Business Ethics and Social Responsibility
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Caroline Burns, Saint Mary’s College of California
Grant Rozeboom, Saint Mary’s College of California
Sarah M. Vital, Saint Mary’s College of California
Copyright Year:
Publisher: Saint Mary's College of California
Language: English
Formats Available
Conditions of Use
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA
Table of Contents
- License Attributions
- Accessibility Statement
- Land Acknowledgement
- Acknowledgements
- Author Statements
- Introduction
- 1. Institutional Context of Business
- 2. Ethical Decision Making in Organizations
- 3. Organizational Culture and Climate
- 4. Social and Environmental Issues in Business
- 5. Corporate Social Responsibility
- 6. Corporate Governance
- Glossary
About the Book
Business Ethics and Social Responsibility introduces students to ethical decision-making and the role of social responsibility in contemporary organizational life. The text explores foundational concepts in ethical reasoning, organizational culture, stakeholder theory, corporate governance, and the intersections between business actions and environmental and social issues. Through real concepts such as conflicts of interest, corporate social responsibility, and fiduciary accountability, the book supports learners in understanding how ethical frameworks inform responsible practice in business contexts. Through applied concepts such as conflicts of interest, corporate social responsibility, and fiduciary accountability, and guided engagement with real-world cases the book supports learners in understanding how ethical frameworks inform responsible practice in business contexts.
Accessibility
Accessibility of This Resource The web version of this resource has been designed to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, level AA. In addition, it follows all guidelines in Appendix A: Checklist for Accessibility of the Accessibility Toolkit - 2nd Edition. It includes: Easy navigation. This resource has a linked table of contents and uses hierarchical headings in each chapter to make navigation easy. Accessible theme. This resource is using Pressbooks' Malala theme. Accessible images. All images in this resource that convey information have alternative text and, if needed, linked image descriptions. Accessible links. All links are descriptive, and reference if they open in a new tab. Accessible tables. All tables are used to organize information rather than page layout, include a caption, use correct headers and scope, avoid merged cells, and include cell padding. Accessible interactivity. H5P types are either fully accessible or if inaccessible, an alternative, accessible option is available.
About the Contributors
Authors
Caroline Burns, Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility. I come to this textbook having spent half my professional life in industry and half in academia. My early career was in hospitality management, where I witnessed, and at times participated in, business practices that were legal but ethically unsettling. Those formative years left me with a lasting awareness of how organizations justify their choices, and how individuals inside them often have far less power than official charts suggest. My view of business has always been shaped more by break rooms than by boardrooms. As a first-generation college graduate, raised in a working-class household and shaped by the experiences of immigration and economic precarity, I’ve spent much of my life aware of how vulnerable people can be to the decisions of those with more power and security. That grounding shapes how I approach questions of responsibility and power. Having moved through corporate and academic spaces with a perspective that doesn’t always match the dominant mold, I’ve learned to pay close attention to what gets overlooked, unheard, or dismissed. Those sensitivities inform my contributions to this textbook. Finally, my contribution is grounded in a respect for business as a potential force for good, and a belief that its ethical legitimacy depends on how it treats the humans and the natural world that sustain it and those who profit most from its operations.
Grant Rozeboom, Associate Professor of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility. My academic training is in philosophy, with a focus on ethics, and much of my work is in what’s called “normative business ethics,” which examines the basic principles and values that should inform the structure of markets and their participants. I’m the first academic in my family, and so my approach to this book was guided by a concern to present theoretical frameworks in a clear, accessible way that provides a bridge for readers encountering this material for the first time. Given my academic background, I focused most heavily on the sections introducing philosophical frameworks and conceptual foundations.
Sarah M. Vital, Business Librarian. I come to this project not as a subject-matter expert in business, but as an academic librarian with further scholarly and teaching experience in communication and rhetoric. My role in this work was to support cohesion in the contributions of the two primary authors, both of them being subject experts with different perspectives. As a non-traditional academic scholar– from my experience as a first-generation college student to my role in academia outside of a professorial role– and as someone slightly outside the discipline, my ultimate goal was to focus on the undergraduate student reader. I aimed to ensure the accessibility of the language, the clarity of examples, and the overall supportiveness of the included learning aids.