Wim Dubbink – författare

This textbook not only provides the student with a solid foundation in ethics, but introduces students to the most important themes relevant to business today. Issues such as human rights violation down in the supply chain, the effect business has on nature and the environment, and inclusiveness are each discussed in separate chapters, which discuss their importance, but also their challenges. While there are numerous business ethics textbooks, few take a philosophical approach to business ethics. However, without introducing philosophical ethics, discussions about business ethics are bound to get stuck in fallacies and paradoxes. This textbook therefore fills an important societal gap by providing an introduction to profound philosophical issues in clear language at a philosophically high, but accessible level.

Business cases are at the heart of business ethics as a discipline. Analysis and reflection on the morality of business often is triggered by concrete cases. After four introductory chapters into recent developments within business ethics and the value of case analysis, the present volume offers extensive description of eight recent European cases, mainly stemming from The Netherlands and Belgium and all of them with a clear moral impact. Among them are the Lernout and Hauspie speech technology disaster, Heineken struggle with the promotion girls selling beer in Cambodia, cartels in the Dutch construction industry,  the pharmaceutical industry and the Aids crisis, and Unilever allegedly making use of child labour in the cotton industry in India. The book will be of interest to researchers as well as teachers of undergraduate and graduate courses in Business Ethics, Business in Society, Management and Organisation Theory and Strategic Management. It will also be useful for business practitioners eager to learn about business ethics by means of cases.

Business ethics as a discipline leans on cases but flourishes by thorough analysis and reflection. The present volume offers both. After three introductory chapters into business ethics eight recent European cases, mainly stemming from The Netherlands and Belgium and all of them with a clear moral impact, are extensively described and analysed. Among them are the Lernout and Hauspie speech technology disaster, Heineken’s struggle with the promotion girls selling beer in Cambodia, cartels in the Dutch construction industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the Aids crisis, and Unilever allegedly making use of child labour in the cotton industry in India. Each case is followed by two expert comments, from the fields of general ethics, but also of law, economics, management and organisation theory, sociology and social psychology. Cases and comments together offer an unique entrance in varieties of moral reasoning and in the personal and institutional dimensions to be taken into account when facing a corporate case saturated with moral ambiguities. This book will be of interest to researchers as well as teachers of undergraduate and graduate courses in Business Ethics, Business in Society, Management and Organisation Theory and Strategic Management. It will also be useful for business practitioners eager to find moral guidance in their specific field.