By deliberately placing ethics under the category of communication, Kierkegaard intended to show that it is like no other science. He distinguished betweendirect communication and indirect communication. Direct communication concerns objectivity and knowledge; indirect communication, on the other hand, has to do with subjectivity (“becoming-subject”). In this paper, the author presents Kierkegaard’s philosophy of communication and ethics with special emphasis on his irony and pseudonymous authorship. He also examines the possibility of a discourse in business ethics, focusing on the educational (...) perspective. He discusses Kierkegaard’s aspects of communication—the communicator, the receiver, and the object—with particular reference to applied ethics. He argues that the Kierkegaardian notion of indirect communication can contribute to renewing business ethics teaching—which in his view is more art than science—in two important ways: (1) when the ethics teacher changes his position in the teacher/learner relationship; and (2) when the relationship between communicator/receiver is strengthened at the expense of the object. (shrink)

In 1999, the Journal of Business Ethics published its 1 500th article. This article commemorates the journal's quest "to improve the human condition" (Michalos, 1988, p. 1) with a summary and assessment of the first eighteen volumes. The first part provides an overview of JBE, highlighting the journal's growth, types of methodologies published, and the breadth of the field. The second part provides a detailed account of the quantitative research findings. Major research topics include (1) prevalence of ethical behavior, (2) (...) ethical sensitivities, (3) ethics codes and programs, (4) corporate social performance and policies, (5) human resource practices and policies, and (6) professions – accounting, marketing/sales, and finance/strategy. Much remains to be done. (shrink)

A question facing nearly all private firms is whether they may keep employee pay secret. Many think it is obvious that firms are obligated to disclose a good deal of pay information once we properly appreciate the severity of pay discrimination in our economy and the autonomy-related interests that would be served by pay disclosure. This article puts forth a dissenting voice against the vast majority of recent commentary. It exploits a fissure between reasons we have to support certain coercive (...) regulations and reasons firms have to act in the absence of such regulation. While acknowledging that we may need transparency regulations for firms that fail to act morally, it argues that otherwise moral firms need not disclose pay on the surveyed grounds. (shrink)