Dear Readers,

Business ethics as an individual area of scholarship is merely thirty years old. It was in the 1980s that Harvard Business School established a department devoted to the investigation of ethics in business, thus ushering in the era of modern business ethics research.

Ethical dilemmas that occur in the course of business dealings nevertheless date back to the beginning of recorded human history. The Bible is a rich storehouse of examples of the complex nature of relations between economic processes and ethical conduct. Another noteworthy early source is Cicero's account of the situation on Rhodes, a classical business ethics dilemma: in times of an acute grain shortage on the island a merchant of Alexandria managed to sell his wares at a highly favourable price. When setting sail in Alexandria he saw many other vessels loaded with grain bound for Rhodes and knew the crisis would soon be solved. The inhabitants of the island were not aware of this. The merchant's ethical dilemma therefore is whether to tell the people of Rhodes that the lean days are soon over or keep the news to himself, selling his grain at the highest possible price. At the end of the story Cicero comments that providing appropriate information is a merchant's moral obligation even if he faces losses of profit by doing so.

Business Ethics

2013/6

Studies and Essays

Table of Contents

Which way to go?*

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff: After the Financial Crisis: The Ethics and Economics Debate Revisited

Giorgio Baruchello: Cruelty and Austerity. Philip Hallie’s Categories of Ethical Thought and Today’s Greek Tragedy

Jacob Dahl Rendtorff: Ethical Challenges Facing Greenland in the Present Era of Globalization: Towards Global Responsibility

Bo Isenberg: Mammonist Capitalism – Ubiquity, Immanence, Acceleration. And the Social Consequences

Signe Larsen: On New Beginnings and Democratic Legitimacy

Peter Wolsing: Responsibility to Nature? Hans Jonas and Environmental Ethics

Øjvind Larsen: Philanthropy and Human Rights - The Genealogy of the Idea from Antiquity to Global Society

*The source of the studies: Nordicum - Mediterraneum

Perspectives

Carlos Flores Juberías - Marija Atanaskova: Macedonia and its Way Towards European Integration: Advances, Obstacles and Implications for the Balkan Region

Maurizio Scaini: L’Egitto degli anni Settanta: Liberalizzazione economica e radicalismo islamico

Imre Garaczi: Die Globalisierung am Horizont der Geschichtsphilosophie

Guillermo Á. Pérez Sánchez: Europa y los Balcanes, veinte años de miradas cruzadas