Preface: Perspectives on Philosophy of Management and Business Ethics –With a special Section on Business and Human Rights; Jacob Dahl Rendtorff.- I. Business Ethics, Philosophy of Management and Theory of Leadership.- Business ethics, Philosophy of Management and Theory of Leadership; Jacob Dahl Rendtorff.- Universal Ideology & Ethical Strategy; Alan E Singer.- A Genealogy of the Gift; Germán Scalzo.- To Be or Not to Be a Dot? Philosophy of Management and the Subjective Body; Ghislain Deslandes.- A narrative research design into moral courage of financial professionals; Marion Smit.- Understanding value conflict to engage SME managers with business greening; Sarah Williams, Anja Schaefer and Richard Blundel.- My brother's keeper: a new phase in the debate on corporate responsibility; Johan Wempe and Willeke Slingerland.- Norms for networks: a contractarian approach to corruption; Willeke Slingerland.- Compliancy, Global Ethos and Corporate Wisdom: Values Strategies as an increasingly critical competitive advantage; Friedrich Glauner.- Mind the gap - the business ethics fallacy. Dispositional Attribution of Corporate Executives: Is self-interest a conscious decision or a state of mind?; Julian Clarke.- Honour as the (new) Foundational Virtue for Responsible Leadership in the Banking Sector. A Theoretico-conceptual Analysis; Johan Bouwer.- Ethical issues in e-commerce: A renewed analysis based on the multiplicity of customer relationships; Magnus Frostenson, Nina Hasche, Sven Helin and Frans Prenkert.- Whistleblowing and the Indonesian tax department: A framework for analysis (Research in process); Bitra Suyatno, Anona Armstrong and Keith Thomas.- II. Business and Human Rights.- Business Responsibility for Human Rights Violations From a Theoretical Perspective: Towards a Moral Division of Labour; Aurora Voiculescu.- Who cares whose cars? A philosophical analysis of the business and human rights conundrum; Ana-Maria Pascal.- How to accomplish Corporate Social Responsibility for Human Rights - A Case Study on the Nicaraguan Sugarcane Industry; Anita Aufrecht.- Connecting Corporate Human Rights Responsibilities and State Obligations under the UN Guiding Principles: Communication and Human Rights Due Diligence; Karin Buhmann.- Philanthropy and Human Rights in Business Ethics; Øjvind Larsen.- The Economics of Nonsense upon Stilts Basic Human Rights and Economic Analysis; Jörg Althammer.- Enlightened International Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Social Irresponsibility, and Human Rights; Aloys Prinz.- Power and weaknesses of the idea of natural rights; Giuseppe Franco.- List of contributors.
Jacob Dahl Rendtorff is professor at Roskilde University, Denmark and co-editor of the series ethical economy at springer, where the proposed book is proposed to be published. The book is the proceedings from the EBEN conference in Copenhagen 2015 where Jacob Dahl Rendtorff as head of EBEN Scandinavia was the main organizer.
This book presents a selection of articles with focus on the theoretical foundations of business ethics, and in particular on the philosophy of management and on human rights and business. This implies identifying and discussing conflicts as well as agreement with regard to the philosophical and other foundations of business and management.
Despite the general interest in corporate social responsibility and business ethics, the contemporary discussion rarely touches upon the normative core and philosophical foundations of business. There is a need to discuss the theoretical basis of business ethics and of business and human rights. Even though the actions and activities of business may be discussed from a moral perspective, not least in the media, the judgments and opinions relating to business and management often lack deeper moral reflection and consistency.
Partly for this reason, business ethicists are constantly challenged to provide such moral and philosophical foundations for business ethics and for business and human rights, and to communicate them in an understandable manner. Such a challenge is also of scientific kind. Positions and opinions in the academic field need to be substantiated by thorough moral and theoretical reflection to underpin normative approaches. Far too often, business ethicists may agree on matters, which they approach from different and sometimes irreconcilable philosophical standpoints, resulting in superficial agreement but deeper-lying disagreement. In other cases, it may be of high relevance to identify philosophical standpoints that despite conflicting fundamentals may arrive at conclusions acceptable to everyone.