Manager ethics

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Manager ethics
Slovak University of Technology Faculty of
Material Science and Technology in Trnava

• A History of Business Ethics

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Contents

• Greek Moral Philosophy
• Hellenistic and Roman Ethics
• Early Christian and Ethics Reformation ethics
• Modern ethics
• Business Ethics as an Academic Field
• Business Ethics as a Movement

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Greek Moral Philosophy

• Socrates (469-399 BC)
• on the area of VALUES
• Aristotle ( 384-322 BC)
• Nicomachean Ethics

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Hellenistic and Roman Ethics

• Epicureanism taught that all humans by nature
  seek a pleasant life and that the best way to the
  pleasant life is through a life of moderate
  satisfaction.

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Hellenistic and Roman Ethics

• Stoicism taught that "the world is independent of
  our will" and consequently that a life detached
  from the natural events of life will be calmer
  and less troubled than a life bound up with false
  desires for worldly things.

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Early Christian and Ethics Reformation ethics

• Thomas Aquinas's
• Martin Luther
• Jean Calvin, and John Wesley

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Modern ethics

• Adam Smith (1723-1790)
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
• An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
  Wealth of Nations (1776)

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Modern ethics

• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
• categorical imperative

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Three formulations of the Categorical
Imperative.

• "Act only according to that maxim by which you
  can at the same time will that it should become a
  universal law."
• "Act as though the maxim of your action were by
  your will to become a universal law of nature."
• Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your
  own person or in that of another, always as an
  end and never as a means only."

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Modern ethics

• Max Weber (1864-1920)
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
  

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Business Ethics as an Academic Field

• Norman Bowie
• first conference in business ethics, which was
  held at the University of Kansas, and which
  resulted in the first anthology used in the new
  courses that started popping up thereafter in
  business ethics

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Business Ethics as an Academic Field

• Thomas Donaldson's
• The Ethics of Business Ethics (New York Oxford
  University Press, 1989) was the first systematic
  treatment of international business ethics

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Business Ethics as an Academic Field

• Tom Beauchamp and Norman Bowie
• Ethical Theory and Business
• Richard De George
• Business Ethics
• John Rawls
• A Theory of Justice

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Business Ethics as a Movement

• Johnson Johnson's
• well-known Credo was written and published by
  General Robert Wood Johnson in 1943

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General Motors

• In 1978 General Motors and a group of other U. S.
  companies adopted what are known as the Sullivan
  Principles, which governed their actions in South
  Africa.

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Sarbanes-Oxley Act

• The most recent legislative incentive to
  incorporate ethics in the corporation came in the
  Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

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• Thank you for your attention!
• Questions?