The Individual in Business Ethics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

   PDF

2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 1-9

3. The Evolvement of Business Ethics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 11-11

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   2. History of Business Ethics

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 13-26

   3. The Breakaway of Business Ethics from Classical Ethics

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 27-62

   4. Institutionalization of a Code of Ethics and the Politics of the Protestant Work Ethic

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 63-69

4. The Individual’s Moral Value in Business Ethics

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 71-71

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   2. Life Politics and Ideology

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 73-82

   3. Corporate Life Politics and Ideology

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 83-118

   4. Whistle-blowing as the Foundation of a Distinct Out-corporate Individual’s Moral Value from the Perspective of Political Philosophy

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 119-134

5. Summary

   1. Summary

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 135-139

6. Post Scriptum: The Non-efficient Citizen: Identity and Consumerist Morality

   1. Post Scriptum: The Non-efficient Citizen: Identity and Consumerist Morality

      • Tomas Kavaliauskas

      Pages 140-151

7. Back Matter

   Pages 152-201

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Today we are witnessing social and political dominance of large corporations. They provide for its employees moral values and business principles. Moreover, they institutionalize their codes of ethics. The theory of Business Ethics provides the moral guideline and standards for corporate life and concrete business organizations apply those standards to practice. The individual employee, as a member of a business organization, accepts those standards. Therefore, it is important to examine the foundation of the individual's moral value in Business Ethics in order to understand on what the foundation of the moral value depends on. This highly interdisciplinary text is a critique of Business Ethics as an ideology and life politics. The author discloses how contemporary business ethics grovels before corporations, how it is too weak to create a truly critical voice of American capitalist economy. The individual's treatment in corporate life is revealed through the eyes of American Protestant culture and its coercive work tradition where efficiency value usurps values of individual choice and freedom. This book suggests a new concept of an out-corporate individual.

• Aristotle
• business ethics
• Deontological Ethics
• ethics
• management
• morality
• philosophy
• Virtue Ethics

TOMAS KAVALIAUSKAS researcher and a lecturer at Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania. For the last five years has been teaching Business Ethics and Political Philosophy, throughout European universities has been attending conferences and workshops introducing his interdisciplinary approaches. The author is also an essayist on the portal of European intellectuals www.eurozine.com, where he writes on Euro integration and identity issues. T. Kavaliauskas is member of Lithuanian PEN club and of European SPES – Spirituality in Economics and Society.

Policies and ethics