Just Business: Business Ethics in Action

By Elaine Sternberg

Book Overview

Just Business: Business Ethics in Action introduces conceptual clarity to business ethics, and provides systematic, jargon-free arguments for rebutting unethical demands on business. Just Business argues that business can be true to its definitive objective of maximizing long-term owner value, and still be fully ethical. Combining business realism with analytical rigor, Just Business offers an Ethical Decision Model that is globally applicable, and can be used to manage businesses' ethical problems in all their real-life complexity and variety. Even more significantly, Just Business provides a powerful explanatory framework that unifies and justifies its answers.

Just Business offers detailed analyses of common concerns in business ethics and corporate governance, including 'If it's good for the business, can it really be ethical?', accountability, audits, bribery, buyouts, codes of conduct, competition, conflicts of interest, consultation, directors' responsibilities, dividends, executive pay, fairness, fiduciary responsibility, financial reporting, hiring and firing, honesty, insider trading, mixed motives, remuneration, restructuring, shareholder responsibilities, 'short-termism', takeovers, and whistle-blowing.

Unlike most books on business ethics, Just Business does not apply incoherent philosophical doctrines to misunderstood business practice. Nor is it a collection of anecdotal examples or a set of ad hoc responses to isolated questions. Rather, Just Business offers a systematic, reasoned argument grounded in Aristotelian realism about what constitutes ethical conduct for business. Just Business demonstrates that when properly understood, business ethics is not an extraneous anti-business option: it is a rigorous, analytical business tool.

Just Business's understanding of business derives from direct, practical experience of doing business in the 'real world'. It is intended for, and should be easily accessible to, active business stakeholders and formulators of public policy as well as academic philosophers. Now in its fourth edition, Just Business is essential reading for students of business, ethics, law, economics, and public policy, and can benefit everyone who has dealings with business, whether as employees or customers, lenders or investors, regulators or free-marketeers.

Financial Times: "...a new book on business ethics that has something valuable to say is ... a rare event ... worth celebrating.... companies would be more profitable, the gross national product higher, and standards of behaviour better in a country where every manager read Just Business and took it to heart."

Philosophical Quarterly: "Just Business is clear, readable and witty... it may become a standard text before long... deserves to be read by everyone with an interest in business ethics, whether teacher, student or business professional."

The Independent: "Just Business is closely argued, logical and well written."

Business Ethics: A European Review: "Much is gained by the book's carefully reasoned, clear approach to ethical issues."

South China Morning Post: " ...very important... clear... logical... cogent... a first-class work. ...this book should be read by the officers, managers and owners of every major corporation..."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0999266128
• ISBN13: 9780999266120
• Release Date: July 2018
• Publisher: Phronimos Press
• Length: 326 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Packed With Knowledge!

Elaine Sternberg has written an important, fascinating look at business ethics. Despite its academic presentation, it hooks you right away, and keeps you hooked. She is not fuzzy in her ethical analysis; there is no moral posturing to be found. This book is a practical decision-making guide for businesspeople. Sternberg builds an ethical framework that starts with the fundamental premise that the goal of business is to increase owner value. If an ethical issue relates to that goal, it's one you must address. If not, it's not your problem. Once you've identified an ethical dilemma that you must resolve, Sternberg guides you through a series of intellectual exercises that narrow your options, identify your constraints and ultimately help you arrive at the correct answer. We [...] recommend this book as a seminal introduction to ethical decision making for business men and women that should be read by all and referred to often.