Managing Ethics in Business Organizations: Social Scientific Perspectives

This work addresses the major theoretical questions involved in doing empirical research about normative issues. It addresses the boundaries - methodological, conceptual, and institutional - that too easily separate philosophical and social scientific approaches to business ethics, and reviews various ways in which those approaches can be brought close together to benefit research and practice. The text also describes the increasing institutionalisation of formal systems designed to manage ethics in organizations. It reviews the initiatives to foster ethical business conduct and also looks at the relative roles of executives and external policies in creating meaningful ethical initiatives. Also it covers individual ethical behaviour and how organizations influence it, describing in detail some of the outcomes of organizational ethics initiatives.