Business Ethics : A Stakeholder, Governance, and Risk Approach

Traditionally, books on business ethics focus on CSR, companies’ relations with their stakeholders, and corporate citizenship. More recently, green credentials and sustainability have been added to that agenda. Unconventionally, this book argues that business ethics are basic to running business, not a separate subject. They are inherent to the governance and management of every organization, not an optional exercise in corporate citizenship. Business ethics concern behaviour in business and the behaviour of business. Decisions at every level in a company have ethical implications – strategically in the board room, managerially throughout the organization, and operationally in all of its activities.

The use, and sometimes the abuse, of corporate power, the process of corporate governance, raises ethical issues. Business involves risk-taking, whether decisions are at the strategic, managerial, or operational level. Exposure to ethical risk needs to be part of every organization’s strategy formulation, policy making, and enterprise risk management.

Designed to be read by both undergraduates and postgraduates, this book is a primer on ethics in business. It is also relevant to ethics courses that are now part of many legal, accountancy and other professional examinations. The book is not about moral philosophy, nor does it prescribe appropriate standards of behaviour or recommend economic, legal or political solutions. Rather it enables readers to recognize ethical issues in business, to respond appropriately, and to embed ethics in business processes. The book not only considers what business ethics are, and why they are important, but offers practical approaches on how to develop a successful corporate ethics culture.

Dr R. I. (Bob) Tricker was a chartered accountant, an officer in the Royal Navy, and financial controller of an industrial company, before studying at the Harvard Business School and becoming a Research Fellow at Oxford University. He was Professor of Information Systems at Warwick University, then Director of the Oxford Centre for Management (now the Saïd Business School) for a decade, before being appointed Professor of Finance at the University of Hong Kong. His books include The Independent Director (1978), Corporate Governance (1984), the first book with that title, The Economist Essential Director (5th edition, 2003) and Corporate Governance – principles, policies and practices (2nd edition, 2012). He currently holds visiting professorships at two Hong Kong Universities.

Gretchen Tricker BA, MBA has been a researcher, journalist, and managing editor of a women’s style magazine in Hong Kong. Subsequently, she was Senior Research Officer in the University of Hong Kong, and deputy-editor of Corporate Governance - an international review. She wrote Shares in Hong Kong, the centennial history of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (1991).