Ethics

Abstract

In the mid-1970s, the problem of business ethics was raised by a scientific and opinion movement that developed in the USA, where big universities are the crossroads of the cultural and economic worlds. This movement rapidly gave birth to a network composed of representatives of the cultural and business spheres. The network eventually spread all over the industrialised world and clustered into a variety of institutions. The movement was based on the widespread feeling that a firm can be considered a “moral person”, and not only a “legal person”. As such, its conduct could be subjected to normative rules, and not only described and interpreted from an analytical perspective. This ethical dimension is termed “business meso-ethics”, while the moral evaluation of economic institutions, i.e. free market, regulated market, planning, etc., is defined “business macro-ethics”. On the other hand, “micro-ethics” is concerned with evaluating the conduct of the actors operating within firms and institutions from a normative perspective [1].