A Primer on Business Ethics

by Tibor R. Machan and James E. Chesher

Book Overview

A Primer on Business Ethics is an accessibly written, engaging introduction to the fundamental questions of business ethics, for use in the undergraduate classroom. Machan and Chesher approach the business enterprise in a friendly, pro-business spirit, and identify the virtue of prudence as its moral foundation. Various branches of business including advertising, financial services, management, employment, corporate ethics, responsibilities of corporate...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0742513890
• ISBN13: 9780742513891
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.9" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Well done

After reading one review of this book I wanted to see for myself and lo and behalf found that there is a discussion of Enron in the Epilog. (The reviewer spoke out without reading the book, which is dirty pool.) In any case, while the authors are indeed champions of the free market, this doesn't by any means tell the whole story. They also defend a virtue ethics in terms of which various professions are held to their (explicit or implicit) oath. People in business, in particular, are committed to make their enterprise prosper and if they engage, for example, in racial, sexual or other kinds of irrelevant discrimination, they are guilty of violating the ethics of their profession and may also be guilty of injustice in general. This book, thus, is full of precise enough guideliness for how to conduct oneself in business, what would make one an unethical advertiser, manager, personnel director, and corporate executive. The authors' view of advertising as an means of promotion rather than information dissemination is especially useful, as is their discussion of employment ethics. All in all a good text that is by no means easy on business, even if not a business basher as most such texts manage to be.

How business friendly should business ethics be?

This is a clearly written, lucid and interesting business ethics primer that will be useful for anyone interested in business ethics. The main shortcoming of the book in my opinion is the general perspective of libertarianism from which it is written. While it is true that the book does not indulge in 'business ethics', it veers towards the other extreme of business apologetics at many stages. What are we to think of a business ethics primer, with a chapter on insider trading, which makes no mention of Enron or ImClone?