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Christian A. Conrad
Business Ethics -
A Philosophical
and Behavioral
Approach
Second Edition
Business Ethics - A Philosophical and
Behavioral Approach
Christian A. Conrad
Business Ethics - A
Philosophical and
Behavioral Approach
Second Edition
Christian A. Conrad
University of Applied Science
Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft des Saarlandes
Saarbrücken, Germany
Translated by
Danica Webb
Hotchkiss, CO, USA
Dessert plate from the Nantgarw China Works, ca. 1817-1822, impressed NANT-GARW
C.W., bearing the escutcheon, crest, torse and motto of Wyndham. The motto “Au Bon Droit”
translates as “With Good Right”. Henry Windham Wyndham-Quin (1782-1850) became
Viscount Mount Earl of Adare in Co. Limerick, in February 1816 and the Earl of Dunraven
in 1822. Family seats, Dunraven Castle, Glamorgan, and Uffords Manor, Norfolk. Reproduced
with permission from Gwyn Jones, Director of the John Andrews Charitable Trust Collection,
Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, Llanbedrog, Abersoch, Gwynedd.
ISBN 978-3-030-98842-5 ISBN 978-3-030-98843-2 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98843-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland
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Preface to First Edition
This book is the result of more than twelve years of professional experience in a
large German bank, where I often worked with the management of international
companies as a business consultant. The time period of this experience included the
boom and crash at the beginning of the new millennium and the financial crisis.
These practical impressions led to the conviction that there is a problem with ethics
in the economy and that the lack of ethics is not only harmful to people but also
leads to serious productivity losses. As a result, I have held seminars on business
ethics in the bachelor’s and master’s degree at the University of Applied Science
HTW in Saarbrücken. This teaching experience was incorporated into this book as
well as an extensive literature study.
I would like to thank Ms. Danica Webb (USA) for the translation of the major
part of this book.
Saarbrücken, Germany Christian A. Conrad

April 2018
v
Preface to Second Edition
The second edition has been completely revised and expanded to include new find-
ings from the behavioral sciences (psychology, social psychology, sociology, and
behavioral economics). In particular, the research on emotions, motivation, and
group behavior has given rise to many new impulses in business ethics. In addition,
new case studies and new chapters were included, like Politics and Morality,
Theories of Justice, Global Ethics, and Institutions as Solutions to Specific Game
Situations (game theory).
Again, I would like to thank again Ms. Danica Webb (USA) for the translation of
the major part of this book.
Saarbrücken, Germany Christian A. Conrad

May 2022
vii
Introduction
The question of whether or not there is a need for ethics in business is still a scien-
tific discussion. However, in the context of the 2000 Enron crisis, the first doubts
arose as to whether a business enterprise without morality could work. Since the
financial crisis that began in 2007, the economy and business administrations are
increasingly confronted with the demand for more social responsibility. A common
feature of the crises was the immoral enrichment efforts of managers at the expense
of their companies and the system, and thus society. The market economy system
places the individual at the forefront of economic value creation and grants him a
great freedom of development. The pursuit of self-interest is intended to ensure the
greatest possible motivation for the individual, and thus a maximum result for the
general public seems to work less and less.
The central question to be answered in this textbook is the extent to which moral
values play a role as productive forces for the economy. Our underlying method is a
scientific approach. In this case, no normative approach is deliberately pursued, and
a morality is not demanded a priori by the economy. This morality would have to be
subjectively and culturally relativized and could therefore claim no universality.
Moral values in themselves, such as the dignity of man, should not be regarded as a
requirement profile without logical reasoning, although they have a high target pri-
ority. Normative, moral, and perhaps even emotional-related goals, such as justice,
should be mentioned, but should not be used for argumentation when they are not
productivity enhancing. The aim is the optimal development of the productive
forces in companies and national economy, that is, the simple increase in welfare
through output maximization while taking into account the welfare of all parties
involved. A system of ethics founded purely on logic will be devised, one which
stimulates the productive forces of the market economy. The aim is to reveal the
ethics implied by the market economy, ethics that can also claim international valid-
ity for the globalized economy. We hope to justify and promote ethics objectively
and thus convincingly.
The term “business ethics” encompasses, according to the international standard,
both the ethics of companies in the business sector (meso level, corporate ethics,
and organizational ethics) as well as managerial ethics in companies (micro level,
personal ethics) and even ethics within the national economic framework (systemic
level, economic ethics). The goal is to create a textbook for business ethics from the
ix
x Introduction
many ethical approaches and partly also from different conceptual uses. The aim is
to show how ethics improves productivity in the economy. For practical application,
specific ethics tools are provided.
In order to work out how people behave ethically and unethically and how this
affects the economy, this book refers to newer research results from behavioral eco-
nomics, but also from other disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and social
psychology, thus leading to new conclusions for business ethics. The knowledge
relevant to the students is first derived scientifically then the results are presented as
summarized. The chapters have a behavioral and ethical summary. After the ethical
assessment approaches have been explained, the students are given an ethical
assessment of economic behavior using case studies. Roleplaying and games are
also used to explain the behavior of people in relation to ethics.
The book begins with the foundations of business ethics by defining terms and
delineating objectives. The importance of business ethics for business, the economy,
and the society is also discussed here. Then the ethical evaluation approaches are
presented, which are intended to enable the reader to evaluate economic behavior
ethically. Man in business is the next chapter. Here we will deal with man and his
behavior. What motivates him? To what extent is it ethically oriented? Is there a
sense of justice? Next, we will discuss the rules of the market. Does the market
economy promote ethical behavior or is there a conflict of goals between ethics and
market economy? Do companies have a social responsibility? We note that answers
to these questions are very much dependent on the legal framework of economic
activity. In an economic anarchy, ethical behavior cannot be expected either by the
companies or by the individual actors, which is why we turn to ethics as an ordi-
nance. Here, the state as an actor has an important role to play. In international busi-
ness, no government controls the companies. We will analyze the circumstances for
business ethics at the global level. Politicians organize government and shape insti-
tutions. They are responsible for the rules that should make ethical behavior worth-
while. Next, we will investigate the question of whether politics makes economic
decisions in an ethically and socially maximizing way. How do politicians behave,
what are their incentives, and how ethical can they be? After analyzing the impor-
tance of ethics for productivity in the enterprise and in the economy, we present
so-called ethics tools as the instruments with which the management can promote
ethical behavior in their employees. The book concludes with an outlook and rec-
ommendations on business ethics as a discipline as part of economic education.
Contents
1 Basic of Ethics�� 1

1.1 Basic Terms�� 1
1.2 What Is Business Ethics?�� 6
1.3 Objective of Business Ethics�� 7
Literature�� 10
2 Ethical Valuation Approaches�� 13
2.1 Classical Ethics �� 13
2.1.1 Ethics of Conviction�� 14
2.1.2 Kant’s Rules for Ethical Reasoning�� 15
2.1.3 Ethics of Duties (Deontological Ethics) �� 17
2.1.4 Ethics of Responsibility or Ultimate End
(Teleological Ethics) �� 22
2.1.5 The Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham�� 24
2.1.6 Millian Utilitarianism �� 26
2.1.7 Individual Ethics or Discourse Ethics? �� 27
2.2 Modern Ethics�� 33
2.2.1 Moral Economics: Morality Must Be Worthwhile�� 33
2.2.2 Specific Ethical Assessment Principles�� 37
2.2.3 Justice as an Assessment and Behavioral Approach �� 39
2.3 Conclusion on Ethical Evaluation Procedures�� 41
2.4 Application Examples�� 42
Literature�� 44
3 The Image of Humans �� 49
3.1 The Classical View of Man: Homo Economicus�� 49
3.2 Falsely Understood Egoism�� 53
3.3 Individualism Versus Collectivism: Behavior in Groups�� 56
3.4 Fairness as Motivation�� 67
3.5 Human Intelligence�� 73
3.6 The Cultural Impact�� 77
3.7 Economic Behavior Motivation and Emotions �� 81
3.8 Final Conclusion and Summary�� 85
Literature�� 90
xi
xii Contents
4 Ethical Problems of the Economy: Enron, Subprime & Co. – From

Crisis to Crisis�� 97
4.1 Enron, Worldcom and Co.�� 97
4.2 The Subprime Crisis, the Biggest Financial Crisis
After 1929 �� 101
4.3 Some Causes of the Financial Crisis�� 109
4.3.1 Technical Mistakes�� 109
4.3.2 Exaggerated Belief in Figures�� 113
4.3.3 Missing Moral Values �� 118
Literature�� 127
5 Market and Morality �� 129
5.1 Theories of Justice�� 129
5.2 Economy and Freedom – A Historical Overview �� 136
5.3 A Free Market Without Social Rules?�� 141
5.4 The Russian Tto an Unethical Market Economy�� 143
5.5 How Does the Market Economy Work? �� 147
5.5.1 The Picture of the Perfect Market in the Welfare
Economy �� 148
5.5.2 Functions of Competition �� 150
5.5.3 Moral Goals and Market Economy�� 154
5.5.4 Social Market Economy�� 160
5.5.5 Morality Within the Economic Division of Labor�� 165
5.5.6 The Company in the Market System�� 173
5.6 Market Failure�� 185
5.6.1 Market Failure Due to External Effects�� 186
5.6.2 Market Failure Due to Non-exclusion, Public Goods�� 192
5.6.3 Market Failure Due to the Prisoner’s Dilemma�� 195
5.6.4 Market Failure Due to Lack of Rationality�� 199
5.6.5 Market Failures Due to Asymmetrical Information�� 205
5.6.6 Market Failure Due to Transaction Costs �� 211
5.6.7 Market Failure Due to Corruption�� 216
5.6.8 Market Failure Due to Lack of Market Transparency�� 226
5.6.9 Market Failure on the Labor Market�� 226
5.6.10 Historical Development�� 226
6 Institutional Ethics: The National and International Framework�� 241
6.1 Institutions as Solutions to Specific Game Situations�� 241
6.1.1 The Ethical Prisoner Dilemma�� 241
6.1.2 Games of the Gender Struggle Type �� 244
6.1.3 Insurance or Trust Game�� 244
6.1.4 Conflicting Strategies, the Chicken Game,
Negative Payoffs �� 245
6.2 Ethical Institutions and Organizations�� 248
6.3 Is the State of Law Sufficient?�� 250
Contents xiii
6.4 International Business Ethics�� 252

6.4.1 Global Ethics�� 252
6.4.2 Non-Governmental Organizations or Civil
Society Groups�� 255
6.4.3 International Quality Seals�� 255
6.4.4 Incentives to Overcome the International Prisoner’s
Dilemma�� 256
6.4.5 International Ethical Codes�� 257
6.4.6 Development Policy�� 259
7 Politics and Morality�� 265
7.1 The New Political Economy �� 265
7.2 The Vote Maximization Model from Downs�� 268
7.3 Interest Groups (Lobbying)�� 269
7.4 Economic Theory of Bureaucracy�� 271
7.5 Voting Procedure�� 272
7.5.1 Unanimity Rule�� 272
7.5.2 Majority Rules (Absolute or Relative Majority,
Plurality Voting)�� 274
7.5.3 Borda Rule�� 277
7.6 Discourse Ethics as Basis for a Legitimate Decision
Making Process�� 278
7.7 Political Manipulations �� 289
8 Tools of Ethics for Management �� 297
8.1 Institutional Ethics on Company Level�� 297
8.1.1 Corporate Principles and Vision�� 297
8.1.2 Operative and Strategic Targets�� 301
8.1.3 Code of Conduct �� 303
8.1.4 Ethical Control Systems�� 305
8.1.5 The Ethical Aspects of the Shareholder
Value Concept �� 307
8.1.6 Ethical Stakeholder Approach�� 314
8.2 Organizational Ethics�� 322
8.2.1 Organizational Structure �� 323
8.2.2 Ombudspersons�� 329
8.2.3 Ethics Officers�� 330
8.2.4 Ethics Commission �� 330
8.2.5 Whistleblowing �� 331
8.3 Leadership Ethics�� 336
8.3.1 Case Study of Enron �� 336
8.3.2 Weaknesses of Corporate Governance�� 336
8.3.3 Incentives, Risk and Compensation Schemes�� 341
8.3.4 Ethical Corporate Culture �� 359
xiv Contents
8.3.5 Ethical Leadership�� 379

8.3.6 The Ethical Model of Company Management�� 393
8.3.7 Ethical Staff Selection�� 409
8.3.8 Ethical Personnel Development�� 426
9 Ethics in Business Education�� 445
9.1 Cultural Factors in Economics�� 445
9.2 Economics as a Natural Science? �� 448
9.3 Ethics in Business Administration�� 451
9.4 Summary �� 454
Index�� 457
About the Author
Christian A. Conrad teaches economics and business ethics at Saarland University

of Applied Science HTW. He has published several books and papers on ethics,
business, economics, and financial markets. He was previously senior key account
manager in the national and international corporate department of a major
German bank.
xv
Basic of Ethics
1
What Follows Why?

In addition to your business and economic courses, this chapter will provide you
with the concepts and the starting point of the applied discipline of business ethics.
Learning Goals
Students should be able to describe the basics of business ethics in their own words.
1.1 Basic Terms
Business ethics investigates the connections between ethics and economy, or to put
it more simply, moral behavior in the economy and in particular the importance of
moral behavior for the economy. Under the term “economy” we understand the
system that produces goods and services to fullfil the needs of a society. Do econ-
omy and ethics go together at all? Is it possible to measure economic contexts with
criteria such as good and evil? At first glance this seems unrealistic. Economy is
something abstract, subject to its own laws. How can one differentiate between
good and evil? Many people have tried to answer the last question, without having
been able to develop a universally applicable definition of good and evil. The dif-
ferentiation and designation of good and evil is greatly dependent on one’s point of
view, but one can speak to general tendencies. We almost always use good and evil
in relation to the effect on a third party. An action is good if it is advantageous for
others, and bad if it is harmful. It is impossible to reach a differentiation without
addressing the relationship to an advantage or benefit. Societal norms and values are
created in a process of trial and error, or cultural evolution. They express the behav-
ior a society desires because it is advantageous for the society and its members.
Behavior considered by the society to be positive is rewarded with social approval.
On the other hand, negative behavior damaging to a society is punished through
social exclusion or through the justice system as societal institutions. We say people
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
C. A. Conrad, Business Ethics - A Philosophical and Behavioral Approach,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98843-2_1
2 1 Basic of Ethics
are good if they bring benefit to other people and evil if they are harmful. The cat-
egorical imperative from the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant will be discussed
later in detail as an example that expresses the same idea; act in such a way that your
behavior could be the basis for a universal law. One could also follow the golden
rule; do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. This we would consider
moral behavior.
We can transfer this idea to the economy. Economics is a relatively abstract con-
cept due to its complexity, yet the institutions and organizations were created by
humans, for humans. An ethics of economics is thus legitimate if it asks whether the
people acting economically and/or the institutions and organizations are good
because they are good for the community. An ethics of economics can thus be
reduced to the question of what economic actions, or the economy as a whole or in
part, offers the society. Ethics in economics thus places people above the economy,
and assumes that the economy should serve the people.
Moral or ethical is therefore to be defined in the following book as a human
behavior that does not harm other people (living beings) objectively, and that their
welfare is not diminished (definition).
It is conceivable that the agent did not intend this effect, that is, his mind was not
moral. We also do not exclude that the action was objectively beneficial for the other
person, but he does not care. For example, it would certainly be wrong to say that to
give someone €100 is not moral only because he is a millionaire. Active action is not
a prerequisite for unethical behavior. Inaction can be considered unethical, for
example, if one does not help someone in an emergency situation.
Because we need an objective assessment criterion, our definition of moral dif-
fers from the common use of “moral” as the subjective viewpoint of society. Our
definition of moral therefore also differs as an adjective from the corresponding
noun “morality”.
The word “morality” comes from the Latin: the custom (Lat: mos, mores custom,
customs). According to this, morality depends on the time, that is to say, it is subject
to fluid societal trends, as well as dependent on the particular culture, that is, from
country to country. The applicable law covers only a part of these standards.
Norms are social behavioral guidelines (definition).
For instance: Do not smoke if others are eating. Respect the property of others, etc.
The elementary norms are incorporated into the laws of a society. Empirical
studies show that apart from the damage caused by an action, the social norms,
or the ethical consensus, are decisive for whether a person behaves ethically or
unethically.1
For sociology, norms are the unwritten rules that make the conflict-free coexis-
tence of many people in a society possible. Unclear or missing norms lead to
anomie-producing situations, meaning a lack of social integration. Too much or too
1
See Singhapakdi, A./Vitell, S. J./Kraft, K. L. (1996); Frey, B. F. (2000) and Butterfield, K. D./
Treviño, L. K./Weaver, G. R. (2000).
1.1 Basic Terms 3
restrictive of norms cause special stress situations and contradictory norms create
norm conflicts. If a society has many different groups or sub-societies (pluralistic
society), it will also have many different and conflicting norms, as each sub-society
has its own norms. If a person moves in different sub-groups he must inevitably
violate the behavior norms of the sub-groups. This applies not only to immigration
but also between generations. A youth must behave according to the rules of his age
group in order to be recognized there, but he is also dependent on the acceptance of
his parents. And there are other norms of behavior. In contrast to norms, conven-
tions are voluntary agreements between people, for instance the terms for objects in
a language, or shaking hands with greetings.
What is ethics? The Roman Cicero (born January 3, 106 BC in Arpinum, †
December 7, 43 BC at Formiae) translated the Greek term êthikê (ethics) with phi-
losophia moralis. Thus ethics is the philosophy of morality.2 Ethics (from the ancient
Greek “ta ethika”, translated as the moral doctrine) is then the science of morality,
whereby the goal of this science as part of philosophy (the friend of wisdom) is to
regulate the world and in particular the behavior of man. To investigate what
includes not only the being of man, but how he should be in the world. For us, ethics
answers the question of how we should behave properly. It is also called practical
philosophy. So, ultimately, it is no more and no less than the meaning of life and the
meaning of our existence as human beings. We want to understand ethics as the sci-
ence of the analysis and assessment of human behavior with effects on third parties
or all living beings.
Ethics can be described as descriptive, normative, but also as a method of teach-
ing. The latter form searches for the way “to enter the laws of pure practical reason
into the human mind, to influence the maxims. The objective-practical reason can
also make subjectively practical.”3
Material ethics, which is concretely evaluated, examines which behavior is moral
and can be differentiated from formal ethics, which provides methods for how moral
behavior can be generated or determined. An example of formal ethics would be the
rule that a just, and thus moral division of a single cake would be for the first person
to cut the cake into two pieces and then the second one to select their piece.4
The term ethos is used when the individual chooses a part of morality as a basis
for action, thus internalizes it (definition).5 Virtues (definition), on the other hand,
are practiced and internalized dispositions of inner attitudes, to do good, to behave
ethically (definition). The Cardinal Virtues of Socrates and Plato were bravery, pru-
dence, wisdom and justice. Virtues correspond to characteristics and are related to
the persons. Aristotle (384–322 BC) concluded here by formulating “virtue is the
way to happiness (eudaimonia)”. Christian ethics supplemented these virtues by
three more: faith, love, and hope.6
2
See Ritter, Joachim /Gründer, Karlfried/Gabriel, Gottfried (1984), p. 149.
3
Kant, Immanuel (1788), p. 269.
4
See Göbel, Elisabeth (2010), pp. 45.
5
See Schmidt, Heinrich (1982), p. 172 and Göbel, Elisabeth (2010), p. 10.
6
See Götzelmann, Arnd (2010), pp. 17 and Schmidt, Walter (1986), p. 40.
4 1 Basic of Ethics
The heavenly virtues (and the contrary vices) of the Occidental Middle Ages
were widespread by the musical work of Hildegard of Bingen in the Christian West
of the Middle Ages: humility (arrogance), benevolence (avarice, greed), abstinence
(lewdness), moderation (gluttony), goodwill (envy), diligence (laziness), patience
(anger).7
Faithfulness, efficiency, consistency, thriftiness, reliability, cleanliness, punctu-
ality, diligence, conscientiousness, patience, order and self-discipline are called sec-
ondary virtues. They have the nickname “secondary” because they are not directly
moral, but are useful to society and are necessary for the implementation of moral
actions. A good intention, such as caring for the elderly, cannot have a moral effect
if discipline is lacking, and the care must be clean, punctual and orderly so that the
old do not suffer any harm. In general, it is also possible to paraphrase the secondary
virtues with a certain degree of certainty and reliability, which enables the good and
expected implementation of a moral action. Secondary virtues are therefore also
referred to as work ethos.8
Another approach emphasizes the human limits of ethical behavior. Bounded
ethicality is based on the term “bounded rationality”. The concept of bounded ratio-
nality was developed by Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon, implying limited
information processing capacities as opposed to complete rationality. A decision is
rationally limited if, taking account of information access and processing effort, the
decision that maximizes utility is chosen.9 Human beings can only reach a satisfac-
tory decision, rather than the optimal one. The same is true for ethical behavior.
People cannot make an ethically optimal decision because they are limited by infor-
mation, time, social and environmental limits and pressure as Tenbrunsel and
Bazerman pointed out. Human beings are more focused on reaching a satisfactory
ethical decision, the most ethical, rather than the optimal one.10 Kern and Chugh
showed for instance that time and financial pressures can encourage unethical
behavior. For example, test subjects in a financial loss situation and under time pres-
sure decided more unethically than test subjects who were not subjected to this
influence.11 It is obvious that human capabilities are limited, but it is crucial that
there is the will to do good, as we will see later in the ethics of conviction (Sect. 2.1.1).
Duties, goods and values are the basis of ethical action. Values are the highest
guiding principles of human behavior. They can apply to groups or individuals.
These conscious or unconscious orientation standards are the goal of all goods.
Values are the fundamental conceptions of the desirable.
Values are positive occupied guidance (goals) for behavioral orientation (defini-
tion). A good example are the three values of the French Revolution: égalité,
7
See Davidson, Audrey Ekdahl (1992) and Stalker, James (1998).
8
See Leisinger, Klaus M. (1997), p. 144 and http://www.familie.de/eltern/sekundaertugenden-
foerdern-moral-538569.html
9
See Simon, Herbert A. (1959), pp. 262.
10
See Bazerman, M.H./Tenbrunsel, A.E. (2011).
11
See Kern, M.C., Chugh, D. (2009) and Khan, Ashraf (2018).
1.1 Basic Terms 5
fraternité and liberté. Values that are relevant to the company or the economy are,
for example, reliability, honesty, etc.
Values can apply to groups or individuals. These conscious or unconscious ori-
entation standards are the goal of all goods. A successful life is the supreme value
of Aristotle. (Born 384 BC in Stageira, † 322 BC in Chalkis).
Group Discussion: Value Clarification

Write your most important values in turn on a sheet in your script. In the following,
your lecturer will help you to become aware of your most important values through
open questions. This is called value clarification. Do you think that these values
should also apply in the business world?
What are the most important values for you when dealing with people? The open
method of questioning is named after Socrates’ Socratic conversation. By discuss-
ing in the group, a group consensus can be established. Unlike television talk shows,
it is not important to be right or to be good for the other participants, but to find the
truth for themselves and the group.
Socrates applied a special open questioning technique to move people to self-
knowledge (Socratic method, mäeutics, or even midwifery). It has been called mid-
wifery because the questions raised something from the interviewees that had
already been inside of them. This is a philosophical dialogue in order to gain an
insight in an open-ended research process. A result of Socrates’s ethics research is
that the right action follows from the right insight. Moreover, according to Socrates,
righteousness is a basic condition of souls’ welfare. For him, it was worse to do
wrong than to be exposed to injustice.12
Goods are the means to achieve values (definition). Goods are defined by ethics
as special objectives or means to achieve the goal of a successful life. Goods are, for
example, the objectives of human rights declarations such as health or life, freedom,
peace, prosperity, security, property, environment, culture, but also the human com-
munity with its institutions (e.g. state and family).13
Duties are rules of action that result from norms (definition), whether as a sanc-
tioned legal code of conduct or from morality and custom. Private actions and inter-
ests are only ethical or moral, thus socially legitimated, if they are based on socially
accepted values.
12
See Störig, Hans Joachim (1997), pp. 152; Hersch, Jeanne (1981), p. 274; Schuschanaschwili, G
G. (1987), pp. 855 and http://www.paradisi.de/Freizeit_und_Erholung/Kultur/Philosophie/
Artikel/22607_Seite_9.php (15.04.2015).
13
See Korff, Wilhelm (1999), p. 312 and Göbel, Elisabeth (2010), p. 155.
6 1 Basic of Ethics
1.2 What Is Business Ethics?
Business ethics (definition) is the science of morality and ethos in the economy
(definition). The aim of this science, as part of philosophy, is to understand the rules
of the world, and in particular the behavior of human beings, which includes not
only the being of man, but also his normative expectations. In the case of business
ethics as a science, the aim is to analyze the causes and effects of ethical and unethi-
cal economic behavior and to develop approaches to improve productivity with the
help of ethics in order to provide recommendations for action for companies and
policies.
Business ethics is the ethics of the economy and thus encompasses all kinds of
human behavior at different levels of the economy. A part of this is the so-called
corporate ethics or business ethics, which deals with the ethics of enterprises (meso-
level), whereas manager ethics is concerned with the ethics of the enterprise, and
thus is attributable to the microcosm. The micro level is concerned with the indi-
vidual level, that is, the ethics of the economic operators. The macro level is con-
cerned with the ethical framework of the entire economy (economic ethics). For
example, the decision on the economic order (pure market economy, social market
economy, socialism or communism) or the laws would have to be taken on the sys-
tem level.14
Ethics in the company affects both the behavior of executives and employees
among themselves as well as against third parties, other stakeholders. For example,
customers are not allowed to be lied to about product properties and contract terms,
balances are not falsified, nor bad company news kept secret against the lenders and
shareholders. Dependencies (e.g., from vendors) should not be exploited.15 From
this point of view, the problem of ethics is a natural part of a market economy based
on the free action of individuals.
Why do we need business ethics at all? Is it not enough to let the market forces
work? Why should an economic subject be ethical, and why is ethics important to
society? Although the answer to this central question is still being elaborated in
detail, it should already be answered in principle:
1. To avert damage to economic activity for third parties (interest of society)

2. To avert damage to economic activity for the company (interest of the company)
3. To increase the productivity of interpersonal cooperation (interest of the com-
pany and society)
This results in two conflicts of interest for the individual: the individual pursues his
own interests and conflicts with the interests of society. In extreme cases, he can
even maximize his utility at the expense of society (individual versus society). This
conflict of interests also often arises against the company as an employer (individual
versus company).
14
See Kreikebaum, H. (1996), p. 14 and Dietzfelbinger, D. (2008), p. 30.
15
See Göbel, Elisabeth (2010), p. 202.
1.3 Objective of Business Ethics 7
So-called moral hazards promote such conflicts of interest as negative behavioral

incentives. A moral hazard is an incentive for the individual to behave against, or at
the expense of, the public (collectively, for example, society or company)
(definition).16
Such negative incentives (perverse incentives) are often responsible for faulty
developments and productivity losses. For example, in the financial crisis the
American intermediaries were paid for subprime credits by credit volume. The con-
sequence was that the repayability of the loans was no matter to them. More and
more loans were given to ever-worsening borrowers. In the cases of ENRON and
Worldcom, bonuses after a short-term increase in the share price led to the manipu-
lation of the balance sheets in order to increase share price increases by means of
higher profits.
1.3 Objective of Business Ethics
The moral preoccupation with which the economy is confronted is ancient. Aristotle
(384–322 BC) distinguished between natural acquisition or acquisition and enrich-
ment (chrematism), which he condemns, because it is not given, but is based on the
weakness of man. The pursuit of money becomes a self-interest, which removes
man from his natural destiny, namely the elementary need-satisfaction for a good
life. Aristotle puts virtue over the economy because man can only achieve his hap-
piness through the exercise of his virtues. The perfect virtue for Aristotle is justice,
which serves as a measure of the economy. He does not see any need for justice, as
is the case with socialism, because unequal should not be made or treated as equal.
According to Aristotle, there must also be a balancing justice, which compensates
for unlawful distributive results, for example from fraud.17
Business ethics thus puts people above the economy and assumes that the econ-
omy is to be used by man. However, there are also other opinions, according to
which the economic success justifies the means. Economy is then faced with moral-
ity. Economic success is a sign of God’s benevolence according to Calvinism.
Economic success is thus more than just morally legitimate, it indicates God’s cho-
sen. There can hardly be any greater incentive for active pursuit. Hard work and
asceticism are therefore the basis of a successful Calvinistic entrepreneurial
personality.18
16
The Moral Hazard theory comes originally from the Principal Agent Theory. Here, the incentives
for the agent to enrich themselves with rational utility maximization at the expense of the principal.
See Schnebel, Eberhard/Bienert, Margo A. (2004), p. 205.
17
See Aristoteles (1960), p. 196 und p. 358; See Aristoteles (1991), pp. 22 or 1257b und 1258b and
Schefold, Bertram (1989), p. 19–55.
18
Already Max Weber saw in the Protestant and Calvinist influence a cause for the positive eco-
nomic development in Switzerland, the Netherlands, England and parts of Germany. See Weber,
Max (1905); Ulrich, Peter (1993), pp. 1168 and Noll, Bernd (2002), p. 166.
8 1 Basic of Ethics
Originally, the economy and ethics were interconnected. According to Aristotle,

the purpose of economics as an art of household management was to provide the
means to enable a happy life for man. The economics should solve the problem of
scarce resources, which means to ensure their efficient use so that the welfare could
be maximized, thus enabling a life to unfold human potential. This was the ethical
purpose, and thus the goal of economics. Prosperity was not an end in itself.19 The
long-term maximization of profit was the first step towards the development of busi-
ness economics as a separate discipline. Added to this was the maximization of the
shareholder valuation. It was thus left to the remaining national economics (national
economy) to ensure that the maximization of profits also leads to a welfare maximi-
zation. According to Aristotle the “art of gainfulness” and “the pursuit of maximum
wealth” explicitly do not belong to economics.20 Aristotle does not see the goal of
“increasing money to the infinite”21 as a meaningful, happy, human goal.22
For Aristotle, economics is the art of making goods for the satisfaction of vital
needs. The goods that are necessary for life are thus also moral, because they are the
basic prerequisite for survival and beyond, the basis for a “perfect life,” the human
potential of striving for supreme value and for happiness.23
Modern business management does not distinguish between moral and immoral
goods. The benefit for people and their purchasing power drives decisions. A social
evaluation is intentionally dispensed with. If a person is willing to spend money on
a good, the utility and satisfaction of a need is assumed. The preferences of the
consumers are perceived as subjective and given no objective assessment. The
goods that are sold can be immoral, such as pornography or even directly harmful
such as drugs, as far as the legislator permits. The goods are therefore equivalent to
medicines and basic food.24
The business administration has separated itself from morality and pursues a
purely material goal with the maximization of profit, which can be quite immoral:
how the money is earned does not matter. This is also scientific, inasmuch as the
natural sciences are also researching without morally evaluating or even regulating
research. The discovery of atomic energy has enabled both the use of this energy
form and the development of the atomic bomb. Ultimately, however, it is also clear
that a society cannot be allowed to do this. It must prevent this kind of science from
being used against it. The question of the benefit or harm to man and to the society
must be posed as early as possible and answered in order to forestall societal damage.
Ethics traditionally ranks the social benefits above the individual benefit. For
Kant (b. 22 April 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia, † 12 February 1804 ibid), an action
is especially moral (moral) when it benefits others at expense to one’s own benefit.
19
See Aristoteles (1991), pp. 22 or 1258a, b, 1059b and Aristoteles (1960), pp. 5 or 1094a, b, 1095a.
20
See Aristoteles (1991), p. 27 or 1258b.
21
See Aristoteles (1991), p. 26 or 1258b.
22
See Aristoteles (1991), pp. 22 or 1257b and 1258b.
23
See Aristoteles (1991), p. 23 or 1256b and Aristoteles (1960), pp. 8 or 1095b.
24
See Stigler, George J./Becker, Gary p. (1977); Ulrich, Peter (2001), pp. 2 and Wöhe, Günther
(2008), p. 17.
1.3 Objective of Business Ethics 9
“... there still remains, as in all other cases, a law, namely, to promote his happiness,
not out of affection, but out of duty, and so his behavior first of all has the real
moral value.”25
It follows from Kant’s considerations that, in those cases where the welfare of
others or the common good (or company) is opposed to one’s own, the welfare of
others is at least accepted as equivalent. Under no circumstances should the pursuit
of one’s own happiness, or one’s own benefit maximization be carried out at the
expense of the others, or that of general wellbeing. And when in doubt, morality,
that is the wellbeing of others, must be placed above one’s own. For this purpose,
one’s attitude is important in order to be moral and be of benefit to others.
Kant does not demand self-sacrifice, since man is explicitly to pursue his own
happiness.26 Rather, he is striving to find his own happiness in the pursuit of the hap-
piness of others. In the consistency of happiness and morality Kant sees the “highest
good” as the ultimate goal. At the same time, he sees it as a human duty to shape the
world in such a way that people can also be happy in this.27
Business ethics therefore has the important purpose of countering the common
good of the economic individual benefit maximization. This is one task of business
ethics. Another is to demonstrate the productivity advantages that result from ethi-
cal behavior for the company and society. This indirectly promotes ethical behavior.
Business ethics is thus legitimate when it asks whether the economically active
people, or the institutions and organizations, are good because they are good for the
human community. Thus, business ethics can be reduced to the question of what
economic activity or the economy as a whole or in parts brings to man, society and
business. Business ethics thus puts people above the economy and assumes that the
economy is to be used by man.
There are also different concepts in European business ethics. One can differenti-
ate into corrective, functionalist and integrative approaches. In the corrective
approach, the unethical effects of the economy are to be corrected by business ethics
(Principal Agents Horst Steinmann, Albert Löhr and Peter Koslowski). In this con-
cept economics has to be subordinated to ethics and is improved normatively.
Functional business ethics considers ethics a means of increasing the productivity of
the economy. Ethics thus becomes a means to an economic end (Karl Homann). The
same goals are pursued as the economy. Integrative business ethics by Peter Ulrich,
on the other hand, strives to reveal the ethical effects of the economy and to orient
the economy more to the life demands of the people.
25
See Kant, Immanuel (1785), p. 25 or BA13.
26
See Kant, Immanuel (1785), p. 25 or BA13 and Kant, Immanuel (1797a), p. 518 or A18.
27
See Kant, Immanuel (1788), pp. 216 or A166, 223,225, 234. “The moral law requires the highest
possible good in a world to make me the ultimate object of all behavior. This, however, I can not
hope to effect, but by the agreement of my will with the holy and benevolent maker of the world,…”
Kant, Immanuel (1788), p. 261 or A233.
10 1 Basic of Ethics
Conclusion and Summary

Business ethics is intended to ensure that economic activity works to the advantage
of others and thus complements business management and economics.
Comprehension Questions
1. Define business ethics.

2. What is meant by moral, morality, norms, ethos, and virtues?
3. In your opinion, have you considered moral aspects adequately in your previous
business training or do you think this is superfluous?
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Ethical Valuation Approaches
2
What Follows Why?

This lecture chapter explains the classical and modern ethical evaluation criteria for
human action. They should serve as a basis for evaluating economic action.
Learning Goals
Students should be able to apply the classical and modern ethics concepts to eco-
nomic action.
How should one behave morally in the economy?
2.1 Classical Ethics
Case Study: Relations and Recommendations

A works in a bank. B, who does not know A, asks him to give him a job in his
bank. How would A behave morally, and how ethically? Discuss the right behavior.
1. A will help him and recommend him. B is lazy and also steals from the bank.
2. A will help him and recommend him. B will be a grateful and loyal employee.
The bank is grateful to A.
3. A says no, because he does not know B and only stands up for something he
believes in. B goes to the competition and becomes one of their best employees.
4. A says no, because A does not know B and is only willing to recommend what
he is sure is a good person. A meets B in a year in the pub again. Because of his
financial problems and the resulting bad mood, his wife left him.
5. A says no because A does not want to help B. What has A to do with B, B should
help himself. A meets B in a year in the pub again. Because of his financial prob-
lems and the resulting bad mood, his wife left him.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2022
C. A. Conrad, Business Ethics - A Philosophical and Behavioral Approach,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98843-2_2
14 2 Ethical Valuation Approaches
How should one behave morally in this situation? What is right? The above example
shows that one can see the same situation differently and can behave differently
morally.
2.1.1 Ethics of Conviction
One can focus on the mind; the motivation or intention. Accordingly, it would have
been sufficient to mention the prospective employee to the personnel department in
order to help him. Not mentioning him to the personnel department would have
been moral if it was intended to protect the bank. According to Immanuel Kant, the
“good will” and not “the ability to achieve a purpose” is decisive for an ethical
evaluation:
There is nothing in the world, or at all, to think outside of it, which, without limitation, can
be considered a good intention...1
Good will is not determined by what it affects or effects, not by virtue of its suitability for
the attainment of any superior purpose, but only by the will, in itself, good ...2
In Kant, the mind ultimately determines whether an action is to be classified as

moral. If looking in on your old aunt it is a duty, but not a moral one, if you do so
only to be considered in the inheritance:
I also set aside the actions which are really duty-bound, but which are not directly affecting
men, but which they nevertheless exercise, because they are driven by a different inclina-
tion. For it is easy to distinguish whether the duty-related action has been done for duty or
self-seeking.3
According to Kant, a good or good-maximizing deed would not be classified as

moral if it is done for the sake of pleasure, instead of out of a pure commitment to
duty. Kant offers the example:
A shopkeeper is honest with a naive, easily duped customer, not because it is his duty to be
honest, but because it will help build his good reputation, and his business. He acts in accor-
dance with duty (he is honest) but not from duty (ie not because honesty is right whether or
not it helps his reputation and business). ...4
For today’s society too, ethics of conviction is central. “Good will counts” and even
courts of law distinguish between premeditation and negligence. Ethics of convic-
tion also corresponds to conscience. If we have a clear conscience, we think we have
done everything right, especially since we often cannot ignore the consequences of
our actions. Thus, in cases 1 and 2, a good will exists, but the effects of the action
are negative and thus unintended.
1
See Kant, Immanuel (1797a), (C), p. 393.
2
3
See Kant, Immanuel (1785), (B), p. 397.
4
Kant, Immanuel (1785), (B), p. 397.
2.1 Classical Ethics 15
But what about the consequences? Is it enough to want good? No, unfortunately
not. Otherwise, every fanatic, every terrorist would be a morally acting man, even
though he harms many people. It would depend only on the subjective assessment
by the actor, his, in his opinion, positive attitude. Well meant is not well done.
There are people who are particularly convinced they always know what is good.
This has the consequence that they also know better for others what is good for
them. They thereby patronize others and impinge on their freedom. They accuse
others of being immoral and yet it is often a point of view. Do they really know bet-
ter? What is the right behavior? As a rule, the information on the consequences and,
in particular, the impact and the assessment of the affected persons are missing. A
basic problem with ethics is that one cannot look through people, what they have
thought about their behavior, what their motivation was. Every judge has to deal
with this problem if he is to decide whether an action with a negative effect for third
parties was intentional. The intent distinguishes murder from manslaughter and thus
also clearly the penalty changes. In addition, even the actor can often not determine
the motives that have guided him, since he can also be influenced by the
subconscious.5
People are very different and sometimes not rational, or rather emotional and
irrational for many reasons, whether predisposition, indoctrination by religion or
ideologies. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 in Stuttgart,
Wuerttemberg, 14 November 1831 in Berlin, Prussia) lends absurdity to ethics by
saying that ultimately any crime can be justified as long as it was committed only
with good intent or with good conscience.6
In principle, an ethics of conviction would suffice to produce good behavior for
mankind if all men were to have the same perceptions and objective reason, in order
to correctly assess the consequences of their actions. Kant doubts this, which is why
in his work Metaphysics of Morals he develops a duty ethics for general human
behavior (deontological ethics, from Greek to déon: the necessary, the duty). In
addition, he developed imperatives or rules as an aid to the practical reasoning about
human coexistence: a categorical imperative and a practical imperative as well as
the publicity rule. The conviction of the agent to do good has to be added to the duti-
ful action.
2.1.2 Kant’s Rules for Ethical Reasoning
2.1.2.1 The Practical Imperative

The practical imperative:
Act in the way that you use humanity, both in your person and in the person of each other,
at any time not just as means but also as a purpose.7
5
See Grünewald, B. (2010), pp. 99.
6
See Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1820), § 140.
7
Kant, Immanuel (1797a), (C), p. 429.
16 2 Ethical Valuation Approaches
How do my actions affect people? The purpose of my action should be to do good,

or at least not to harm anyone. We should therefore take into account the purpose,
which means the effect on other people, and not regard humans as a means, i.e.
without the effects of our actions, on our actions or behavior, which also includes
allowing inaction. We should therefore take into account the purpose of an action,
the effect it will have on other people, we should not regard humans as a means
separate from the effects of our actions, including the decision not to act.
For example, customers should be seen not only as a means to gain profit by sell-
ing the products to them, but also to take into account the effect on them through the
product, e.g. do not sell rotten meat to customers. Kant, however, also refers to the
agent himself. He should not regard himself as a means, but also as a purpose, and
therefore not harm himself. In current situations this would mean that a manager
should not harm his health, just to further his career.
2.1.2.2 The Categorical Imperative

For Kant, maxims are guiding principles that people give themselves. In addition,
there are still universal human laws, which are categorically valid.8
The categorical imperative:
Only act according to the maxim that you can make a universal law.9
This is to be the guiding principle for ethical action. This means that the actor should
ask himself whether his behavior satisfies a principle that he also wishes to find
generally applied in society. All human beings would behave in this way, and the
agent would be exposed to the same behavior from other people. The first case cor-
responds to the question often heard as a child: “What if everyone did that?” If you
would like to take a little stone as a souvenir from the Acropolis, this might be
socially acceptable as a single action, but not if all people behave like this. Then
there would soon be no more acropolis. So there can be no exception to the rule.
The second case corresponds to the popular saying: “What you do not want to
done to you, do not do to anyone else.” Here, the agent is supposed to put them-
selves into the situation of the person affected by their behavior. If action leads to
the person to be better, the action is not only socially problem-free, but also desirable.
Lying to other people for one’s own advantage would, for example, contradict
the categorical imperative, since one does not want to be lied to. If someone in the
workplace is rude to colleagues or even mobbing, he should ask himself whether he
wants to be treated like this.
2.1.2.3 Publicity Rule

Kant develops yet another rule to establish moral action:
All actions related to the right of other people, whose maxim is not compatible with public-
ity, is wrong.
8
See Schmidt, Walter (1986), p. 47.
9
2.1 Classical Ethics 17
That is, the behavioral rule is such that if the agent would fear the response of his
community should his actions become public, we assume that the rights of others
are unfairly, thus disproportionately, affected. One should ask oneself whether those
affected by an action would approve of it. For example, if a pharmaceutical com-
pany conceals the side effects of a drug, the publicity rule would be violated because
the patients would not understand the dangers to their health.
2.1.3 Ethics of Duties (Deontological Ethics)
The approach of regulating human coexistence via obligations is already found in

the ten commandments of the Bible and has been repeatedly taken up within the
framework of philosophical ethics research. The doctrine of duty, doctrina de offi-
ciis (Latin: “of duties” or “dutiful action”), was written by Marcus Tullius Cicero in
44 BC and is one of the standard works of ancient ethics.
De officiis consists of three books wherin the duties of daily life are identified,
especially those of a statesman. The first deals with honorable behavior, while the
second deals with the duties useful to man, and the third book deals with situations
in which they may conflict. In the first and third books he also refers to the four
cardinal virtues.
Cicero refers to the doctrine of the Stoic Panaetius (died 111 BC) (peri tou
kathêkontos) and Panaitius of Rhodes, but also draws on other ancient philosophers
such as Poseidonius and Plato. Kant subdivided his definition of duty “Metaphysics
of Morals” into legal and virtue doctrines, according to the distinction between legal
and virtuous duties.10
Duties are what should be done from the ethical point of view. They are the oppo-
site of values as ethical principles of behavior, which man himself has voluntarily
accepted. Duties are imposed by society and values are the voluntary ethical
guidelines.
Depending on social orientation, Kantian universal duties become laws and
norms or even parts of religions or ideologies. Duties in the narrower sense are also
laws. Without a moral attitude, according to Kant, adherence to laws is not a moral
act because the actor ultimately only wants to escape punishment.
Duties (definition) are rules of action that result from norms, be it as a sanctioned
legal code of conduct or from morality and custom.
If a society has many plural groups or sub-societies (pluralistic society), it will
also have many different and contradictory norms, as each sub-society has its own.
If a person moves in different sub-companies, he must inevitably violate the norms
of the sub-companies with his behavior. Duties as coercion and values as goals are
the basis of ethical action.
Religions consist of duties, binding norms of action. Ultimately, it is the goal of
all religions to regulate human coexistence with the claim to sole representation, so
10
See Bührmann, Mario (2008), p. 126 and http://www.zeno.org/Kirchner-Michaelis-1907/A/
Pflichtenlehre (15.04.2015).
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For tis not styles far-fetched from Greece or Rome,
But just the Fireside, that can make a home;
None of your spindling things of modern style,
Like pins stuck through to stay the card-built pile,
It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair,
Its warm breath whitening in the October air,
While on its front a heart in outline showed
The place it filled in that serene abode.
“When first I chanced the Eagle to explore,

Ezra sat listless by the open door;
One chair careened him at an angle meet,
Another nursed his hugely-slippered feet;
Upon a third reposed a shirt-sleeved arm,
And the whole man diffused tobacco’s charm.
'Are you the landlord?' 'Wahl, I guess I be,'
Watching the smoke, he answered leisurely.
He was a stoutish man, and through the breast
Of his loose shirt there showed a brambly chest;
Streaked redly as a wind-foreboding morn,
His tanned cheeks curved to temples closely shorn;
Clean-shaved he was, save where a hedge of gray
Upon his brawny throat leaned every way
About an Adam’s-apple, that beneath
Bulged like a boulder from a brambly heath.
The Western World’s true child and nursling he,
Equipt with aptitudes enough for three:
No eye like his to value horse or cow,
Or gauge the contents of a stack or mow;
He could foretell the weather at a word,
He knew the haunt of every beast and bird,
Or where a two-pound trout was sure to lie,
Waiting the flutter of his home-made fly;
Nay, once in autumns five, he had the luck
To drop at fair-play range a ten-tined buck;
Of sportsmen true he favored every whim,
But never cockney found a guide in him;
A natural man, with all his instincts fresh,
Not buzzing helpless in Reflection’s mesh,
Firm on its feet stood his broad-shouldered mind,
As bluffly honest as a northwest wind;
Hard-headed and soft-hearted, you’d scarce meet
A kindlier mixture of the shrewd and sweet;
Generous by birth, and ill at saying 'No,'
Yet in a bargain he was all men’s foe,
Would yield no inch of vantage in a trade,
And give away ere nightfall all he made.
“'Can I have lodging here?' once more I said.

He blew a whiff, and, leaning back his head,
'You come a piece through Bailey’s woods, I s’pose,
Acrost a bridge where a big swamp-oak grows?
It don’t grow, neither; it’s ben dead ten year,
Nor th' ain’t a livin' creetur, fur nor near,
Can tell wut killed it; but I some misdoubt
’Twas borers, there’s sech heaps on ’em about.
You did n' chance to run ag’inst my son,
A long, slab-sided youngster with a gun?
He’d oughto ben back more ’n an hour ago,
An' brought some birds to dress for supper—sho!
There he comes now. 'Say, Obed, wut ye got?
(He’ll hev some upland plover like as not.)
Wal, them’s real nice uns, an’ll eat A 1,
Ef I can stop their bein' over-done;
Nothin' riles me (I pledge my fastin' word)
Like cookin' out the natur' of a bird;
(Obed, you pick ’em out o' sight an' sound,
Your ma’am don’t love no feathers cluttrin' round;)
Jes' scare ’em with the coals,—thet’s my idee.'
Then, turning suddenly about on me,
'Wal, Square, I guess so. Callilate to stay?
I’ll ask Mis' Weeks; ’bout thet it’s hern to say.'
“Well, there I lingered all October through,

In that sweet atmosphere of hazy blue,
So leisurely, so soothing, so forgiving,
That sometimes makes New England fit for living.
I watched the landscape, erst so granite glum,
Bloom like the south side of a ripening plum,
And each rock-maple on the hillside make
His ten days' sunset doubled in the lake;
The very stone walls draggling up the hills
Seemed touched, and wavered in their roundhead wills.
Ah! there’s a deal of sugar in the sun!
Tap me in Indian summer, I should run
A juice to make rock-candy of,—but then
We get such weather scarce one year in ten.
“There was a parlor in the house, a room

To make you shudder with its prudish gloom.
The furniture stood round with such an air,
There seemed an old maid’s ghost in every chair,
Which looked as it had scuttled to its place
And pulled extempore a Sunday face,
Too smugly proper for a world of sin,
Like boys on whom the minister comes in.
The table, fronting you with icy stare,
Strove to look witless that its legs were bare,
While the black sofa with its horse-hair pall
Gloomed like a bier for Comfort’s funeral.
Each piece appeared to do its chilly best
To seem an utter stranger to the rest,
As if acquaintanceship were deadly sin,
Like Britons meeting in a foreign inn.
Two portraits graced the wall in grimmest truth,
Mister and Mistress W. in their youth,—
New England youth, that seems a sort of pill,
Half wish-I-dared, half Edwards on the Will,
Bitter to swallow, and which leaves a trace
Of Calvinistic cholic on the face.
Between them, o’er the mantel, hung in state
Solomon’s temple, done in copperplate;
Invention pure, but meant, we may presume,
To give some Scripture sanction to the room
To give some Scripture sanction to the room.
Facing this last, two samplers you might see,
Each, with its urn and stiffly-weeping tree,
Devoted to some memory long ago
More faded than their lines of worsted woe;
Cut paper decked their frames against the flies,
Though none e’er dared an entrance who were wise,
And bushed asparagus in fading green
Added its shiver to the franklin clean.
“When first arrived, I chilled a half-hour there,

Nor dared deflower with use a single chair;
I caught no cold, yet flying pains could find
For weeks in me,—a rheumatism of mind.
One thing alone imprisoned there had power
To hold me in the place that long half-hour:
A scutcheon this, a helm-surmounted shield,
Three griffins argent on a sable field;
A relic of the shipwrecked past was here,
And Ezra held some Old-World lumber dear.
Nay, do not smile; I love this kind of thing,
These cooped traditions with a broken wing,
This freehold nook in Fancy’s pipe-blown ball,
This less than nothing that is more than all!
Have I not seen sweet natures kept alive
Amid the humdrum of your business hive,
Undowered spinsters shielded from all harms,
By airy incomes from a coat of arms?”
He paused a moment, and his features took

The flitting sweetness of that inward look
I hinted at before; but, scarcely seen,
It shrank for shelter ’neath his harder mien,
And, rapping his black pipe of ashes clear,
He went on with a self-derisive sneer:
“No doubt we make a part of God’s design,
And break the forest-path for feet divine;
To furnish foothold for this grand prevision
Is good and yet to be the mere transition
Is good, and yet—to be the mere transition,
That, you will say, is also good, though I
Scarce like to feed the ogre By-and-by.
Raw edges rasp my nerves; my taste is wooed
By things that are, not going to be, good,
Though were I what I dreamed two lustres gone,
I’d stay to help the Consummation on,
Whether a new Rome than the old more fair,
Or a deadflat of rascal-ruled despair;
But my skull somehow never closed the suture
That seems to knit yours firmly with the future,
So you ’ll excuse me if I’m sometimes fain
To tie the past’s warm nightcap o’er my brain;
I’m quite aware ’tis not in fashion here,
But then your northeast winds are so severe!
“But to my story: though ’tis truly naught

But a few hints in Memory’s sketchbook caught,
And which may claim a value on the score
Of calling back some scenery now no more.
Shall I confess? The tavern’s only Lar
Seemed (be not shocked!) its homely-featured bar.
Here dozed a fire of beechen logs, that bred
Strange fancies in its embers golden-red,
And nursed the loggerhead whose hissing dip,
Timed by nice instinct, creamed the mug of flip
That made from mouth to mouth its genial round,
Nor left one nature wholly winter-bound;
Hence dropt the tinkling coal all mellow-ripe
For Uncle Reuben’s talk-extinguished pipe;
Hence rayed the heat, as from an in-door sun,
That wooed forth many a shoot of rustic fun.
Here Ezra ruled as king by right divine;
No other face had such a wholesome shine,
No laugh like his so full of honest cheer;
Above the rest it crowed like Chanticleer.
“In this one room his dame you never saw,

Wh i db t ld S li l
Where reigned by custom old a Salic law;
Here coatless lolled he on his throne of oak,
And every tongue paused midway if he spoke.
Due mirth he loved, yet was his sway severe;
No blear-eyed driveller got his stagger here;
'Measure was happiness; who wanted more,
Must buy his ruin at the Deacon’s store;'
None but his lodgers after ten could stay,
Nor after nine on eves of Sabbath-day.
He had his favorites and his pensioners,
The same that gypsy Nature owns for hers:
Loose-ended souls, whose skills bring scanty gold,
And whom the poor-house catches when they ’re old;
Rude country-minstrels, men who doctor kine,
Or graft, and, out of scions ten, save nine;
Creatures of genius they, but never meant
To keep step with the civic regiment.
These Ezra welcomed, feeling in his mind
Perhaps some motions of the vagrant kind;
These paid no money, yet for them he drew
Special Jamaica from a tap they knew,
And, for their feelings, chalked behind the door
With solemn face a visionary score.
This thawed to life in Uncle Reuben’s throat
A torpid shoal of jest and anecdote,
Like those queer fish that doze the droughts away,
And wait for moisture, wrapt in sun-baked clay;
This warmed the one-eyed fiddler to his task,
Perched in the corner on an empty cask,
By whose shrill art rapt suddenly, some boor
Rattled a double-shuffle on the floor;
'Hull’s Victory' was, indeed, the favorite air,
Though 'Yankee Doodle' claimed its proper share.
“'Twas there I caught from Uncle Reuben’s lips,

In dribbling monologue ’twixt whiffs and sips,
The story I so long have tried to tell;
The humor coarse, the persons common,—well,
From Nature only do I love to paint,
Whether she send a satyr or a saint;
To me Sincerity’s the one thing good,
Soiled though she be and lost to maidenhood.
Quompegan is a town some ten miles south
From Jethro, at Nagumscot river-mouth,
A seaport town, and makes its title good
With lumber and dried fish and eastern wood.
Here Deacon Bitters dwelt and kept the Store,
The richest man for many a mile of shore;
In little less than everything dealt he,
From meeting-houses to a chest of tea;
So dextrous therewithal a flint to skin,
He could make profit on a single pin;
In business strict, to bring the balance true
He had been known to bite a fig in two,
And change a board-nail for a shingle-nail.
All that he had he ready held for sale,
His house, his tomb, whate’er the law allows,
And he had gladly parted with his spouse.
His one ambition still to get and get,
He would arrest your very ghost for debt.
His store looked righteous, should the Parson come,
But in a dark back-room he peddled rum,
And eased Ma’am Conscience, if she e’er would scold,
By christening it with water ere he sold.
A small, dry man he was, who wore a queue,
And one white neckcloth all the week-days through,—
On Monday white, by Saturday as dun
As that worn homeward by the prodigal son.
His frosted earlocks, striped with foxy brown,
Were braided up to hide a desert crown;
His coat was brownish, black perhaps of yore;
In summer-time a banyan loose he wore;
His trousers short, through many a season true,
Made no pretence to hide his stockings blue;
A waistcoat buff his chief adornment was,
Its porcelain buttons rimmed with dusky brass
Its porcelain buttons rimmed with dusky brass.
A deacon he, you saw it in each limb,
And well he knew to deacon-off a hymn,
Or lead the choir through all its wandering woes
With voice that gathered unction in his nose,
Wherein a constant snuffle you might hear,
As if with him ’twere winter all the year.
At pew-head sat he with decorous pains,
In sermon-time could foot his weekly gains,
Or, with closed eyes and heaven-abstracted air,
Could plan a new investment in long-prayer.
A pious man, and thrifty too, he made
The psalms and prophets partners in his trade,
And in his orthodoxy straitened more
As it enlarged the business at his store;
He honored Moses, but, when gain he planned,
Had his own notion of the Promised Land.
“Soon as the winter made the sledding good,

From far around the farmers hauled him wood,
For all the trade had gathered ’neath his thumb.
He paid in groceries and New England rum,
Making two profits with a conscience clear,—
Cheap all he bought, and all he paid with dear.
With his own mete-wand measuring every load,
Each somehow had diminished on the road;
An honest cord in Jethro still would fail
By a good foot upon the Deacon’s scale,
And, more to abate the price, his gimlet eye
Would pierce to cat-sticks that none else could spy;
Yet none dared grumble, for no farmer yet
But New Year found him in the Deacon’s debt.
“While the first snow was mealy under feet,

A team drawled creaking down Quompegan street.
Two cords of oak weighed down the grinding sled,
And cornstalk fodder rustled overhead;
The oxen’s muzzles, as they shouldered through,
Were silver fringed; the driver’s own was blue
Were silver-fringed; the driver s own was blue
As the coarse frock that swung below his knee.
Behind his load for shelter waded he;
His mittened hands now on his chest he beat,
Now stamped the stiffened cowhides of his feet,
Hushed as a ghost’s; his armpit scarce could hold
The walnut whipstock slippery-bright with cold.
What wonder if, the tavern as he past,
He looked and longed, and stayed his beasts at last,
Who patient stood and veiled themselves in steam
While he explored the bar-room’s ruddy gleam?
“Before the fire, in want of thought profound,

There sat a brother-townsman weather-bound:
A sturdy churl, crisp-headed, bristly-eared,
Red as a pepper; ’twixt coarse brows and beard
His eyes lay ambushed, on the watch for fools,
Clear, gray, and glittering like two bay-edged pools;
A shifty creature, with a turn for fun,
Could swap a poor horse for a better one,—
He’d a high-stepper always in his stall;
Liked far and near, and dreaded therewithal.
To him the in-comer, 'Perez, how d’ye do?'
'Jest as I’m mind to, Obed; how do you?'
Then, his eyes twinkling such swift gleams as run
Along the levelled barrel of a gun
Brought to his shoulder by a man you know
Will bring his game down, he continued, 'So,
I s’pose you’re haulin' wood? But you’re too late;
The Deacon’s off; Old Splitfoot couldn’t wait;
He made a bee-line las' night in the storm
To where he won’t need wood to keep him warm.
’Fore this he’s treasurer of a fund to train
Young imps as missionaries; hopes to gain
That way a contract that he has in view
For fireproof pitchforks of a pattern new.
It must have tickled him, all drawbacks weighed,
To think he stuck the Old One in a trade;
His soul, to start with, wasn’t worth a carrot,
And all he’d left ’ould hardly serve to swear at.'
“By this time Obed had his wits thawed out,

And, looking at the other half in doubt,
Took off his fox-skin cap to scratch his head,
Donned it again, and drawled forth, 'Mean he’s dead?'
'Jesso; he’s dead and t’other d that follers
With folks that never love a thing but dollars.
He pulled up stakes last evening, fair and square,
And ever since there’s been a row Down There.
The minute the old chap arrived, you see,
Comes the Boss-devil to him, and says he,
“What are you good at? Little enough, I fear;
We callilate to make folks useful here.”
“Well,” says old Bitters, “I expect I can
Scale a fair load of wood with e’er a man.”
“Wood we don’t deal in; but perhaps you’ll suit,
Because we buy our brimstone by the foot:
Here, take this measurin'-rod, as smooth as sin,
And keep a reckonin' of what loads comes in.
You’ll not want business, for we need a lot
To keep the Yankees that you send us hot;
At firin' up they’re barely half as spry
As Spaniards or Italians, though they’re dry;
At first we have to let the draught on stronger,
But, heat ’em through, they seem to hold it longer.”
“'Bitters he took the rod, and pretty soon

A teamster comes, whistling an ex-psalm tune.
A likelier chap you wouldn’t ask to see,
No different, but his limp, from you or me'—
'No different, Perez! Don’t your memory fail?
Why, where in thunder was his horns and tail?'
'They’re only worn by some old-fashioned pokes;
They mostly aim at looking just like folks.
Sech things are scarce as queues and top-boots here;
’Twould spoil their usefulness to look too queer.
p q
Ef you could always know ’em when they come,
They’d get no purchase on you: now be mum.
On come the teamster, smart as Davy Crockett,
Jinglin' the red-hot coppers in his pocket,
And clost behind, ('twas gold-dust, you’d ha' sworn,)
A load of sulphur yallower’n seed-corn;
To see it wasted as it is Down There
Would make a Friction-Match Co. tear its hair!
“Hold on!” says Bitters, “stop right where you be;
You can’t go in athout a pass from me.”
“All right,” says t’other, “only step round smart;
I must be home by noon-time with the cart.”
Bitters goes round it sharp-eyed as a rat,
Then with a scrap of paper on his hat
Pretends to cipher. “By the public staff,
That load scarce rises twelve foot and a half.”
“There’s fourteen foot and over,” says the driver,
“Worth twenty dollars, ef it’s worth a stiver;
Good fourth-proof brimstone, that’ll make ’em squirm,—
I leave it to the Headman of the Firm;
After we masure it, we always lay
Some on to allow for settlin' by the way.
Imp and full-grown, I’ve carted sulphur here,
And given fair satisfaction, thirty year.”
With that they fell to quarrellin' so loud
That in five minutes they had drawed a crowd,
And afore long the Boss, who heard the row,
Comes elbowin' in with “What’s to pay here now?”
Both parties heard, the measurin'-rod he takes,
And of the load a careful survey makes.
“Sence I’ve bossed the business here,” says he,
“No fairer load was ever seen by me.”
Then, turnin' to the Deacon, “You mean cus,
None of your old Quompegan tricks with us!
They won’t do here: we’re plain old-fashioned folks,
And don’t quite understand that kind o' jokes.
I know this teamster, and his pa afore him,
And the hard working Mrs D that bore him;
And the hard-working Mrs. D. that bore him;
He wouldn’t soil his conscience with a lie,
Though he might get the custom-house thereby.
Here, constable, take Bitters by the queue,
And clap him into furnace ninety-two,
And try this brimstone on him; if he’s bright,
He’ll find the masure honest afore night.
He isn’t worth his fuel, and I’ll bet
The parish oven has to take him yet!” ’
“This is my tale, heard twenty years ago

From Uncle Reuben, as the logs burned low,
Touching the walls and ceiling with that bloom
That makes a rose’s calyx of a room.
I could not give his language, wherethrough ran
The gamy flavor of the bookless man
Who shapes a word before the fancy cools,
As lonely Crusoe improvised his tools.
I liked the tale,—’twas like so many told
By Rutebeuf and his brother Trouvères bold;
Nor were the hearers much unlike to theirs,
Men unsophisticate, rude-nerved as bears.
Ezra is gone and his large-hearted kind,
The landlords of the hospitable mind;
Good Warriner of Springfield was the last;
An inn is now a vision of the past;
One yet-surviving host my mind recalls,—
You’ll find him if you go to Trenton Falls.”
THE ORIGIN OF DIDACTIC POETRY.

When wise Minerva still was young
And just the least romantic,
Soon after from Jove’s head she flung
That preternatural antic,
’Tis said, to keep from idleness
Or flirting, those twin curses,
She spent her leisure, more or less,
In writing po——, no, verses.
How nice they were! to rhyme with far

A kind star did not tarry;
The metre, too, was regular
As schoolboy’s dot and carry;
And full they were of pious plums,
So extra-super-moral,—
For sucking Virtue’s tender gums
Most tooth-enticing coral.
A clean, fair copy she prepares,

Makes sure of moods and tenses,
With her own hand,—for prudence spares
A man-(or woman-)-uensis;
Complete, and tied with ribbons proud,
She hinted soon how cosy a
Treat it would be to read them loud
After next day’s Ambrosia.
The Gods thought not it would amuse

So much as Homer’s Odyssees,
But could not very well refuse
The properest of Goddesses;
So all sat round in attitudes
Of various dejection,
As with a hem! the queen of prudes
Began her grave prelection.
At the first pause Zeus said, “Well sung!—

I k Ph b h k ”
I mean—ask Phœbus,—he knows.”
Says Phœbus, “Zounds! a wolf’s among
Admetus’s merinos!
Fine! very fine! but I must go;
They stand in need of me there;
Excuse me!” snatched his stick, and so
Plunged down the gladdened ether.
With the next gap, Mars said, “For me

Don’t wait,—naught could be finer,
But I’m engaged at half past three,—
A fight in Asia Minor!”
Then Venus lisped, “I’m sorely tried,
These duty-calls are vip’rous;
But I must go; I have a bride
To see about in Cyprus.”
Then Bacchus,—“I must say good bye,

Although my peace it jeopards;
I meet a man at four, to try
A well-broke pair of leopards.”
His words woke Hermes. “Ah!” he said,
“I so love moral theses!”
Then winked at Hebe, who turned red,
And smoothed her apron’s creases.
Just then Zeus snored,—the Eagle drew

His head the wing from under;
Zeus snored,—o’er startled Greece there flew
The many-volumed thunder.
Some augurs counted nine, some, ten;
Some said ’twas war, some, famine,
And all, that other-minded men
Would get a precious——.
Proud Pallas sighed, “It will not do;

Against the Muse I’ve sinned, oh!”
And her torn rhymes sent flying through
Ol ’ b k i d
Olympus’s back window.
Then, packing up a peplus clean,
She took the shortest path thence,
And opened, with a mind serene,
A Sunday-school in Athens.
The verses? Some in ocean swilled,

Killed every fish that bit to ’em;
Some Galen caught, and, when distilled,
Found morphine the residuum;
But some that rotted on the earth
Sprang up again in copies,
And gave two strong narcotics birth,
Didactic verse and poppies.
Years after, when a poet asked

The Goddess’s opinion,
As one whose soul its wings had tasked
In Art’s clear-aired dominion,
“Discriminate,” she said, “betimes;
The Muse is unforgiving;
Put all your beauty in your rhymes,
Your morals in your living.”
THE FLYING DUTCHMAN.
Don’t believe in the Flying Dutchman?

I’ve known the fellow for years;
My button I’ve wrenched from his clutch, man:
I shudder whenever he nears!
He’s a Rip van Winkle skipper,

A Wandering Jew of the sea,
Who sails his bedevilled old clipper
In the wind’s eye, straight as a bee.
Back topsails! you can’t escape him;

The man-ropes stretch with his weight,
And the queerest old toggeries drape him,
The Lord knows how long out of date!
Like a long-disembodied idea,

(A kind of ghost plentiful now,)
He stands there; you fancy you see a
Coeval of Teniers or Douw.
He greets you; would have you take letters:

You scan the addresses with dread,
While he mutters his donners and wetters,—
They’re all from the dead to the dead!
You seem taking time for reflection,

But the heart fills your throat with a jam,
As you spell in each faded direction
An ominous ending in dam.
Am I tagging my rhymes to a legend?

That were changing green turtle to mock:
No, thank you! I’ve found out which wedge-end
Is meant for the head of a block.
The fellow I have in my mind’s eye

Plays the old Skipper’s part here on shore,
And sticks like a burr, till he finds I
Have got just the gauge of his bore.
This postman ’twixt one ghost and t’other,

With last dates that smell of the mould,
I have met him (O man and brother,
Forgive me!) in azure and gold.
In the pulpit I’ve known of his preaching,

Out of hearing behind the time,
Some statement of Balaam’s impeaching,
Giving Eve a due sense of her crime.
I have seen him some poor ancient thrashing
Into something (God save us!) more dry,
With the Water of Life itself washing
The life out of earth, sea, and sky.
O dread fellow-mortal, get newer

Despatches to carry, or none!
We’re as quick as the Greek and the Jew were
At knowing a loaf from a stone.
Till the couriers of God fail in duty,

We sha’n’t ask a mummy for news,
Nor sate the soul’s hunger for beauty
With your drawings from casts of a Muse.
CREDIDIMUS JOVEM REGNARE.
O days endeared to every Muse,

When nobody had any Views,
Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind
By every breeze was new designed,
Insisted all the world should see
Camels or whales where none there be!
O happy days, when men received
From sire to son what all believed,
And left the other world in bliss,
Too busy with bedevilling this!
Beset by doubts of every breed

In the last bastion of my creed,
With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime,
I watch the storming-party climb,
Panting (their prey in easy reach),
To pour triumphant through the breach
In walls that shed like snowflakes tons
Of missiles from old-fashioned guns,
B t bl ’ th th t th t
But crumble ’neath the storm that pours
All day and night from bigger bores.
There, as I hopeless watch and wait
The last life-crushing coil of Fate,
Despair finds solace in the praise
Of those serene dawn-rosy days
Ere microscopes had made us heirs
To large estates of doubts and snares,
By proving that the title-deeds,
Once all-sufficient for men’s needs,
Are palimpsests that scarce disguise
The tracings of still earlier lies,
Themselves as surely written o’er
An older fib erased before.
So from these days I fly to those

That in the landlocked Past repose,
Where no rude wind of doctrine shakes
From bloom-flushed boughs untimely flakes;
Where morning’s eyes see nothing strange,
No crude perplexity of change,
And morrows trip along their ways
Secure as happy yesterdays.
Then there were rulers who could trace
Through heroes up to gods their race,
Pledged to fair fame and noble use
By veins from Odin filled or Zeus,
And under bonds to keep divine
The praise of a celestial line.
Then priests could pile the altar’s sods,
With whom gods spake as they with gods,
And everywhere from haunted earth
Broke springs of wonder, that had birth
In depths divine beyond the ken
And fatal scrutiny of men;
Then hills and groves and streams and seas
Thrilled with immortal presences,
Not too ethereal for the scope
Of human passion’s dream or hope.
Now Pan at last is surely dead,

And King No-Credit reigns instead,
Whose officers, morosely strict,
Poor Fancy’s tenantry evict,
Chase the last Genius from the door,
And nothing dances any more.
Nothing? Ah, yes, our tables do,
Drumming the Old One’s own tattoo,
And, if the oracles are dumb,
Have we not mediums? Why be glum?
Fly thither? Why, the very air

Is full of hindrance and despair!
Fly thither? But I cannot fly;
My doubts enmesh me if I try,—
Each lilliputian, but, combined,
Potent a giant’s limbs to bind.
This world and that are growing dark;
A huge interrogation mark,
The Devil’s crook episcopal,
Still borne before him since the Fall,
Blackens with its ill-omened sign
The old blue heaven of faith benign.
Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? Which? Why?
All ask at once, all wait reply.
Men feel old systems cracking under ’em;
Life saddens to a mere conundrum
Which once Religion solved, but she
Has lost—has Science found?—the key.
What was snow-bearded Odin, trow,

The mighty hunter long ago,
Whose horn and hounds the peasant hears
Still when the Northlights shake their spears?
Science hath answers twain, I’ve heard;
Choose which you will, nor hope a third;
y p
Whichever box the truth be stowed in,
There’s not a sliver left of Odin.
Either he was a pinchbrowed thing,
With scarcely wit a stone to fling,
A creature both in size and shape
Nearer than we are to the ape,
Who hung sublime with brat and spouse
By tail prehensile from the boughs,
And, happier than his maimed descendants,
The culture-curtailed independents,
Could pluck his cherries with both paws,
And stuff with both his big-boned jaws;
Or else the core his name enveloped
Was from a solar myth developed,
Which, hunted to its primal shoot,
Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root,
Thereby to instant death explaining
The little poetry remaining.
Try it with Zeus, ’tis just the same;

The thing evades, we hug a name;
Nay, scarcely that,—perhaps a vapor
Born of some atmospheric caper.
All Lempriere’s fables blur together
In cloudy symbols of the weather,
And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas
But to illustrate such hypotheses.
With years enough behind his back,
Lincoln will take the selfsame track,
And prove, hulled fairly to the cob,
A mere vagary of Old Prob.
Give the right man a solar myth,
And he’ll confute the sun therewith.
They make things admirably plain,

But one hard question will remain:
If one hypothesis you lose,
Another in its place you choose,

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ISBN 978-3-030-98842-5 ISBN 978-3-030-98843-2 (eBook)

Saarbrücken, Germany Christian A. Conrad

Saarbrücken, Germany Christian A. Conrad

1 Basic of Ethics�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1

4 Ethical Problems of the Economy: Enron, Subprime & Co. – From

6.4 International Business Ethics�������������������������������������������������������������� 252

8.3.5 Ethical Leadership������������������������������������������������������������������ 379

Christian A. Conrad teaches economics and business ethics at Saarland University

What Follows Why?

1.1 Basic Terms

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Group Discussion: Value Clarification

1.2 What Is Business Ethics?

1. To avert damage to economic activity for third parties (interest of society)

So-called moral hazards promote such conflicts of interest as negative behavioral

1.3 Objective of Business Ethics

Originally, the economy and ethics were interconnected. According to Aristotle,

Conclusion and Summary

1. Define business ethics.

Noll, B. (2002). Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik in der Marktwirtschaft. Stuttgart:

What Follows Why?

2.1 Classical Ethics

Case Study: Relations and Recommendations

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

2.1.1 Ethics of Conviction

In Kant, the mind ultimately determines whether an action is to be classified as

According to Kant, a good or good-maximizing deed would not be classified as

2.1.2 Kant’s Rules for Ethical Reasoning

2.1.2.1 The Practical Imperative

How do my actions affect people? The purpose of my action should be to do good,

2.1.2.2 The Categorical Imperative

2.1.2.3 Publicity Rule

2.1.3 Ethics of Duties (Deontological Ethics)

The approach of regulating human coexistence via obligations is already found in

“When first I chanced the Eagle to explore,

“'Can I have lodging here?' once more I said.

“Well, there I lingered all October through,

“There was a parlor in the house, a room

“When first arrived, I chilled a half-hour there,

He paused a moment, and his features took

“But to my story: though ’tis truly naught

“In this one room his dame you never saw,

“'Twas there I caught from Uncle Reuben’s lips,

“Soon as the winter made the sledding good,

“While the first snow was mealy under feet,

“Before the fire, in want of thought profound,

“By this time Obed had his wits thawed out,

“'Bitters he took the rod, and pretty soon

Saarbrücken, Germany Christian A. Conrad

Saarbrücken, Germany Christian A. Conrad

1 Basic of Ethics�� 1

4 Ethical Problems of the Economy: Enron, Subprime & Co. – From

6.4 International Business Ethics�� 252

8.3.5 Ethical Leadership�� 379

1.1 Basic Terms

1.2 What Is Business Ethics?

1.3 Objective of Business Ethics

2.1 Classical Ethics

2.1.1 Ethics of Conviction

2.1.2 Kant’s Rules for Ethical Reasoning

2.1.2.1 The Practical Imperative

2.1.2.2 The Categorical Imperative

2.1.2.3 Publicity Rule

2.1.3 Ethics of Duties (Deontological Ethics)