Contemporary Reflections on Business EthicsRonald F. Duska, who began his career as a philosopher, has, over the last 30 years, established himself as one of the leading scholars in the field of business ethics. In the past decade, he has concentrated on ethics in the financial services industry because of his affiliation with The American College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, an institution that specializes in educating financial services professionals. This affiliation gives Duska regular interaction with producers, managers, and top executives in the financial services industry. This book includes a selection of the articles Duska has written throughout the years on ethics, business ethics, teaching ethics, agency theory, postmodernism, employee rights, and ethics in accounting and the financial services industry. The articles reflect Duska’s underlying philosophical concerns and their application to the real-world challenges of practitioners—an overarching method that might be called an Aristotelian common-sense approach to ethical decision making. |
Contents
Chapter | 3 |
Ethics in Business | 7 |
Chapter | 10 |
Oxymoron or Good Business? | 51 |
Two Notions of Justice | 59 |
Chapter | 67 |
3 | 79 |
Chapter | 89 |
Who Are You To Say? Teaching Ones Values | 134 |
Conclusion | 136 |
Chapter | 139 |
Chapter | 149 |
Agency and the Problem of Agency | 151 |
The Economists Problem of Agency | 152 |
Agency Costs | 156 |
Glaucons Problem | 158 |
The Invention of Money | 96 |
Turning Psychological Impulse into a Social Function Versus Aims | 101 |
A New Ideal Type | 102 |
Recommendations | 103 |
Can Rawls View be Justified? | 105 |
Chapter | 109 |
Ethical Issues in Employment Loyalty and Agency | 119 |
Chapter | 121 |
Skepticism as a Pervasive Attitude | 124 |
Relativism as Skepticism | 126 |
Critiques of Relativism | 127 |
The Possibility of Moral Knowledge | 129 |
Implications for Teaching Business Ethics Courses | 131 |
Is There a Solution? | 132 |
What Ethics Courses Need to Add to Common Opinion | 133 |
SelfInterested Pursuit of Profit is Egoistic | 159 |
Challenging the Corporate Ethos | 161 |
Agency and Professionalism the Enlightened View | 162 |
The Agent in Business as Professional or the Professional as Agent | 166 |
Is the Enlightened View Also naïve? | 167 |
Employee Rights | 171 |
Ethical Issues in Financial Services | 187 |
The Ethics of the Market System | 193 |
Types of Roles in Financial Markets | 200 |
Institutional Barriers to Ethical Behavior | 203 |
Chapter | 223 |
Chapter | 233 |
Chapter | 245 |
Biography | 265 |