Whose Business Values?

Table of Contents

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pp. v-vi

Contributors

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pp. vii-xii

Preface: Trading Values

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pp. xiii-xxii

This book is the result of Asia's first international conference on business values held in June 1994 in Hong Kong. It was hosted by the newly launched Centre for the Study of Business Values in the University of Hong Kong. Business values are manifested in business conduct and/or strategy, depending whether they are terminal or instrumental values (Rokeach 1973). They include business ethics but are...

1: The Ethics of Values and the Value of Ethics: Should We Be Studying Business Values in Hong Kong?

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pp. 1-18

This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first book on business setting-up of the new Centre for the Study of Business Values at the University of Hong Kong. The territory has until now lacked a centre concentrating solely on business values, rather than on more general ethical questions, although there are many elsewhere in the ...

2: Ethical Values as Part of the Concept of Business Enterprise

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pp. 19-40

The orientation of this paper is that there is no special science of 'business ethics' any more than there is one of 'medical ethics' or 'legal ethics'. While there may be issues that arise in medicine or law that require special treatment, the ways of relating to such issues are derived from a basic ethical stance. Once one has evolved ...

3: Codes of Ethics and the Civil Society: John Stuart Mill's Legacy in the 1990s

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pp. 41-54

Wrestling with the limits of morality and the criminal law is not only the task of moral philosophers, it is also the task of the action, such as the right to conduct private business transactions minimizing the risk within the confines of the criminal law. It is the concern of everyone in business to think about the areas of ...

4: Ethical Values: A Source of Conflict -- But Whose Values?

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pp. 55-68

Much noise on the issue of ethics has been generated from the United States. It has become a hot topic in business schools (Andrews 1989; Hoffman 1989). Wright (1989) suggests that there are numerous factors that have led to the erosion of ethical values in the United States, foremost of which is the breakdown...

5: The Relevance of Equity Values in Eastern Cultures

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pp. 69-86

Over two decades ago, Hofstede (1980a) asked the question, 'Do American theories apply abroad?' Many researchers have approached this issue by testing straightforward translations of American instruments to determine whether the same theoretical relationships hold in India, Britain, Hong Kong or wherever. Conclusions range from support for the...

6: An Outsider's View of the East Asian Miracle: Lessons and Questions

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pp. 87-120

A miracle is something extraordinary and transcends our usual understanding of the world and how it works. We are struck that the miracle occurs against our expectations. According to our 'normal' experience of the world, we consider the miracle exceptional. By putting it into the category of 'non-classifiables', we maintain and do not question our traditional..

7: Feudalism, Ethics and Postmodern Company Life

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pp. 121-142

Between the fall of Constantinople in 1452 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, the world economy was moved forward by colonialism, mercantilism and capitalism-all being variations of a basic law of survival of the fittest. From the late fifteenth-century voyages of discovery to the late twentieth-century Voyager missions, the age of Modernity was characterized...

8: Psychic Prisoners? Managers Facing Ethical Dilemmas: Cases from Hong Kong

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pp. 143-164

This paper provides illustrations, taken from the author's own study involving ten Hong Kong managers,¹ of four forms of 'psychic imprisonment' which restrict managers' ability to resolve ethical dilemmas. These are: 1. having limited ethical reasoning capacity; 2. holding stereotypical assumptions about the nature of organizational structures, responsibilities...

9: Corporate Ethics and International Business: Some Basic Issues

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pp. 165-202

Questions about the ethical justification of human activity have Confucius, the writers of the Gospels, or Fathers of the Church constitutes sensible human existence. Those of us wishing to discover suitable working principles can refer to Immanuel Kant, Max Weber or Hans Jonas. One way or the other, no one today can claim that ...

10: Business Values: A Strategic Imperative for the Coming Decades

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pp. 203-222

In the 1980s, research in business values and culture reached an unprecedented climax. Innumerable theoretical and empirical studies encompassing almost all researchable topics in business values and culture were conducted, focusing on such areas as definition issues, theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, typological ...

11: Ethical Attitudes to Bribery and Extortion

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pp. 223-246

Bribery is a source of considerable concern in many quarters of the globe, as events and scandals in various countries in the last twenty are examined, as well as attempts made by international agencies to outlaw the practice. A distinction is drawn between bribery and extortion may be considered morally justifiable. However, situations ...

12: Business Values and Embryonic Industry: Lessons from Australia

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pp. 247-266

Embryonic industry is new and emerging. Its novelty lies in the application of distinctive practices to production, service or problem resolution in ways that are discontinuous with existing technologies, values, and knowledge. The root metaphor is that of an 'embryo'. If there is not something that is new and discontinuous then there ...

13: Development in the Underdeveloped World: A New Challenge for Business Ethics

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pp. 267-288

Business ethics and environmental ethics are inextricably intertwined government, promises to achieve a more ethical relationship in the developing world. While using the suggestions of the recent emphasis development practices, it also incorporates the suggestions of those is more than a new way for the industrialized world to increase ...

Conclusion: Whose Business Values?

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pp. 289-304

The study of business values is a relatively new academic discipline; the first real debate on business values is usually considered to have taken place as late as 1904 with the Barbara Weinstock series of lectures, on the 'Morals of Trade', closely followed in 1908 by the Page Lectures at the Sheffield Scientific School, which purported ...

Index

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pp. 305-310