Integrating Ethics With Strategy

This volume brings together 18 innovative articles on business strategy and ethics. Originally appearing in reputed journals, the articles are interrelated and focus on complex linkages between ethics and strategy in business.The first of its three sections discusses various frameworks developed by the author that explicitly integrate strategy with ethics. The second section comprises articles placing business ethics relative to management-science models and systems thinking. The final section applies some of the foregoing ideas to strategic and social issues, including poverty alleviation, corruption reduction, political divestment decisions, intellectual property rights, and pharmaceutical industrial strategy.

This book investigates how different types of Japanese management systems are able to motivate stakeholders, including employees, top management, stockholders, customers and transaction partners, to participate actively in the organizational behavior that improves business performance. The various systems motivating stakeholders are examined in five sections: strategy and business restructuring for enhancing the business value; management control systems and budgeting; cost management; management accounting for supply chain and shared services; and, process management.

A series of high-profile events in recent years have highlighted the growing need to cover ethical issues in international business and raise awareness of the responsibilities that need to be integrated into all levels and all subjects. Utilising the knowledge from a wide selection of expert contributors and illuminated by a case study for each chapter, this comprehensive volume makes a compelling case for business ethics to become an integrated consideration across the business disciplines, rather than an afterthought in the curriculum.

Events such as Trafigura's illegal dumping of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire and BP's environmentally disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have highlighted ethical issues in international business at a time when business leaders, academics and business schools were reflecting on their own responsibilities following the global financial crisis. The scope and scale of the global operations of multinational businesses means that decisions taken in different parts of the world have far reaching consequences beyond the national settings where employees are located or where firms are registered and as such, an awareness of these responsibilities needs to be integrated into all levels and all subjects. Using four guiding principles – a critical multi-level approach rooted in the tradition of European social theory, a comparative and international perspective, a global rather than just a European or American stand point and engaging with subject-specific issues this book aims to 'mainstream' business ethics into the work of teachers and students in business schools. This comprehensive volume brings together contributions from a range of experts in different areas of business studies thereby facilitating and encouraging a move away from business ethics being a box to be ticked to being an integrated consideration across the business disciplines. This impressive book brings ethical considerations back to the heart of the business curriculum and in doing so, provides a companion for the progressive business student throughout their university career.

These chapters on ‘Responsible Leadership’ represent the latest thinking on a topic of increasing relevance in a connected world. There are many challenges that still remain when it comes to establishing responsible leadership both in theory and practice. Whilst offering conceptualisations for the improvement of leadership is a first and perhaps easier response, what is more difficult is to facilitate the actual change to happen. These chapters will not only generate interest in the emerging domain of studies on responsible leadership, but also will pave the way for future research in this area in the years to come. Previously Published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 98 Supplement 2, 2011​

Engineers and ethicists participated in a workshop to discuss the responsible development of new technologies. Presenters examined four areas of engineering-sustainability, nanotechnology, neurotechnology, and energy-in terms of the ethical issues they present to engineers in particular and society as a whole. Approaches to ethical issues include: analyzing the factual, conceptual, application, and moral aspects of an issue; evaluating the risks and responsibilities of a particular course of action; and using theories of ethics or codes of ethics developed by engineering societies as a basis for decision making. Ethics can be built into the education of engineering students and professionals, either as an aspect of courses already being taught or as a component of engineering projects to be examined along with research findings. Engineering practice workshops can also be effective, particularly when they include discussions with experienced engineers. This volume includes papers on all of these topics by experts in many fields. The consensus among workshop participants is that material on ethics should be an ongoing part of engineering education and engineering practice.