This commentary finds much to like about the work of Professor Thomas I. White, “Business, Ethics, and Carol Gilligan's ‘Two Voices.” (Vol. 2, No. 1, January 1992) At the same time it suggests further work is needed on the following points: (1) White must consider how males respond to dilemmas if he hopes to articulate a difference between male and female methods of responding; (2) White must support his conclusion that the “ethics of care” is the ethic most likely to produce the results that he assumes to be true, and further explain why he thinks that the studies he chooses support the “ethics of care,” and (3) White must explain why the “ethics of care” is not just as likely to produce a result opposite to that found by researchers.

Many areas of business ethics research are “sensitive.” We provide an empirical assessment of the randomized response technique which provides absolute anonymity to subjects and “legal immunity” to the researcher. Beyond that, RRT techniques provide complete disclosure to subjects, unconditional privacy is maintained, and there is no deception.

In all the criticisms that have shadowed the financial industry in recent years, the burden seems to be, that the reckless (as opposed to malicious) bankers too often took money of which they were the appointed stewards, and used it for speculation, especially in junk bonds. As Shaheen Borna and James Lowry argue in their “Gambling and Speculation” (the only article on gambling that I was able to raise on my computer) business speculation is probably wrong, since it is very like gambling, which everyone knows is wrong. But why is gambling wrong? If we, as the ethicists of business, are to adopt an uncharacteristically judgmental posture toward the most venerable American institutions, occupying the tallest and closest of American buildings, by calling their residents “gamblers,” then surely we ought to be able to provide an account of the blameworthiness of gambling itself. That, at any rate, is the challenge I set myself for this paper.

During the 2002–2003 academic year, Santa Clara University’s Institute on Globalization offered a series of public lectures, conferences, and exhibits featuring perspectives on globalization by leading scholars, journalists, officials, business leaders, and activists from around the world. The purpose of this program was to increase the attendees’ understanding of the processes and impact of globalization, especially in terms of the effects of market forces, advances in information technology, and new forms of transnational governance on developing countries.

To date, the business ethics movement has mainly concentrated on reaching the troops, not the generals. But the issue that will determine how well this movement succeeds in the opening decades of the new millennium is not how we drive ethics and compliance programs down an organization, but how we integrate considerations of ethics and values up in an organization. We must broaden the present group of business ethics advocates by enlisting influential policymakers, opinion leaders, the media, boards of directors, CEOs, investment bankers, international economic experts, and others who comprise what we might call the International Club of Thinkers and Doers. The key to ethical health in the future is a process that will drive integrity-based leadership and governance to the top of our global business organizations, with a goal to achieving global and universal standards of fundamental ethical values.

This 2001 Presidential Address critically examines the mission of SBE and how it can be fulfilled. I begin with Brother Leo Ryan’s 1994 Presidential Address, in which he asked how the SBE mission can be accomplished given the growing number of organizations that focus on business ethics. I take up his challenge by focusing on one objective of our stated mission: To help develop ethical business organizations. I examine two ways we might promote this objective: the Moral Market Model advocated by John Boatright in his 1998 Presidential Address and the Market of Morality model advocated by Thomas Dunfee in his 1996 Presidential Address. I argue both views are limited because they focus only on market institutions. I conclude with an example of how breast cancer awareness among African-American women was increased by relying on a multi-institutional approach: organizations (beauty parlors), individuals (hairdressers, who distributed the information), personal relationships, culture, and educational and health care institutions. The question remains: Who are our hairdressers?

It has been suggested that a new form of moral responsibility, labeled “social products liability,” is relevant to business ethics. In particular, this kind of responsibility might justify recent legal claims against firearm manufacturers. This paper argues that, as it has been presented, social products liability must rest upon utilitarian considerations or on a deeper, more complete theory of moral responsibility. In the first case, a new form of responsibility seems unnecessary, since liability could be directly apportioned on utilitarian grounds. In the second case, proponents of social products liability face the tasks of presenting the more complete theory and then anchoring social products liability to it.

The decade in which the Business Ethics Quarterly has flourished has been a good one for business and business ethics, in which new guiding theories (like stakeholder theory), new interpretations of older ethical concepts (trust, virtue, and the social contract, for instance), and whole new paradigms of doing business (the Triple Bottom Line) have entered the literature. But practice has not kept up with theory, and the theoretical gains seem to be offset by terrible losses in the temperance of greed, the fostering of trustworthiness, and sensitivity to the natural environment.

Raising the issue of corporate moral agency in our examination of the morality of corporate speech is important for two fundamental reasons. Each reason suggests we exercise caution in conflating corporations and individuals as the law often does. First, raising the issue of corporate moral agency is important to the aim of providing a framework for ethically evaluating corporate speech. It is tempting to proceed as if the nature of corporate speech is self-evident. But this is hardly the case. Corporations are not natural persons, and we mustn't assume corporate speech is indistinguishable from human speech. Before we can ethically evaluate corporate speech, we must first clarify what corporate speech is. This requires an understanding of the fundamental nature of the corporate entity, including its moral status. Second, raising the issue of corporate moral agency is important if we wish to promote morally responsible corporate speech. Any diminished moral capacity on the corporation's part would suggest a core role for the strong legal reinforcement of any ethical aspirations here. In promoting morally responsible corporate speech, ethical injunctions uncoupled from an effective legal regime may hold only limited promise.

This special issue is devoted to highlighting thinkers who have been overlooked within business ethics and who have important contributions to make to our field. We make the case that, as scholars of a hybrid discipline that also aims to address important issues of business practice, we need to look continually for new sources of insight and wisdom that can both enrich our discourse and improve our ability to generate ideas that have a positive impact on business practice. In this introductory essay, we discuss our rationale for creating this special issue, summarize the articles contained within, and close with thoughts on its significance for the field going forward.

Voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) aim to encourage ethical behaviors of organizations, yet studies show that many VSS adopters do not live up to these promises. Existing literature typically attributes the reason for this ineffectiveness to either policy–practice decoupling, owing to a lack of adhering to VSS requirements, or means–ends decoupling, owing to a lack of adapting to the local context. However, little is known about how the contradictory needs of adherence and adaptation evolve throughout VSS implementation. Building on the knowledge transfer literature, we develop a dynamic conceptual framework that distinguishes two phases of VSS implementation. Specifically, we theorize how tensions emerge in the transition between phases since the first phase primarily calls for adherence, whereas the second calls for adaptation. Applying this framework, we develop propositions to illustrate how these tensions relate to different VSS characteristics: stringency, enforcement, and scope. The article concludes with implications and future research directions for VSS scholarship.

In 1538–39 Francisco de Vitoria delivered two relections: De Indis and De iure belli. This article distills from these writings the topic of free trade as a “human right” in accordance with ius gentium or the “law of peoples.” The right to free trade is rooted in a more fundamental right to communication and association. The rights to travel, to dwell, and to migrate precede the right to trade, which is also closely connected to the rights to preach, to protect converts, and to constitute Christian princes. This has significant repercussions on the field of business ethics: the right to free trade is ultimately founded directly on natural law and indirectly on divine law; trade is not independent of ethics; and trade is presented as an opportunity to develop the virtues of justice and friendship, among other repercussions. Vitoria is portrayed as a defender of private initiative and free markets.

As a “case” in business ethics, the conduct of the firearms industry is hardly dilemmatic. The responsible choices before firearm manufacturers have long been clear, if largely neglected. The great interest here for business ethicists lies in understanding how civil law and ethics can work together to bring a rogue industry under control. Business ethicists have a role to play in shaping the formation of legal standards in this area. In turn, emerging concepts of manufacturers’ liability can make a contribution to the teaching of business ethics.

Accountability, it would seem, is something that everyone would like to see more of. Citizens would like to have a more accountable government; teachers and parents would like to have more accountable students and schools; and clearly, stakeholders and commentators appear to desire more accountable corporations. One of the leading organizations concerned with improving the social and ethical performance of business is called simply, “AccountAbility” (http://www.accountability21.net/). The uniformity of such calls for greater accountability tempts one to see it as an unalloyed benefit to organizational performance and societal advancement.

Competing schools of contemporary jurisprudence can be “internationalized” to elucidate special problems in interpreting obligations of multinational firms under emergent corporate and international codes. An “integrity” model proves superior to a relativist conception of international business precepts. An integrity jurisprudence provides a coherent vision of a global rule-of-law and ethics-of-principle for the world community’s rights correlative to MNC obligations while accomodating the indeterminate and contestable nature of interpretations of such textually-based directives.

The discipline of business ethics has been slow to include Big Tech as a worthwhile object of examination. My goal in this presidential address is to make the case that the discipline of business ethics is overlooking novel harms and marginalized stakeholders in emerging and impactful technology industries. Furthermore, although the discipline is improving, the persistent narrowness of our field inhibits our ability to identify and examine novel issues in these important industries. I use standpoint theory to suggest one reason why we remain narrow in what we think counts in business ethics as valid objects of concern: because we are similarly narrow in who counts as a business ethicist. As scholars, we are a lens that we train on the world to identify who counts as a scholar, what we study, and who matters.

The market failures approach (MFA) to business ethics argues that economic theory regarding the efficient workings of a market can generate normative prescriptions for managerial behaviour. It argues that actions that inhibit Pareto optimal solutions are immoral. However, the approach fails to identify goods that should be regulated or prohibited from the market, something common to the moral limits to markets (MLM) approach to business ethics. There are, however, numerous assumptions underlying Paretian efficiency, including some about the preferences of market participants. Trade in some goods violates some of these assumptions, and so these goods are morally suspect and can be understood to indicate that the market for these goods is not moral. This creates grounds sufficient for regulating, and possibly prohibiting, these goods. To help determine whether it is then necessary to regulate the goods, I propose a supplementary economic analysis to ascertain why an assumption regarding a particular preference is being violated.