Manager ethics

A History of Business Ethics

Slovak University of TechnologyFaculty of Material Science and Technology in Trnava

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

Greek Moral Philosophy

Socrates (469-399 BC) on the area of VALUES

Aristotle ( 384-322 BC) Nicomachean Ethics

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.

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.

Early Christian and Ethics Reformation ethics Thomas Aquinas's

Martin Luther Jean Calvin, and John Wesley

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)

Modern ethics

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) categorical imperative

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."

Modern ethics

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

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

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

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

Business Ethics as a Movement

Johnson & Johnson's well-known Credo was written and

published by General Robert Wood Johnson in 1943

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.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act

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

Thank you for your attention!

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