Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics – Business Ethics, Corporate Ethics, grade: 2, 3, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, course: Unternehmensethik, language: English, abstract: In the past few years, business ethics has emerged as a broad and important
concept, universities are offering seminars, corporations are sending their managers
on trainings, and an enormous literature body seems to be emerging out of nowhere.
In contrast to this movement, the ‘globalization bible’, the novel No Logo written by
journalist Naomi Klein draws a different picture: it accuses companies and CEOs of
antisocial behaviour. Consumer capitalism on the one hand and at the same time
articles about sweatshops, bad working conditions, and ‘famous’ names like the
Brent Spar platform, Sao Wiwa and Shell, and Nike sweatshops support the negative
image of MNCs.
In the following I would therefore like to examine why certain corporations seem to
take on corporate responsibility while others, as stated in Klein’s novel, act as ‘the big
brand bullies’. I seek to answer in this paper why business ethics as a concept is not
an oxymoron (cp. Collins 1994) per se and why in the words of John L. Campbell
“given the incentives for maximizing profit and shareholder value, let alone acting
opportunistically, why would a corporation ever act in socially responsible ways, even
at the most minimal level” (947).
In general, there are three main approaches to the grounds of acting socially
responsible: there are moral reasons, economic reasons and institutional reasons.
First of all I would like to start by giving some theoretical basics. Subsequently moral,
economic and institutional theories as an explanation for the implementation of
business ethics will be examined. Because each of these three parts is considered
equally important they will all be covered, but concessions need to be made due to
the enormous width of the topic. I would then like to come up with a diagnosis and
possible topics to ‘walk the talk’ and finally draw a conclusion.
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