Under the direction of Laszlo Zsolnai, the CEMS Business Ethics Faculty Group produced a book entitled “Ethics in the Economy: Handbook of Business Ethics” by Peter Lang Academic Publishers, in 2002 in Oxford. This book presents a non-instrumental approach to business ethics, arguing that there is a chance to improve the ethical quality of our economic activities only if our motivation is genuinely ethical; that is, only if we want to realize ethical conduct for its own sake.
The contents of the book is as follows:
Laszlo Zsolnai (Corvinus University of Budapest): “New Agenda for Business Ethics”,
Peter Ulrich (University of St. Gallen): “Ethics and Economics”,
Laszlo Zsolnai (Corvinus University of Budapest): “The Moral Economic Man”,
Hans De Geer (Stockholm School of Economics): “Business and Society”,
Aloy Soppe (Erasmus University Rotterdam): “Ethical Theory of the Firm”,
Eleanor O’Higgins (University College Dublin): “The Stakeholder Corporation”,
Muel Kaptein and Johan Wempe (Erasmus University Rotterdam): “Ethical Dilemmas of Corporate Functioning”,
Albert Bandura (Stanford University), Gian-Vittorio Caprara (University of Rome “La Sapienza”), and Laszlo Zsolnai (Corvinus University of Budapest): “Corporate Transgressions”,
Josep M. Lozano (ESADE Business School, Barcelona): “Organizational Ethics”,
Martin Buscher (University of St. Gallen): “Ethics of the Market”,
Zsolt Boda (Corvinus University of Budapest): “International Ethics and Globalization”,
Antonio Tencati (Bocconi University, Milan): “Managing Sustainability”,
Mette Morsing and Peter Pruzan (Copenhagen Business School): “Values-Based Leadership”,
Laszlo Zsolnai (Corvinus University of Budapest): “Future of Capitalism”
The book provides a European perspective without falling prey to Eurocentrism. For the authors, the European approach is about respect for otherness and a dialogical attitude toward non-European values and cultures. In this spirit the authors invite everyone interested in and dedicated to developing ethics in the economy to an open dialogue of equal parties. Ethics is one of the oldest projects of humanity and there can reasonably be no end to rethinking ethics in our economic affairs.