Business ethics. Conceptual structures and applications

This book is primarily addressed to students in Economics, but may be useful for anyone interested in ethical issues people inevitably face as managers, customers or employees. Although not completely ignoring the legal dimension, this work focuses mainly on the examination of business practices from a moral perspective. The book contains many case studies that show how the theoretical elements can be used for the ethical analysis of business issues.

The volume contains two parts. The first one focuses on fundamental concepts of ethics and on general frameworks of argumentation in business ethics. In addition to the utilitarian and deontological approach, the author examines the free-market perspective on ethical issues, often used, but only seldom synthesized and theorized in the literature.

The second part examines in detail the ethical issues between employers and employees, producers and consumers, as well as ethical problems in international business. Special attention is paid to the issues of employee discrimination, consumer information and product safety. The author also analyzes from an original perspective the social responsibility activities carried out by companies.