European Business Ethics Cases in Context

Business ethics as a discipline leans on cases but flourishes by thorough analysis and reflection. The present volume offers both. After four introductory chapters into business ethics eleven recent European cases, mainly stemming from The Netherlands and Belgium and all of them with a clear moral impact, are extensively described and analysed. Among them are the Lernout and Hauspie speech technology disaster, Heineken struggle with the promotion girls selling beer in Cambodia, cartels in the Dutch construction industry, Shell's unproven oil reserves, dubious side letters in Ahold contracts, the pharmaceutical industry and the Aids crisis, and Unilever allegedly making use of child labour in the cotton industry in India. Each case is followed by two or three expert comments, from the fields of general ethics and business ethics, but also of law, economics, management and organisation theory, sociology and social psychology. Cases and comments together offer an unique entrance in varieties of moral reasoning and in the personal and institutional dimensions to be taken into account when facing a corporate case saturated with moral ambiguities. The book will be of interest to researchers as well as teachers of undergraduate and graduate courses in Business Ethics, Business in Society, Management and Organisation Theory and Strategic Management. It will also be useful for business practitioners eager to find moral guidance in their specific field.