Edited by Alejo José G. Sison, Ignacio Ferrero and Gregorio Guitián
Can business activities and decisions be virtuous? This is the first business ethics textbook to take a virtue ethics approach. It explains how virtue ethics compares with alternative approaches to business ethics, such as utilitarianism and deontology, and argues that virtue ethics best serves the common good of society.
Looking across the whole spectrum of business—including finance, governance, leadership, marketing and production—each chapter presents the theory of virtue ethics and supports students’ learning with chapter objectives, in-depth interviews with professionals and real-life case studies from a wide range of countries.
Business Ethics: A Virtue Ethics and Common Good Approach is a valuable text for advanced undergraduates and masters-level students on business ethics courses.
"The three editors all work at the University of Navarra, two as professors of business ethics and one as associate professor of moral theology. According to them, Business Ethics (207 pages) is the first text book in that field that has been written fully from a virtue ethics perspective. The geographical / cultural diversity of the authors who contributed to the book is noteworthy; There are not just American and European authors, but also contributors from Africa, Asia and Latin America. The premise of the book is that the ultimate reason for existence of business is to promote the public interest or the common good. The consequence of this is, the editors argue in the preface, that maximizing profit cannot be the goal. The more than 200 pages of the book focus on three sources of virtue ethics: Aristotle, Alasdair MacIntyre and Catholic social doctrine. [...] What is a pity, I think, is that only three of these seven chapters provide a concrete list of the virtues required for making the aspect of the business process under discussion contribute to the common good. [...] As the editors acknowledge in their preface, the structure chosen for the book inevitably means that there is some overlap and repetition between the chapters. Nevertheless, my impression is that a slightly more systematic structure and further coordination between the authors of the chapters would have been possible; Some explanations, for example about MacIntyre’s distinction between internal and external goods and between practices and institutions, keep recurring. In addition, it is a regrettable gap that it is not discussed what Aristotle has said about man as a social animal, in above mentioned chapter that discusses the social nature of man according to Catholic doctrine. Furthermore a joint virtue list would have been a good starting point – the next book discussed in this reviews does a better job in that respect! – within which the authors could of course have worked with different priorities, interpretations and examples per chapter."
Table of Contents of Business Ethics
- Virtues and the Common Good in Business (Alejo José G. Sison, Ignacio Ferrero and Gregorio Guitián)
- Virtues and the Common Good in Leadership (Matthias P. Hühn, Marcel Meyer and Aliza Racelis)
- Virtues and the Common Good in Finance (Alejo José G. Sison, Ignacio Ferrero, Gregorio Guitián, Marta Rocchi and Andrea Roncella)
- Virtues and the Common Good in Production (Germán Scalzo)
- Virtues and the Common Good in Marketing (Pablo García Ruiz and Carlos Rodríguez Lluesma)
- Virtues and the Common Good in Human Resource Management (Javier Pinto-Garay and María José Bosch)
- Virtues and Common Good in Corporate Legal Practice (Kemi Ogunyemi and J. Brooke Hamilton)
- Practical Wisdom in Corporate Governance (Alejo José G. Sison and Matthias P. Hühn)
- Confucian Traditions in Virtue Ethics (Richard Kim, Reuben Mondejar, Richard Roque, Javier Cuervo)
About the Editors
Alejo José G. Sison is Professor (School of Economics and Business, University of Navarra) and former president of the European Business Ethics Network (EBEN) (2009–2012). He is Section Editor at the Journal of Business Ethics and editorial board member of Business Ethics Quarterly.
Ignacio Ferrero is Professor of Business Ethics (School of Economics and Business, University of Navarra) and Visiting Scholar at Bentley, Harvard and Notre Dame University. He is co-founder of the research group on virtue ethics in business and management.
Gregorio Guitián is Associate Professor of Moral Theology (School of Theology, University of Navarra). He has published several books and articles on Catholic Social Teaching in international journals. His research interest includes Catholic Social Teaching on economic issues. He is Associate Editor of the journal Scripta Theologica.
