This is a collection of ISBEE documents: conference papers of the ISBEE quadriennal conferences and newsletters. The International Society of Business, Economics, and Ethics (ISBEE) is the first world-wide professional association to focus exclusively on the study of business, economics, and ethics. Its professional orientation involves people not only with academic competencies but also with practical competencies in responsible management positions (such as vice-presidents and issue managers) and entrepreneurs of medium-size and small companies. Individual membership consists of academicians, managers of business firms and of not-for-profit organizations, and others who have an interest in business ethics. Organizational membership includes companies and other organizations.

Recent Submissions

  • The Price of Truth

    E. Asira, Asira; Okpo, Odumayak (ISBEE, 2012)
    The media are the primary source of information in a democracy. Accurate and reliable information is the lifeblood of the democratic process. Perhaps, the most obvious players in this information flow are journalists who gain access to privilege information and attempt to provide such information as accurately as possible to the citizens to make informed and intelligent decisions. At the minimum, media audiences demand information unencumbered by deliberate falsehood or distortion of the truth. When this expectation is not forthcoming, a crisis of confidence occurs between the news media institutions and the public. This paper attempts to show that truth is undoubtedly the most fundamental norm in journalism. Truth in journalism does not only win public confidence, but also bring about well informed citizens, more profit for the news organization, good returns to its shareholders and growth of the news media organization as a whole.
  • The Impact of an Online Ethics Module on Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice Instruction on the Morality Levels of Appraisal Students

    Martin, Sam (ISBEE, 2012)
    This paper represents a portion of the work performed for the PhD in Education at Walden University. The financial markets have been in a state of chaos for a number of years. Some of the chaos can be attributed to appraisers bending under unethical pressure exerted by lenders (Martin, 2009). Bandura (2001) and Detert, Trevino and Sweitzer (2008) described such deviation from moral behavior as a disengagement from the agents of cognitive morality. Some suggest a lack of morality among appraisers was a principal cause of the financial collapse of the 2000s. Therefore, if appraiser morality could be positively affected, adherence to appraisal codes of ethics would be enhanced. Appraisers must complete a 7-hour USPAP Update Continuing Education course once per renewal cycle to maintain their license. The research problem is to determine the effect an online USPAP course has on the moral outlook of appraisal students who take these courses. The research will consist of administering the Defining Issues Test (DIT) before the USPAP course as a baseline, and then again after the USPAP course to determine if there is a difference in moral outlook. An Ethics Module (EM) will be created and added to the USPAP course for some participants. The researcher will determine if the EM affects the student’s morality level. The researcher will also determine if the teaching environment (online vs grounded) affects student morality. The results of this research may result in recommendations to the agency that promulgates USPAP based upon the results of this research.
  • The Paradigm of Unity in Business Management

    Grochmal, Stanisław (ISBEE, 2012)
    The article presents the idea of economy of communion realizing a new paradigm of management derived from the spirituality of unity of the Focolare Movement. The genesis and development of this idea on the background of the basic assumptions of the spirituality of unity are presented. It has been argued that the management style of the economy of communion companies can be considered as a new paradigm in the management, which is a special case of a paradigm of unity in the social sciences. The practice of governance of several hundred economy of communion businesses from more than 20 years and the developed scientific doctrine showing the application of the paradigm of unity in the various disciplines of science allows to formulate a thesis on the importance and influence of the spirituality of unity in the contemporary social, economic and cultural processes.
  • The “Sustainable Development Referential” As an Innovative Tool to Pilot and Implement Sustainability Development Strategies in French Higher Education Institutions

    Ernult, Joël; Ingham, Marc (ISBEE, 2012)
    The implementation of “Sustainability management systems”, has been viewed as a facilitator (lever) when it comes to developing and integrating sustainability and social responsibility in companies. An increasing number of higher education institutions adopt such systems to support the elaboration and implementation of sustainability strategies in their activities and operations. However, to our knowledge, few researches (if any), have addressed this topic in the context of Higher Education Institutions in France. This paper presents and discusses why and how an innovative tool “the sustainability development referential” has been developed to support these institutions (“Grandes Ecoles” and Universities) in their efforts to implement social responsibility (SR) and sustainable development (SD). More specifically, it traces back the origins and stages (from 2002 to 2012) leading to the establishment of this framework. To conduct this research we applied the methodology of case study analysis. The paper shows that this referential is an innovative tool aiming at helping higher education institutions to (1) Make a diagnosis of their situation regarding SD and SR ; (2) Define SD and SR strategies in line with national policies. (3) Implement an action plan (short term) and structure (mid and long term) their approach of SR and DD. (4) Assess actions; progress and outcomes in SD and SR. (5) Evaluate the possibility to benefit from "labels" and certifications in SD and/or SR. This paper situates at the interface between two principal fields of literature on: (1) Sustainability Management Systems (adapted to address the specificities of higher Education institutions) and (2) the design process ( to identify stages in the development of this innovative tool.) .Emphasis is put on three interdependent questions and dimensions: - the reasons why the innovative framework has been developed – its content (evolutions) - and the underlying processes (how it evolved). This case study shows that the design process follows a trajectory based on the interplay between "internal" and "external" dimensions. “Internal dimensions” cover (1) The number and variety of stakeholders involved in the process (2) The interactions between these actors. The process suggests a progressive transformation of" intermediate” and “boundary” objects which are co- constructed by actors involved . "External" drivers, such as national policies and laws, triggered new stages in the design of the referential; putting pressure on actors to modify its content.
  • Towards Siecle De Lumiere For Ethically Enlightened Management

    Mukherjee, Sanjoy (ISBEE, 2012)
    The Age of Enlightenment in the 17th – 18th century Europe came with the promise of Reason, Freedom and Happiness. The power of the Mind as in rational view of the world was the instrument in understanding Reality as it unfolds to us. But where is its influence in the management scenario today? Sumantra Ghoshal had rendered critical observations on the current mainstream management education in terms of ‘Bad Management Theories’. Warren Bennis was worried about why and How Business Schools lost the Way? On and positive note, Howard Gardner at Harvard was illustrating on eight facets of Human Intelligence a Danah Zohar was working on Spiritual Intelligence while Laszlo Zsolnai among others at the European SPES forum was creating spaces for responsibility and ethics in Business education. The present paper is an effort to address these issues from a perspective that is Indian with an appeal that is Eastern but seeking its relevance that is global in its reach and impact.
  • The Moral Inquiry in to the Lack of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

    Yuhua, Yu (ISBEE, 2012)
    The corporate social responsibilities (CSR) can neither be detached from the consideration of profit-making, nor only confined to that. The CSR, only if explained from an inner perspective of an enterprise, can be regarded as a moral one. The moral CSR means that an enterprise, having its ethical personality, is an ethical player in economic activities and also a player to fulfill social responsibilities. An enterprise’s ethical personality is incessantly and closely related with its economic activities, and is the pursuit and manifestation of human nature herein. It is the ethical personality of an enterprise that keeps it sticking to the life principle and sharing social responsibilities. An enterprise’s ethical personality can be built up only when it harmonizes its economic commitment and social commitment and unifies its profit-oriented activities and ethical-personality-oriented activities.
  • THE CROSS, THE SCEPTER AND THE CORPORATE JET:

    B. Lowry, David (ISBEE, 2012)
    This paper is about a fairly big idea; that global business, and especially business that operates through large multinational and state-owned companies, is going to partner with nation-states to create order and societal responsibility in the future. We would have liked our idea to be bigger; that is the idea that business would take over many functions of government and the world would be transformed by ‘global business-states,’ but the data and good sense pushed an idea that big into the background. But we do believe that companies will, in some cases at least, begin to take substantial responsibility for not only their own employees, but also for communities most impacted by the companies’ operations. Most often this will be found in the areas of resource extraction and manufacturing. But it may well move far beyond these areas.
  • The Ethics of CEO Apologies

    Koehn, Daryl (ISBEE, 2012)
    The number of corporate apologies has increased dramatically during the past decade. The trend has caught the eye of both rhetoricians and management scholars who have analyzed various corporate apologies, characterizing some as sincere and others as merely ritualistic. The classification schemes used by these analysts tend to be highly schematic—i.e., they focus on the necessary and sufficient logical qualities that an apology must possess in order to qualify as sincere. Another body of management literature overlaps with these logical analyses but focuses on public relations and considers which types of apologies by CEOs are most successful in repairing a firm’s image. The logical and PR analyses are not completely distinct, for an apology by its very nature aims at restoring trust among parties and that restoration may involve damage control. This paper adds several important but overlooked dimensions to the debate by delving into the ethics of CEO apologies. First, rather than just listing traits or features than an apology should have, I ground these features in the nature or essence of an apology. Second, I explore the largely ignored role played by the speaker’s ethos and pathos in genuine or ethical apologies and suggest that attention needs to be paid to the problems “role contamination” poses for CEO apologizers. Third, I conclude by arguing that it likely is not possible to specify all of the necessary and sufficient conditions for an apology to be ethically good. The most one can hope to do is to outline some key aspects of an ideally good apology.
  • The Director of Corporate Social Responsibility

    Imbs, Pia (ISBEE, 2012)
    Corporate Sustainability is a business approach that creates long-term stakeholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments. The quality of a company's strategy and management and its performance in dealing with opportunities and risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments can be quantified and used to identify and to select leading companies for investment purposes. Leading sustainability companies display high levels of competence in addressing global and industrial challenges in a variety of areas. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the job accountabilities of a sustainable development director and the job requirements that such a director has to fulfil. After reviewing the litterature of Responsible leadership and also both the aptitudes and competences required to take the leadership in a company's 'sustainable development' policy, we demonstrate how a manager in charge of Corporate Social Responsibility (or Director of Sustainable Development) is encouraged to set up and accompany a formulated strategy. We base our research on recent diverse studies which analyse the new position of a sustainable development director which relates how this function, in a variety of situations, is deployed in organisations. We will conclude our study setting out the complexity of the tasks and difficulties encountered in this very new managerial function.
  • The Global Local Dimension of Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting

    Babińska, Danuta; Grochal, Magdalena (ISBEE, 2012)
    While CSR concept might be of global nature, recent research suggests that it is applied differently across different social, economic, cultural, legal and political contexts. The undertaken research project aspires to make a contribution by adding the perspective of transition economies from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to the already well established view on CSR in Western Europe and the USA. Its main purpose is to determine whether local or global orientation dominates in CSR strategies and consequently, social reporting, in case of global corporations operating in the CEE region. Corporations selected for the study, being direct foreign investors in the region, are listed in the annual ranking Fortune 500 and included in the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World. For comparative purposes the companies’ websites in 179 countries were searched systematically for reference to CSR. Findings show that differences in the approach to reporting and information policy between the corporations result from their own initiative and governments’ requirements.
  • THE CAPABILITY APPROACH AS GUIDANCE FOR CORPORATE ETHICS

    Enderle, Georges (ISBEE, 2012)
    The article attempts to make the capability approach fruitful for corporate ethics (i.e., the ethics of business organizations) in two parts. The first part presents the capability approach. After a short historic overview of its development advanced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, the question about an adequate informational basis for interpersonal comparisons is raised, and traditional answers of the utility-based and resources-based approaches are criticized. Against this backdrop, the essential elements of the capability approach, common to Sen and Nussbaum, are highlighted and some foundational implications of Sen’s capability approach in particular are explained, followed by a few considerations on the limitations of the capability approach. The second part discusses the application of the capability approach to corporate ethics. Beginning with three basic assumptions on corporate ethics, the application includes a critique of “value-free” economics and other business disciplines and an enrichment of the notion of rationality. It stipulates a sensitivity to issues of poverty and distribution and elaborates on the focus on functionings and capabilities. The article ends with a few concluding remarks.
  • THE CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY CONTINUUM MODEL

    Rojek-Nowosielska, Magdalena (ISBEE, 2012)
    The paper aims to present an author’s continuum model of corporate social responsibility (CM-CSR). The main plot of the article is firstly directed to the theoretical models description, and secondly to the continuum model of CSR presentation. The main assumption of the CM-CSR is a hierarchization and a succession of every stage of the model. The continuum model of CSR consist of 12 specific stages, describing a possible paths and ways of a company’s behavior in terms of their social responsibility in business.
  • TEACHING ETHICS

    T. Jáuregui de Pivetta, Norma (ISBEE, 2012)
    According to A. Etzione1, “almost the entire life of the contemporary man goes by inside organizations: we are born, grow, receive education, practice religion, work, have fun, marry and even die within organizations. And in the supreme moment of death, the organization par excellence, the State, gives us permission to be decently buried.” Such magnitude of functions carried out by organizations makes it vital for the professionals -who develop most of their job within organizations-, to be not only qualified on their area of expertise, but also to possess moral judgment. This moral judgment must always be exercised, even in hard, conflictive and uncertain situations. A business implies administration, especially of people who essentially cooperate with each other in the achieving of an objective. If we add to this the globalization and change issues, we arrive to the conclusion that managers and professionals must be able to make fast and convenient decisions for the technological and economical world, but said decisions must take into consideration the application of ethical values. Education has to focus on the individuals and not on the knowledge transmission. Learning through education must be integral and holistic and must include a moral dimension.
  • TECHNÉ OR PHRONESIS? THE TEACHING OF ETHICS IN BUSINESS SCHOOLS

    Sastre, Raquel (ISBEE, 2012)
    This work is inserted into the Ethical Entrepreneurship theme of the Fifth ISBEE World Congress. It revolves around the question: Is it necessary (and possible) to teach Ethics in business schools? According to research in which a sample of professors of Economic Sciences in Argentina and in Brazil was interviewed, this paper sustains that the teaching of the theoretical aspects of Ethics in business schools is empty of meaning and content if it is not put into practise. Other requirements, such as a previous training of the professors on Ethical questions, theories and approaches, are necessary in order to be successful in the teaching and learning of Ethics in business schools.
  • THE CSR STANDARDS IN SMALL BUSINESS:

    Lewicka-Strzalecka, Anna (ISBEE, 2012)
    The aim of this article is to discern the crux of SME sector social responsibility in developing countries. An attempt is made to identify, empirically, the ethical standards subscribed to by small firms in Poland and to compare them with the standards of small firms in the UK. The methodology of empirical analysis of the ethical standards of Polish entrepreneurs running small businesses was modelled on Laura Spence’s research on the priorities, practices and ethics of small firms in the UK (Spence 2000). This analysis has revealed certain similarities and significant differences in the way CSR is perceived by Polish and British entrepreneurs. British entrepreneurs manifest a higher degree of awareness with regard to the issue of social responsibility and are more strongly motivated by their external environment to take up social responsibility issues than Polish ones.
  • TEACHING BUSINESS ETHICS DURING AN ECONOMIC CRISIS

    Sójka, Jacek (ISBEE, 2012)
    In 2003 a conference took place at Adam Mickiewicz University, organised by the Polish chapter of EBEN and the Institute of Cultural Studies of AMU and dedicated to the “post-Enron trauma” in business ethics teaching and research. We still discussed the issue even after the conference and finally the proceedings were published in 2005 under the title “Post-Enron business ethics”.1 All authors were convinced that business ethicists witnessed a kind of a turning point: such a shock should have a healing long term effect. Once we had witnessed the consequences of an unethical and, in most cases, simply criminal behaviour – nothing of that would be allowed in the future. Managers would learn the lesson as well as governments, public opinion and the whole range of other stakeholders. For business ethicists it was an opportunity to analyse corporate governance problems, to ask whether similar breach of all basic rules would be possible in Europe and to use this case as a basis of class discussions at universities and elsewhere.2 At that time (and today) “Enron” of course was a symbol of the whole series of bankruptcies caused by questionable business behaviour that shook the American economy. Many prominent figures of American business and politics deplored about the erosion ethical standards and about greed as a driving force of many American companies. Among them are Henry Paulson, Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan who are not – as noted by Laczniak and Murphy – “left-wing crackpots, socialist university professors, or third-world antiglobalists seeking to derail capitalism. They are among the most respected captains of the American economic system, and they are shocked, saddened, and growingly disturbed about the practices and veracity of the business and financial system.”
  • SUSTAINING THE SUSTAINABLE:

    Cecilia Coutinho de Arruda, Maria; Lino de Almeida Lavorato, Marilena (ISBEE, 2012)
    The present article points out the challenges of developing a culture of sustainability, given pressures in organizations. The authors explore how environmental issues have been treated since early signs of life were recognized. The worldly planned use of scarce natural resources lead to a new order of decisions: international policies and agreements, technology development, innovation in processes and products, research, reports, among others. In a concrete international joint effort, sustainability should not mean fear for any stakeholder in organizations. The authors analyze sustainability officers’ perspectives to enforce a sustainable culture in the enterprises, compared to the experience of business ethics officers.
  • BUSINESS ETHICS EDUCATION

    J. Schweigert, Francis (ISBEE, 2012)
    Business ethics education has focused primarily on moral formation of individual leaders and managers in the context of ethical codes, organizational culture, and legal compliance. Important as this approach is, it fails to generate a sufficient level of business responsibility to satisfy legitimate social concerns regarding the use of natural resources, environmental sustainability, reasonable limitation of systemic risk in capital markets, and fair allocation of goods and services. This author proposes that business responsibility regarding social conditions be addressed as a matter of justice and that three essential elements be added to business ethics education: (a) distinguishing personal moral accountability to one’s conscience from ethical accountability on matters of justice in the public arena; (b) grounding businesses’ social responsibility in justice and external accountability; and (c) preparing business leaders to engage in public deliberation to determine the legitimacy, priority, and justice of social claims.
  • SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY OF A UNIVERSITY

    Geryk, Marcin (ISBEE, 2012)
    We can read about the issue of responsibility for one’s actions as far back as in ancient writings. In his works Aristotle stresses the significance of ethical action. He emphasizes the appropriate use of material goods and he calls justice an ethical virtue. In the modern times the importance of personal choice and values have been pointed out by J.P. Sartre. Elements of responsibility for acting in accordance with the precept of norms which stem from the human nature can be found, among others, in K. Wojtyła’s “Ethical Primer” (Wojtyła, 1999, pp. 38-39). It is difficult to assume the existence of one universal ethics for the whole world. However, all human kind relies on certain assumptions of certain ethical systems. This view is shared by R.C. Salomon, who says that “there exist many sets of values and rules depending on context, society or subculture” (Sartre, 2007). Other authors, such as A. Lewicka-Strzałecka, claim that “responsibility is a category with a cognitive and practical quality for the analysis of economic life” (A. Lewicka-Strzałecka, 2006). The business and society theory presented by S.L. Wartick and P.L. Cochran presents a critical attitude towards the neoclassical tradition of an economy based on growth, which assumes that business actions which ensure gaining a maximal profit, within legal regulations, are the only responsibility business bears before society (Wartick, Cochran, 1985, pp. 758-769). Multidimensional actions undertaken in accordance with Wartick and Cochran’s model of social action not only increase competitive advantage but also create an added value for society.
  • SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF CORPORATE CULTURE AND GOVERNANCE IN JAPAN

    Suzuki, Teruji (ISBEE, 2012)
    The notion of corporate governance was attracted as that of control over management of a corporation by stockholders in the 1990s because most of the individual stockholders demanded some reforms of the stock exchange system, which was vital to affect the market situation. The reform oriented criticism against the established system claimed to introduce the American type of corporate governance in Japan, (1)which were also debated between the governments as a problem of structural adjustment of socio-economic reforms during the 1980s. Despite such a political climate ,however, it was not easy to reach a concrete goal on system of corporation and its governance .

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