Velasquez, Manuel G. (2005). Business Ethics, A Teaching and Learning Classroom Edition: Concepts and Cases. Prentice Hall, 6th edition.

Book Description: This book provides readers with a clear, straightforward writing style, an abundance of examples, detailed real-life cases, and current data and statistics. It aims to 1) introduce ethical concepts that are relevant to resolving moral issues in business, 2) develop the reasoning and analytical skills needed to apply ethical concepts to business decisions, 3) identify moral issues specific to business, and 4) examine the social and natural environments within which moral issues in business arise. Chapter topics cover ethics and business, ethical principles in business, the business system, ethics in the marketplace, ethics and the environment, the ethics of consumer production and marketing, the ethics of job discrimination, and the individual in the organization. For anyone in business.

About the Author: Manuel Velasquez is the former Director of Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. He is now chair of the Department of Management at the Leavey School of Business at SCU. He is the author of numerous scholarly articles on Business Ethics.

DesJardins, J. and McCall, J. J. (2004). Contemporary Issues in Business Ethics. Wadsworth Publishing. 5th edition.

With coverage of business ethics from a social and political perspective, this book focuses on areas of business ethics that are relevant to today’s student. Boxes in the text highlight important topics in ethics, including ethical relativism, psychological egoism, ethics and the law, virtue ethics, and ethical decision-making. Case studies, chapter introductions, and decision scenarios are just a few of the tools found throughout that help you master difficult concepts.

Here is an excerpt from the Preface of the book:

“When the previous edition of this textbook was published five years ago, Enron was best known to the general public as the corporate sponsor of a major league baseball stadium in Houston, Arthur Andersen was a “Big Five” accounting firm well-known for sponsoring conferences in business ethics, and a stock market boom fueled by the Internet made enormous CEO salaries seem almost reasonable. Today, Enron is a synonym for corporate corruption and greed, Arthur Andersen is out of business because of its own ethical failings, and exorbitant CEO salaries are universally vilified. The relevance and importance of business ethics has never been more obvious.

This edition has been updated with numerous new readings and cases addressing many of the events that have occurred in the past few years. New readings have been added on corporate governance, executive compensation, and the professional responsibility of accountants and auditors. New case and decision scenarios include Enron, Arthur Andersen, Martha Stewart, and market timing in the mutual fund industry.

But recent developments within business ethics have not been restricted to those brought about by corporate scandals. This edition also includes new readings and cases on meaningful work, consumerism, layoffs, sales and marketing, product safety, sustainable business, sweatshops, and global business.

Nevertheless, readers of the prior edition will recognize a familiar logical structure to this text. Thus, in Part I, we continue to introduce students to the conversation by beginning with the classic essay by Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” Chapters 1 to 3 use this essay, and the ethical, social, and economic views it presupposes, to introduce students to the basics of philosophical ethics: utilitarianism, rights, duties, relativism, ethics and the law, and so forth. Chapter 4 examines in some depth alternative models of corporate social responsibility and corporate governance. The general conclusion from these chapters is that a philosophically adequate perspective must acknowledge that business has many ethical responsibilities beyond the narrow ones described by Friedman. To understand the full range and content of such responsibilities, we then examine business’s ethical relationships with its major stakeholders: employees (Part II), consumers (Part III), and society at large (Part IV).

Likewise, this edition remains committed to the four original goals of the first edition. We seek to approach business ethics from a social and political perspective that considers the proper place of business within a society committed to democratic ideals. We also continue to bring special attention to the rights and responsibilities of employees. While many students who use this text will eventually hold managerial positions, they all, with few exceptions, will first and always be employees. Third, we seek a balance between philosophical analysis and accessibility to a wide range of student interest and abilities. We believe that this book will stimulate student interest both at first glance and after sustained study. Finally, we have presented readings and cases that reflect a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Our readings come not only from philosophy and management, but also from law, economics, marketing, sociology and industrial relations. Case and decision scenarios encourage students to apply the lessons from these diverse fields to practical real-world issues. […]” (pp. xiii-xiv)

Snoeyenbos, Milton, robert Almeder and James Humber (Eds.) (2001). Business Ethics. Amherst, NY: Prometeus Books.

Fully updated and revised, this contemporary classic discusses the powerful moral issues facing corporate America: conflict of interest, payoffs, trade secrets, product safety and product liability, hiring, drug testing, reverse discrimination, worker safety, whistle-blowing, ethical decision-making, ethical accounting and advertising practices, environmental responsibility, and the conduct of multinational corporations.

Here is an excerpt from the Preface of the book:

“Many of the job-related decisions corporate employees must make are moral in nature. Recognizing this fact, most institutions of higher learning now offer business ethics courses in an attempt to provide students with the tools necessary to make such decisions. As business ethics courses have proliferated, the number of texts designed for teaching such courses has increased as well. Unfortunately, however, many of these texts are flawed in one of two ways: (1) those that address issues of interest to business students are generally not philosophically sophisticated, and (2) philosophically sophisticated texts are often too sophisticated, concentrating on issues that appeal to philosophers rather than business students.
In designing this book a conscious attempt has been made to avoid both of these extremes. We began with the intuition that business ethics courses should be designed primarily for business students, and should therefore address the issues faced by business men and women in their professional lives. Furthermore, we felt that only “essential” elements of ethical theory need be considered; lengthy discourses on distributive justice, Kant’s categorical imperative, metaethics, and similar topics would only bore students and leave them with the impression that moral philosophy is unintelligible to all but a few “eggheads,” and totally irrelevant to “real life.”

To achieve our goals we worked closely with the College of Business at Georgia State University in an effort to identify moral issues relevant to business men and women. We have taught a number of business ethics courses to students enrolled in the school of business, and, in the process, a wide variety of teaching materials have been evaluated. Sometimes the extant literature did not fill our needs; and where we found this to be the case we wrote essays ourselves or commissioned others to write them. All the essays included in this text have been chosen for their intelligibility and their potential to encourage classroom discussion. The essays are not intended to solve moral problems. Rather, they raise moral issues and propose “bold hypotheses” that invite further discussion. Additional discussion is encouraged by the inclusion of numerous case studies.

Business students who work through this text will learn some of the essentials of ethical theory and will acquire the basic tools needed to deal with the types of moral problems they will face dining their professional lives. Again, the case studies illustrate the types of situation people are likely to encounter in business. On the other hand, philosophy students will learn a great deal about the business world and the problems confronting corporate employees. Both philosophy and business have much to gain by a closer alliance; and if that alliance is strengthened in any way by our text, we will count it a success. […]” (pp. 13-14)

A ground-breaking book, which has changed the way business ethics is considered
by both the business community and philosophers.

Offers substansive answers to questions of business ethics, resolving key problems of personnel, finance and corporate governance Supplies an Ethical Decision Model which can be used to manage businesses’ ethical problems Provides provides solid arguments for rebutting trendy but unethical demands for ’social responsibility’ and ’stakeholding’ in business

Just Business; Business Ethics in Action is a ground-breaking book, which has changed the way business ethics is considered by both the business community and philosophers. Employing a powerful, original explanatory framework, Just Business offers substansive answers to questions of business ethics, resolving key problems of personnel, finance and corporate governance. Even more significantly Just Business supplies an Ethical Decision Model which can be used to manage businesses’ ethical problems whenever and wherever they arise, in all their real -life complexity and variety.  

By introducing conceptual clarity to business ethics, Just Business provides solid arguments for rebutting trendy but unethical demands for ’social responsibility’ and ’stakeholding’ in business. Just Business demonstrates that business’s correct ethical concern is just.

As presented in Just Business, business ethics is not an extraneous anti-business option: it is rigorous, analytical business tool. Just Business provides a systematic, jargon free argument to show that it is not necessary either to emasculate or to adulterate business for business to be moral. Combining business realism with philosophical rigour, and employing a global pespective, Just Business should be of use to all who have dealings with business, whether as employees or directors, customers or lenders, shareholders or formulators of public policy.

Sternberg, Elaine (2000). Just Business: Business Ethics in Action NY: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition.