CENTRE FOR GRADUATE STUDIES: Business Ethics

Business ethics is a hybrid discipline built on the conceptual resources of several fields, including moral and political philosophy, economics, sociology, and social psychology. In this special issue, we invite colleagues to submit papers that a) bring in work from important thinkers in a variety of disciplines who have been overlooked or underutilized within the business ethics literature so far, b) provide important resources from these thinkers to generate new theories and insights on a given topic in business ethics, and c) show how this work can be used, more broadly, to inform the larger dialogue in contemporary business ethics.

Purpose – The study aims to map the intellectual structure of business ethics studies by analyzing 17,246 citations of 225 papers published in Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ) in the year between 2005 and 2014. Specifically, the purpose of the study is to describe the current state of BEQ, identify the most influential journals and works, identify the key themes of business ethics studies during 2005-2014 and, at the same time, report the changes in themes by making a comparison between two time periods – 2005-2009 and 2010-2014.

Contrary to understandings that treat ethical considerations and economic thinking as separate if not antagonistic issues, we advocate a holistic view that links business ethics to consequentialist economic concepts and their concern about how scarce means should be used for the attainment of (given) ends.

Ever since the 1980s, the business ethics field has gone through significant changes. There is now a vast body of business ethics literature concerned with diverse topics and themes, but relating the field of business ethics with social representations is not one of them, with this article being the first, to our knowledge, to do so with a Portuguese sample (N = 2,735). Attempting to provide a 'bridge' between theory and reality, we proceeded with this study, trying to discover the social representation of business ethics in Portuguese workers using the free evocation test and applying Abric's central nucleus theory. The results show a central core organised around the concepts of 'respect', 'justice', 'honesty', 'equality', 'code of conduct', 'confidentiality' and 'fair competition'. While some of the core concepts of business ethics are directly found in the literature, others were not, pointing to a possible partition between theory and reality.

Business ethics case competitions and ethics case competitions offer students opportunities to hone communications skills. They could also be opportunities to teach business ethics. Because case competitions use scenarios, they offer good platforms for applying the case method to teaching business ethics. With some adaption to current structure, current case competitions could become effective venues for teaching ethics and contemporary business issues. This article focuses on three competitions and some contemporary business issues from the 2000s and 2010s to show how case competitions can be restructured to effectively teach business ethics.

Although some people might think that the term business ethics (BE) is an oxymoron, understanding ethics and how it is implemented in making a business decision is important.

This study examines business ethics and organizational justice perceptions among members of the Association for Proposal Management Professionals (APMP), the only organization offering
certification to bid and proposal practitioners.