Review : Business Ethics : Australian Problems and Cases

E stablished professions all acknowledge a domain of ethical judgement beyond, but arising from, the power created by their practitioner' arts. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects defer to this obvious fact through specific professional codes. If these codes seem often to be honoured only at a rhetorical or casuistic level, this nevertheless lingers as the residual homage of vice to virtue. In such an atmosphere, the professionalisation of business might be expected to involve a parallel development—and the credentialling of practitioners also involve attention to the associated skills. Perhaps due to the problematic character of management as a profession or perhaps to the problematic character of ethical discourse, it seems few of Australia's 35 management schools yet offer such courses. Interest in business ethics has expanded in recent years—but this has mainly been through research centres associated with the churches, with at best limited links to academic institutions and management programmes. The authors own graduate program at the University of New South Wales is an honourable exception. If one reason for this gap has been the absence of materials that addressed the particular circumstances and needs of Australian managers, that has now been remedied. This text, by Damian Grace and Stephen Cohen, provides a systematic overview of ethics issues as they have arisen for Australian managers and as framed by Australia's distinctive political, legal and institutional environment. Theirs is the first systematic enumeration of the range of ethical questions that might arise in business. It is grounded in a strong empirical base—since recent years have been a fertile source of contentious decisions and actions. These serve an immediate pedagogical purpose—and indirectly, they accumulate to a powerful case for more academic attention to such matters. Their book is structured in ten chapters, three of which explore styles of ethical reasoning and the issues of public and private morality. Here they generally argue the non-Machiavellian, non-Friedmanite proposition that good ethics is good business. They do this admirably clear prose. The remaining seven chapters take a particular aspect or activity of business. Each chapter explores the kind of questions that can arise and the contribution that different traditions of ethical reasoning might make to clarifying decisions and action. Each chapter is illustrated with a variety of case studies—and with student exercises. The particular subjects covered are stakeholders, dealings with rivals and potential partners, marketing and advertising, equal opportunity and affirmative action, the environment, whistleblowing, …