Business ethics : decision making for personal integrity & social reponsibility
- 2nd ed.
- New York McGraw-Hill 2011
- xvi, 608 p. ; figs Includes index
We began writing the first edition of this textbook in 2006, soon after a wave of major corporate scandals had shaken the financial world. Headlines made the com-panies involved in these ethical scandals household names: Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, Health-South, Global Crossing, Arthur Andersen, ImClone, KPMG, J.P. Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Salomon Smith Barney, and even the New York Stock Exchange itself. At the time, we suggested that, in light of such significant cases of financial fraud, mismanagement, crimi-nality and deceit, the relevance of business ethics could no longer be questioned. Sadly, the very same issues are as much alive today as they were several years ago. Consider the rash of problems associated with the financial meltdown in 2008-09 and the problems faced by such companies as AIG, Countrywide, Lehman Brothers, Merrill-Lynch, Bear Stearns and of the financier Bernard Madoff. Once again, we have witnessed financial and ethical malfeasance of historic propor-tions and the inability of market mechanisms, internal governance structures, or government regulation to prevent it.