International Business Ethics

Challenges and Approaches

Edited by Georges Enderle

The dramatic increase of international business since the 1980s has been a highly complex and rather opaque processs, despite the rhetorics both of globalization and the triumphant advance of capitalism. Enormous ethical challenges have come to the fore, which need thoughtful and courageous practical initiatives as well as academic expertise.

International Business Ethics: Challenges and Approaches, edited by Georges Enderle, is a pioneer in this widely uncharted field of international business ethics. This volume includes the work of 39 contributors, half of them from non-Western countries, first presented at the First World Congress of Business, Economics, and Ethics hosted by Reitaku University and the Institute of Moralogy in Japan. Together, their outstanding articles paint an extraordinarily rich and fascinating multidisciplinary picture of international business ethics as it evolves, and delineate the contours of how international business ethics may develop at the turn of the millennium.

Challenges addressed are: the need for a differentiated economic analysis beyond simple profit maximization; the active participation of the world’s religions in coping with global issues; information technology in different culture; the roles and responsibilities of transnational corporations; the demand for a new generation of business leaders; and the prospect of East Asia as a major economic region that will considerably shape the next century.

International Business Ethics is for scholars of business, economics, political science, ethics, and international studies, as well as for anyone interested in the growing field of international business ethics.

Georges Enderle is Arthur and Mary O’Neil Professor of International Business Ethics at the University of Notre Dame and Vice President of the International Society of Business, Economics, and Ethics (ISBEE). He is author and editor of numerous books and articles including Region- and Country-related Reports on Business Ethics* (Journal of Business Ethics, 1997) and Lexikon der Wirtschaftsethik (1993).

Reviews

“This book’s attempt to ‘paint a … picture of international business ethics as it evolves’ is clearly worthy and timely. Recently, for example, the New York Stock Exchange’s chairman flew to guerilla-held territory in Colombia to discuss ‘the promise of capitalism’ with the insurgency group’s leaders—dramatic evidence of the ethical and political implications of global business. These papers by academics and corporate executives from 15 countries (half of them non-Western) would have stimulated valuable discussion and insights at the 1996 conference for which they were prepared.… Many contributors are leading business ethics scholars—Norman Bowie, Richard DeGeorge, and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, to name the most notable…’ — Choice

“Enderle’s agenda was to provide an accounting of one meeting, as well as provoke a richer discussion. The book does both quite well. Economists, business persons, philosophers, theologians, Eastern traditions, Western traditions: all take their place in the chapters. The current state of affairs, Enderle would lead us to believe, is one of various discussions among all these actors. Most significantly, the book posits no clear answers, but this panoply of open discussion.” — Global Focus

“… this is a book with valuable and interesting specific topics …” — Ethics and Economics