a part of their field and those in philosophical business ethics claiming social issues as the empirical portion of their field. The emphasis was initially on and still concerns primarily large corporations. This became the second branch of the ethics-in-business strand of business ethics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. “Stakeholder Theory: A Libertarian Defense,” Business Ethics Quarterly 12: 331–349. Academic criticism, public protests, self-policing and corporate or industry codes can go only so far. The two branches that became dominant were the corporate ethics branch and the corporate social responsibility branch. Other centers of business ethics started appearing at various universities, and journals dedicated to the field emerged. Competing with Integrity in International Business. Religious organizations used morals and biblical teachings to support ethical behavior, however, it was not until the mid 1900s that the term “ethics” or “ethics in business” was coined. Did you have an idea for improving this content? This very general and somewhat amorphous sense of business ethics was not clearly articulated and arose as an identifiable phenomenon only after business ethics in a stricter sense developed as an academic field. Social responsibility was a term used by companies to help correct the error in their ways. Furthermore, business ethics is the behavior that a business adheres to in its daily dealings with Goodpaster, Kenneth. The normative issues covered the spectrum of business activities, starting with the moral justifiability (or unjustifiability) of economic systems—in particular capitalism and socialism—and moving on to the areas of business: manufacturing, management, marketing, finance, corporate governance, workers rights, business and the environment, and later the international dimensions of business and the impact of computers and the Internet on the conduct of business. For many corporations—although not for all—this was new and unfamiliar territory. People were concerned for equal employment opportunities and upset about the environmental damage caused by large corporations and the chemical industry. If we jump to the modern era, John Locke (1690) developed a defense of private property as a natural right based on the labor one applies to securing the good in question. Christ’s reply to the rich man that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew, 19: 23–24, Mark, 10: 24–25, and Luke, 18: 24–25) captures that ambivalence. Others, such as Islamist and Buddhist, Hindu and Confucian are, of course, the primary religious influences on business ethics in the countries in which they are dominant. Global Reach: The Power of Multinational Corporations. Corporations can have exemplary CSR programs and be ethically deficient in other areas of their operations, as the case of Enron demonstrated. The emphasis on character development is especially central to those who take an Aristotelian approach to business ethics. The Bentley Center for Business Ethics was established in 1976 and continues to flourish. In 2011 the UN Human Rights Council endorsed a set of Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights which sets a global standard with respect to human rights and business activity. The globalization of business has brought with it the globalization of business ethics in all three of its strands. General professional conduct, social values, anti-discrimination, fair labor standards, â¦ The Journal of Business Ethics began in 1982 publishing semi-annual issues. Barnet 1974) of American business as exploitative added their voices to the critics of big business. Ethical Issues in Business: A Philosophical Approach. In the 1960s, social responsibility entered into the world of academia and is still a popular class in many business schools today. However, business ethics is a lot more complicated. De George, Richard T., and Joseph A. Pichler (eds.). The history of business ethics in the United States can be viewed as the intersection of three intertwined strands. Prior to government legislation, some individual companies, such as Johnson & Johnson, 14 had on their own adopted codes and incorporated ethics into their structures. It also has two main branches, one being the philosophical business-ethics branch, which is normative and critical, and the other the social-scientific branch, which is primarily descriptive and empirical. The public in many countries is more conscious of ethical issues in business than it was 40 years earlier; the academic field of business ethics, although continuing to develop, has matured and is no longer struggling to establish itself; and the business community has at least started seeing ethics and ethical demands as part of the package it has to manage and internalize. Ethics is a common way to determine what it means to be an upstanding citizen, a decent individual, an active participant as a parent, and is an effective tool for someone with excellent leadership skills. Instead of having a code of ethics like many companies do today, people centuries ago would still use ethical guidelines like the Ten Commandments or Aristotle’s economic relations philosophies. The way CSR plays out in most European countries, in which the government has a larger role than in the United States, varies as do the issues that business ethics addresses. With the onset of so many new perspectives and ideas, the term business ethics was born. The Emergence of Business Ethics . By Kirk O. Hanson, former executive director of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. “Ethics in business” as he refers to it, includes the history of moral standards used in business practices since the dawn of time. The Ethics of Information Technology and Business. The International Society for Business, Ethics and Society, which was founded in 1988, helped to promote the growth of business ethics in countries around the world. “What is ‘Business Ethics’?” The Public Interest 63: 18–36. The modern idea of business ethics as a field is relatively new, but how to ethically conduct business has been widely debated since bartering and trading first arose. In the Protestant tradition, Calvinism developed what is called the Protestant (or Puritan) work ethic, namely, the doctrine that hard work was a calling and a means of achieving success, and that economic success was a sign of one’s preordained salvation. The empirical stream typically built on the already-existing social issues in management and the corporate social responsibility courses and structures in the business schools and business education. (Others are legal or simply a response to the desires of vocal lobbing or other groups, and corporations also have many ethical obligations not included under CSR.) Business ethics and the resulting behavior evolved as well. There is no effective international legislation that matches the globalization of business, and corruption on the governmental level impedes the growth of business ethics on the local level in many countries. What, dating from the 1970s, differentiated business ethics as an academic field from ethics in business was that it attempted to systematically study the entire range of ethical issues in business as a comprehensive whole. The history of “business ethics” depends on how one defines it. This prohibited United States firms from making payments to high-level government officials of foreign countries in order to obtain contracts or special favors. Adam Smith, who wrote A Theory of Moral Sentiments before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, wrote about the ethics of business—as well as the lack thereof that took place among colluding businessmen. By the turn of the century business ethics as an academic field was firmly entrenched internationally. Laborem exercens. Prior to the development of business ethics as a field there were individual courses here and there on moral issues in business, and lectures and articles about ethics in business. It was only in late 1990âs that the international business ethics came to the fore especially so after the economic developments that occurred on a global scale. It then spread in a variety of ways to other parts of the world, each time with a different local emphasis and history. For information on the Compact, see the official UN website http://www.unglobalcompact.org. They agreed not to obey the discriminatory and oppressive apartheid laws in South Africa and in other ways—including lobbying the South African government—to attempt to undermine or help end apartheid. He believes each strand represents a different yet equally important perspective on business ethics. This essay "History of Business Ethics and Ethical Theory" is focused on the theory of business ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press. It is partially conservative and partially radical or critical. 2 He was correct in attacking such attempts, but he wrote before the development of the academic field. The major religious influence on American economic culture is the Judeo-Christian. 10 By 2011 EBEN had linked together 17 national networks. New York, London: Macmillan, Collier. The descriptive component of business ethics was developed by those trained in the social sciences and working in business schools. These religious books have talked about truthfulness, transparency and honesty among people. The Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management, which became the major organization for those on the descriptive side of business ethics, had existed since 1976. 5 That tradition melded well with the American belief in hard work as the road to success. The history of business ethics is as old as the religious books like the Bible and the holy Quran. The many movements in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s led to attacks on business and responses from business. What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “business ethics?” Many people associate ethics with following your conscience or the law. American business ethics are based around the idea that it is possible to maximize wealth and profit while also being committed to upholding values and laws. This again subdivides into the integration of ethics into business and business practices on the one hand and the commitment to corporate social responsibility on the other. Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States. Cultural values were shifting, with individualism and fierce dedication to â¦ 2006. Many multinational companies have adopted codes that cover their practices throughout the world and/or have signed on to abiding by sets of principles such as the Caux Principles 16 or the principles contained in the UN Global Compact. Even some of the OECD countries have been lax, for example, in implementing and enforcing national legislation prohibiting bribery of foreign governments. Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk About How to Do It Right. The scandals about bribery, insider trading, false advertising, and the like, constitute what is generally regarded as misconduct in business and what the general public associates with business ethics—or more precisely, with the failure of businesses to act ethically. trace the history of business ethics issues since 1960. It also includes biographiesof individual firms, executives, and entrepreneurs. “Behavioral Ethics in Organizations: A Review.” Journal of Management 32 (6): 951–990. 7 Business ethics rapidly emerged as an academic field. Those who saw the global reach (e.g. 18. The emphasis on CSR, however, in some instances has become equated with business ethics, even though only some of a corporation’s social obligations are ethical. For him the problem with capitalism was that most of the benefits were reaped by the few, when there was enough to better the lot of all. For more on stakeholder analysis, see Freeman (1984), and Goodpaster (1991). But it did not raise its voice against slavery, for instance, and St. Paul even cautions slaves to obey their masters (Colossians, 3: 22). In the Middle Ages the Church had long prohibited usury and the practice of making money from money, although its position eventually changed to prohibit only excessive interest, rather than all interest payments. Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the US Economy. Its subject consists of fundamental issues of practical decision making, and its major concerns include the nature of ultimate value and the standards by which human actions can be morally evaluated. It was not until the late 19th century that the Catholic Church developed a program of social justice when Pope Leo XIII (1891) issued an encyclical, Rerum Novarum, laying out precepts for a just wage. 2006. On the world-wide level it became associated with the UN Global Compact, initiated by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in an address to The World Economic Forum on January 31, 1999, and officially launched in July, 2000. Business activity raises a host ofinteresting philosophical issues: of agency, truth, manipulation,exploitation, justice, and more. This is the level of corporate policy, of corporate culture, of responsibilities to the various stakeholders of a company, and to corporate social responsibility to the extent that such responsibility is ethical responsibility. Moral Issues in Business. It is not that the ordinary person or members of the media have read all of these works. The reinterpretation does not change the ethical obligations of corporations, but it does make it easier to argue that sometimes other stakeholders take precedence over shareholder interests. 1989. Courses and competing texts increased rapidly. The conduct of both the individuals and the organization as a whole need to be aware and are responsible for upholding the Code of Conduct. Westport, CN: Praeger Perspectives. In 1989 it changed its annual meeting to precede the Academy of Management annual meeting, although it still had sessions in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association. The signatories (initially 30, and eventually 50) agreed to have a code of conduct, to establish ethics-training programs for employees and to develop monitoring mechanisms to detect improper behavior. If they did so, and the firm or one of its employees was found guilty of defrauding the government in any way, the fine imposed could be reduced by up to 96% of the maximum fine of US$290 million. The notion of ethics in business can be traced back to the earliest forms of bartering, based on the principle of equal exchange. For example, unsafe working conditions are generally considered unethical because they put workers in danger. Ethics, Free Enterprise and Public Policy: Original Essays on Moral Issues in Business. 1991. 1979. The Johnson & Johnson Credo dates back to 1943. CSR has become something that corporations can no longer ignore and still maintain a positive public image. 1690. But the modern concept of business ethics dates back to the rise of anti-big business protest groups in the United States in the 1970s. Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Analysis. Instead of having a code of ethics like many companies do today, people centuries ago would still use ethical guidelines like the Ten Commandments or Aristotleâs economic relations philosophies. For more information on ISBEE, see http://www.globethics.net/web/guest/about-isbee. To help counter the protests, some corporations began to focus on a new term, social responsibility. De George, Richard T. "A History of Business Ethics." Barry, Vincent (ed.). In a study conducted by Mathew A. Foust and presented in his book Loyalty to Loyalty: Josiah Royce and â¦ For an overview, see Treviño et al. Despite these initial reactions, by the 1990s business ethics was well established as an accepted academic field. The field of business ethics, in its current form, grew out ofresearch that moral and political philosophers did in the 1970s and1980s. Many commercial ethics concepts used regularly within the United States span a wide range of business functions and departments. It seems that there has been an error in the communication. The sixth level is the global level and this deals with the ethical responsibility of corporations to help in the solutions of global issues, such as depletion of the ozone level, global warming, and similar topics that can only be adequately solved on the global level but for which businesses as well as nations bear responsibility. The most modern concept dates back to the rise of anti-big business protest groups in the United States in the 1970âs. The fourth government impetus came with the United States Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002), enacted in the wake of the Enron and associated scandals involving corporate governance. The SBE met initially in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association. In l979 the first texts in business ethics appeared: three anthologies—one by Tom Beauchamp and Norman Bowie, another by Thomas Donaldson and Patricia Werhane, and a third by Vincent Barry—followed by two single authored texts in 1982—one by Richard De George and the other by Manuel Velasquez. While the ethics-in-business approach for the most part was concerned with scandals and abuses that came to the public’s attention, those in business ethics examined the structure of capitalism and the structures of business, sometimes articulating the underlying moral justification of existing structures and practices and sometimes criticizing them from a moral point of view and arguing for change. (2006). Upon hearing the idâ¦ In November 1974, the first ever business ethics conference was held at the University of Kansas. A form of ethics is business ethics. Rather it is taken as a given in most developed countries that each person has a right to own property, and that such property should be protected by law. This could be a version of utilitarianism (which examines the consequences of actions), a Kantian approach to ethical issues (which assumes that duty and rights are basic) or an Aristotelian approach (which places virtue in the center and analyses the character of moral actors—in this case, those in business) or a combination of two or more of them. Conferences began to take place more and more often on various topics and issues in business ethics. This was an initiative by defense contractors in response to a series of irregularities in contracts with the United States government. 1. The Church has a long history of concern for the poor, and the administering of charity to those in need. In as early as 1700 B.C., the Code of Hammurabi was already prescribing prices, laying down rules of commerce, and instituting penalties for noncompliance. Other journals in business ethics followed. The philosophical stream came from philosophy departments and the applied-ethics area, of which medical ethics was the forebearer. 1979. “Business Ethics.” In New Directions in Ethics, edited by Joseph P. De Marco and Richard M. Fox. At the same time, many philosophy departments felt that those who engaged in the study of business ethics were not really doing philosophy as they defined philosophy. Many corporations have two officers and two offices: one the CSR which handles external obligations and one internal—a corporate ethics office—which handles internal ethical training and issues. Social responsibility differed from one industry to another since there were no set standards or descriptors in place to clearly define it. The scandals about bribery, insider trading, false advertising, and the like, the stories about Enron and Arthur Andersen and Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, constitute what is generally regarded as misconduct in business and what the general public associates with business ethics—or more precisely, with the failure of businesses to act ethically. The safety nets in place are also different. It is thus partially conservative and partially radical, and at different periods in different societies one or the other of these aspects is dominant. 1970. New York: Scribner. Beyond the borders of the United States some took the financial crisis to be a crisis of the legitimacy of capitalism, and at least some analysed the ethical justifiability of finance capitalism. What has become clear over the past 40 years is that all three strands of business ethics are interrelated. The United States maintained dominance in the field of business ethics, but centers appeared in many countries in Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and Africa. Article from the book Values and Ethics for the 21st Century. As a result of legislation, corporations were faced with the new task of establishing a corporate-ethics officer position and introducing codes and mechanisms for monitoring and enforcing the codes. In the United States the rapidly developing field had some impact on business. For St. Thomas Aquinas on usury (he followed Aristotle on this point), see his. Ethics, the philosophical discipline concerned with what is morally good and bad and morally right and wrong. What has also become clear, however, is that business ethics by itself is insufficient to level the business playing field for the benefit of all. Mele, Domenec. *Your comment will be reviewed before being published, How to Retort to the Climate Change Deniers, Three Benefits that Came from the Atomic Bomb, Yochai Benkler on Distributed Innovation, Creativity, Peer Production, Reimagining Work: Collaborative Authorship, Coordination, and Version Control II, Getting it Right, the Wrong Way: the Gump Trap, Business Models for Clients of the 21st Century, Do’s and Don’ts of the Augmented Reality App for Corporate Training, The Worth of Risk-Taking and Risk-Avoidance. The 1960s brought the first major wave of changes in business ethics. Business Ethics in the '60s. In the 1970s, scholars, theologians, and philosophers were all investigating the world of business. Drucker, Peter F. 1981. About the same time Richard De George developed a course in business ethics and circulated a ninety-page course curriculum to 900 interested professors in business schools and philosophy departments. Acting ethically ultimately means determining what is ârightâ and what is âwrong.â Basic standards exist around the world that dictate what is wrong or unethical in terms of business practices. The third strand is the adoption of ethics or at least the trappings of ethics in businesses. Explain the history of business ethics and how the concept has evolved over the years Washington, DC: US Catholic Conference. Both reflected the reality that business had become international and that such a development raised new issues that had to be addressed and to which there were no intuitive or easy solutions. Thank you for collaborating with the OpenMind community! Many of the criticisms were couched in moral terms, and when in the late 1970s the academic field of business ethics arose, it provided a vocabulary and overarching framework that the critics seized on and that soon spread to the media and to general culture. Countless philosophers and economists have examined the topic, from Aristotle and his concept of justice to Karl Marx's attack on capitalism. Ethics have been a part of the business ever since then. History. See, for example, the Transparency Corruption Perception Index http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results. This becomes clear when we see, as we have, popular protests when a government’s rampant corruption becomes public, and when government leaders are exposed for taking bribes from corporations on a large scale and enrich themselves at the expense of the people of a country. The questions were answered in different ways, some reducing the actions of corporations to the actions of the individuals who made up a corporation, some making the necessary accommodations in the use of moral terms to apply appropriately to corporate actions. The term âbusiness ethicsâ became popular in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s. The strand represents the widely-held belief that ethics applies in business just as it applies in all areas of life. In other parts of the world the same is true, and issues in developing countries are different from those in developed countries. “Religious Foundations of Business Ethics.” In The Accountable Corporation: Business Ethics V. 2, 11–43. 13. The moral norms that are violated apply to all sections of society. The international dimension included the actions of multinational or transnational corporations, child labor, exploitation of less-developed countries both with respect to labor and with respect to the environment, bribery, and operating in corrupt environments. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Velasquez, M. G. 1982. Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases. The first strand De George discusses is the one that can be dated back the furthest. Accessed April 10, 2019. The History of Business Ethics. Freeman, R. Edward and Robert A. Phillips. 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