“Ethics and the Conduct of Business”, 5^th e, John R. Boatright

[Chapters]

1.        Ethics in the World of Business

2.        Welfare, Rights, and Justice

3.        Equality, Liberty, and Virtue

4.        Whistle-Blowing

--the voluntary release of nonpublic information, as a moral protest, by a member or former member of an organization outside the normal channels of communication to an appropriate audience about illegal and/or immoral conduct in the organization or conduct in the organization that is opposed in some significant way to the public interest. (97:98)

5.        Trade Secrets and Conflict of Interest

6.        Privacy

--matters involving information and, in particular, to the access of others to undocumented personal information (W. A. Parent).

Other Definitions

--the right to be let alone

--to have control over information about ourselves

Category

--Employee Privacy

--Consumer Privacy

7.        Discrimination and Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action – action plans in order to address the problem of discrimination more effectively.

Category

--Discrimination on the Basis of Sex

--Religious Discrimination

--National Origin Discrimination

--Age Discrimination

--Discrimination against the Handicapped

8.        Women (Sexual Harassment) & Family Issues

--a form of sex discrimination

9.        Unjust Dismissal

10.     Marketing, Advertising, and Product Safety

--Ethical Conduct in Marketing (information, sales practice, labeling, pricing and distribution)

--Advertising: deceptive advertising, irrational persuasion …

--Product Safety (Due Care): design, materials, production, quality control, packaging, labeling, warnings, and notification. Misuse, negligence.

11.     Occupational Health and Safety

12.     Ethics in Finance

--Deception, churning, suitability, fraud and manipulation, equal information, equal bargaining power, efficient pricing, inside trading, hostile takeovers, tender offers, golden parachutes, greenmail.

13.     Ethics and Corporations

--Corporate Social Responsibility, corporate governance.

14.     International Business Ethics

--Human rights, justice, wages and working conditions, foreign bribery, cultural differences.

“Business Ethics”, 5^th & 6^th e, Richard T. De George

[Chapters]

1.        Ethics and Business

2.        Conventional Morality and Ethical Relativism

3.        Utility and Utilitarianism

4.        Moral Duty, Rights, and Justice

5.        Virtue, Moral Responsibility, and Moral Reasoning

6.        Justice and Economic Systems

7.        American Capitalism: Moral or Immoral?

8.        Corporations and Morality

9.        Corporate Governance, Accounting, Disclosure and Insider Trading

--Top management, the corporate board, accounting, corporate disclosure and insider trading

10.     Finance, Restructuring, and Investing

--Secrecy and disclosure, corporate takeovers and restructuring, ethics and hostile takeovers, greenmail, golden parachutes, leveraged buyouts by management, downsizing, ethical investing.

11.       Safety, Risk, and Environmental Protection

--Safety and acceptable risk, product safety and corporate liability, production safety, environmental harm, pollution.

12.       Whistle Blowing

13.       Marketing, Truth, and Advertising

--Marketing, competition, pricing, bidding, consumer marketing, direct marketing, truth and advertising, manipulation and coercion, paternalism and advertising.

14.       Worker’s Rights: Employment, Wages, and Unions

--Employment at will, just wages, comparable worth, executive compensation, unions: the right to organize, the right to strike.

15.       Worker’s Rights and Duties within a Firm

--Hiring, Promotion, and Firing, employee civil rights, equal treatment, sexual harassment, privacy, polygraphs, drugs, polygraph testing, drug testing, testing for AIDS, quality of work life, conditions of labor, worker relations, worker attitude, employee duties, worker loyalty and obedience.

16.       Discrimination, Affirmative Action, and Reverse Discrimination

--Changing social structures, equal employment opportunity, affirmative action, active recruitment, equalization of criteria, adequate training, promotion to senior positions, balanced or preferential hiring,

17.       The Information Age: Property and New Technologies

--Intellectual property, copyrights and patents, trade secrets, trademarks, industrial espionage, property: information and software, data and information, the protection of computer software, program property rights between employer and employee, copy programs and fair use, intellectual property and the internet, patents and software.

18.       Information, Computers, the Internet and Business

--Computer crime, viruses, worms, spam, computer theft of funds, theft of information and unauthorized computer entry, theft of computer time, computers and privacy, flextime and tele-working, outsourcing and expert systems.

19.       The International Business System, Multinationals, and Globalization

--MNCs and ethics, MNCs and exploitation, the unfair competition of MNCs, MNCs and impoverishment of less developed countries, human rights, the transfer of dangerous industries to underdeveloped countries.

20.       Corrupt Contexts, and International Business

--Divestment and disinvestment, bribery, foreign corrupt practices, international industrial espionage, discrimination, and questionable products, operating in destabilized environments, child labor and sweatshops, cross-cultural judgments, negotiation, and international justice.

21.       Global Issues and International Obligations

--Famine, malnutrition, and moral obligation, property and allocation of the world’s resources, global common goods, oil and the depletion of natural resources, the morally justifiable use of oil.

22.       The New Moral Imperative for Business

--The role of government, corporate democracy and the new entrepreneur, building a good society.