Business Ethics for Better Behavior

A clear and concise roadmap for ethical business behavior using commonsense moral principles

Business Ethics for Better Behavior concisely answers the three most pressing ethical questions business professionals face: What makes business practices right or wrong?; Why do normal, decent businesspeople of good will sometimes do the wrong thing?; and How can we use the answer to these questions to get ourselves, our coworkers, our bosses, and our employees to behave better?

Bad behavior in business rarely results from bad will. Most people mean well much of the time. But most of us are vulnerable. We all fall into moral traps, usually without even noticing.

Business Ethics for Better Behavior teaches business professionals, students, and other readers how to become aware of those traps, how to avoid them, and how to dig their way out if they fall in. It integrates the best work in psychology, economics, management theory, and normative philosophy into a simple action plan for ensuring the best ethical performance at all levels of business practice. This is a book anyone in business, from an entry-level employee to CEO, can use.

Jason Brennan is the Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University. He is the author of fifteen books, which have been translated twenty-three times into thirteen languages, including Cracks in the Ivory Tower and Injustice for All. He specializes in the intersection of politics, philosophy, and economics.

William English is an assistant professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He taught at Brown University as a post-doc with the Political Theory Project and served as the research director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He was the founding director of the Abigail Adams Institute and is currently a member of the National Council on the Humanities. His research considers both the normative foundations of social institutions as well empirical evaluations of social theories and policies.

John Hasnas is a professor of ethics at Georgetown's McDonough School of Business, a professor of law (by courtesy) at Georgetown Law Center, and the executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for the Study of Markets and Ethics. He is the author of Trapped: When Acting Ethically Is Against the Law as well over fifty scholarly articles and book chapters. His scholarship concerns ethics and white collar crime, legal and political philosophy, and legal history.

Peter Jaworski is an associate teaching professor teaching ethics to undergraduates and MBA students. He was a Visiting Research Professor at Brown University, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the College of Wooster, and an Instructor at Bowling Green State University. His work focuses primarily on the ethics and economics of the global plasma industry. Along with Jason Brennan, he is the author of Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests (2016).

Chapter One: Why Do Good People Do Bad Things?
Chapter Two: The Business of Business Is Business: How Businesses Serve Society
Chapter Three: Why Aren't We All Saints?
Chapter Four: Addressing Moral Confusion: The Principles Approach
Chapter Five: Addressing Moral Confusion: The Right and Wrong of Exploitation
Chapter Six: Addressing Moral Confusion: Ethics Isn't Law
Chapter Seven: The Effect of Incentives: The Value of Reputation
Chapter Eight: The Effect of Incentives: Managing for Ethics
Chapter Nine: The Effect of Incentives: The Problem of Collective Action
Chapter Ten: The Effect of Incentives: Diffusion of Responsibility
Chapter Eleven: Psychological Factors: Ethical Fading and Moral Blind Spots
Chapter Twelve: Psychological Factors: Meaning and Motivation
Chapter Thirteen: Psychological Factors: Avoid DUMB Values
Conclusion: How to Run an Unethical Business
References
Index