Business and morality: a short introduction to business ethics

This might be the first textbook on business ethics ever published in Romania. In any case, it is one of the first attempts to introduce our public to a relatively new field of research, concerned with the moral issues of business activities.

As an applied ethics, business ethics must start with a conceptual framework, used as a paradigm for the analysis and inter¬pretation of particular cases collected from the business activities. There is much to be discussed from an ethical point of view when dealing with ‘narrow business ethics’ topics: customers, employees, shareholders or other associated businesses. But when it comes to ‘broad business ethics’ issues – state, society, environment or international business – the emphasis falls on case studies.

For the time being, the most important task of teaching business ethics to our students in economics is to make as clear as possible the fundamental principles of general ethical theories, and to analyse their applications in the most visible and controversial segments in our present economic life.