We consider the problem of moral disjunction in professional and business activities from a virtue-ethical perspective. Moral disjunction arises when the behavioral demands of a role conflict with personal morality; it is an important problem because most people in modern societies occupy several complex roles that can cause this clash to occur. We argue that moral disjunction, and the psychological mechanisms that people use to cope with it, are problematic because they make it hard to pursue virtue and to live with integrity. We present role coadunation as a process with epistemic and behavioral aspects that people can use to resolve moral disjunction with integrity. When role coadunation is successful, it enables people to live virtuous lives of appropriate narrative disunity and to honor their identity-conferring commitments. We show how role coadunation can be facilitated by interpretive communities and discuss the emergence and ideal features of those communities.

“Business Ethics in Developing Countries: A Response to Rossouw” examines Gedeon J. Rossouw's account of business morality and those preconditions that he seeks in order to develop a moral business culture in South Africa, given the historical reality in that country. The paper argues that Rossouw does not take cognisance of history. Particularly of the decade after the election of the Nationalist Party Government in 1948, when that government strove to impose its ideology upon South African Society. If he did take cognisance of that history, then he would not be able to proffer those proposals which he believes would improve business morality there. The paper also extends a caution against the acceptance of economic advancement as a pre-condition for the appearance of moral business practices. Likewise for the contrary view that economic growth is the harbinger of moral decay.

My objective is to extend Ronald Green’s account of postmodernism by asking how postmodern ethicists should interview business people. I note the use of the interview method in current business ethics research. I then present Jeffrey Stout’s criticism of Robert Bellah’s interview techniques used in Habits of the Heart, which prompts questions about what constitutes a postmodern interview. In conclusion I seek clarification about whether and in what sense Ron Green intends to be a “foundationalist postmodern business ethicist.”

The focus of this paper is the ethics of information giving in the context of complex sales. It is argued that, while current theories provide a broad framework for describing the responsibilities of sales agents, they lack adequate descriptions of the conditions characteristic of complex sales situations. Without an adequate model of complex sales, ethical theories will fail to provide guidance to sales agents facing issues that arise from features of sales situations not accounted for in the theories. To motivate this claim, I develop a brief case study in the area of information system sales. The problem can be remedied, however, if the theories take into account the features of complex sales. A tentative list of such features is presented and their relevance to the case is discussed. One of the most important to emerge is the epistemic role of the buyer as the judge of competing information.

The topic of Manuel Velasquez's clear and persuasive paper is of great significance today—far greater than is commonly realized. For multinational corporations have come to play an extraordinary—and largely unchecked—role in shaping the conditions of life today around the world. It is not so much that they have begun to control legislative processes—although there is some of this—as that they have increasingly escaped governmental control by playing governments off one another. Accordingly, the board rooms in New York, Toronto, and Amsterdam have more and more replaced the legislative chambers in Washington, Ottawa, and the Hague as internationally significant centers of power. And where the interests of business and government have tended to merge, there one finds the most powerful international forces in the world today—witness Japan, Inc.

The measure proposed here, the ratio of the price reported in a given trade to the average world price for that commodity, is based on the average world price for a given commodity reported for all trades between the U.S. and all other countries for a given period. This new measure can be used to enable government agencies to identify trades between U.S. firms or individuals and their counterparts in other countries which are designed to further prohibited activities such as money laundering or tax avoidance. This measure would also enable the U.S. government to monitor trade flows more accurately, facilitating more analysis of trade imbalances between countries and tracking trade in strategic materials, for example, weapons. Use of this new measure could enable naive buyers and sellers of goods, for example, those situated in remote or underdeveloped markets, to know what their counterparts in more central and informed countries are paying or being paid for comparable goods, and hence to become more informed as trading partners.