Given a huge variety of international relations in the age of globalization, business ethics needs to take them seriously in a differentiated way with great sensitivity and sophisticated understanding. This essay proposes to structure the field of business ethics by distinguishing three levels of analysis and four types of international relations. It builds on Richard T. De George’s pioneering work as an early leader in the field of business ethics. It is hoped that such differentiation may help to better identify (...) the ethical responsibilities of all actors in business and the economy. The first part explains the extended three-level conception of business ethics with four types of international relations. The second part shows De George’s contribution to substantiate this conceptual framework. And the third part discusses the significance of this framework for better ways of securing human rights in international relations. (shrink)

In his famous lecture on ‘Politics as a Vocation’, Max Weber coined and elaborated on the antithesis between the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility, which has had a far-reaching impact on the ethics discussions, particularly in German-speaking countries. The article explores what Weber himself meant with this distinction and what implications result from it. As an interesting historical observation, Weber's interpretation of ‘Do not resist an evildoer’ in the (Christian) New Testament is contrasted with Mahatma Gandhi's diametrically (...) opposed interpretation. After criticizing Weber's position, the article outlines how today's business ethics can be based on a new and different foundation that overcomes the ‘profound antithesis’ between the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility without disregarding the tensions between internal attitudes and external action results. (shrink)

Aiming to develop normative recommendations for preventing corporate irresponsibility (CiR), business and society scholars have adopted strategic approaches—exploring the causal links between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and profitability—and moral approaches—exploring the moral principles of CSR that guide managers. However, some business ethics scholars have recently argued that these studies are too simplistic as they disregard the systemic logics of broader institutional environments that generate ‘bad apples’ firms and managers. Drawing on literature that sheds light on the systemic origin of CiR (...) (i.e. the comparative institutionalist perspective and the critical management perspective), we conduct an in-depth case study on how Russian systems of institutional absences shape insensitive corporate environmental violence of a Russian extractive multinational corporation. In doing so, we develop a novel cultural approach to the analysis of CiR that advances knowledge about the systemic origin of CiR in two ways. First, this approach allows for identifying how the sources of CiR are located within firms’ home national systems of institutional absences, which shape systemic logics of CiR that make corporate violence less traceable by firms and broader society. Second, this approach allows for identifying how governments can sustain and perpetuate insensitive corporate violence through the deliberate and systemic absenting of national institutions that could pressure firms to be more socially and environmentally responsible, thus making negative consequences of corporate violence invisible to firms and broader society. We propose future research directions and suggest policy changes in Russia and other countries with similar systems of institutional absences. (shrink)