Abstract
Roman Meinhold, associate professor of philosophy at Mahidol University, Thailand, authored the textbook Business Ethics and Sustainability, designed for courses in business ethics, environmental ethics, and sustainable development, though it's also intended to be useful for business professionals interested in ethical and sustainable practices. Meinhold utilizes a number of case studies including Brunello Cucinelli, Patagonia, and Freitag to demonstrate how ethically guided and sustainably focused businesses perform well in the real world and spends a considerable amount of space outlining the various ethical perspectives that may be considered in assessing the merits of business decisions. Meinhold also makes an effort to include the ethical perspectives of non-Western groups, which are often excluded in business ethics textbooks, in his analysis.
The book is comprised of ten chapters, which might be thematically split into theory (chapters 1-3) and practice (chapters 4-10). Chapter 1 introduces business ethics fundamentals such as the multifaceted interpretation of the concept of value, the distinction between normative and descriptive judgments, and the pervasiveness of ethical considerations in business decisions. Chapter 2 differentiates between ethics and law and introduces what Meinhold terms the “big five” normative ethical theories: virtue ethics, deontology, utilitarianism, feminist care ethics, and environmental ethics. Chapter 3 delves deeper into these ethical systems, showcasing their potential applications in business scenarios. It also explores John Rawls's justice theory, Amaryta Sen's views on power and responsibility, Japanese Ikigai, and Ubuntu collectivism.
Chapter 4 elaborates on environmental ethical concerns, discussing the moral significance of business decisions relating to human health and advocating for intergenerational justice both on ethical and pragmatic bases. Chapter 5 highlights the responsibility of businesses to their stakeholders and the difficulties in weighing them against the interests of the people impacted most by their business decisions. Chapter 6 outlines the relationship between technology and business ethics and the imperative to ensure technological progress is not used by businesses to the detriment of humanity. Chapter 7 presents ethical dilemmas in advertising, marketing, and fashion including influencing and the exploitation of vice.
Chapter 8 introduces “hypernorms,” shared ethical bases of cross cultures, and underscores the importance of recognizing cultural differences in intercultural situations. Chapter 9 evaluates the link between economic systems and well-being, referencing the World Happiness Report, and Chapter 10 concludes the book, recapitulating the main points.
The text's greatest asset is the sheer number of case studies cited, including the occasional movie or pop culture reference. Meinhold explains that “business ethics is heavily concerned with the responsibilities companies have towards their stakeholders” (p. 14), and for any student with that goal in mind, seeing how these companies have fared navigating ethically significant situations will be invaluable.
However, the discussion of ethical theory itself, which might be expected to be its strong suit given Meinhold's area of specialization, falls a bit short. It is understandable that in a business context, one must be willing to make compromises when it comes to strict compliance with ethical theories. Nonetheless, an ethical theory, whose nature embodies a worldview predicated on a specific understanding of goodness is not made to be compromised. A complete ethical theory must, to the believer, be applicable in all situations. Meinhold's presentation does not present ethics as principles that hold universally. Instead he writes:
With many caveats and limitations, as indicated before, these ethical theories can be compared with a toolbox. To screw a Phillips screw into a wooden wall, we could use a normal screwdriver, or maybe even a hammer and just hammer the screw in, both methods somehow work. But the most fitting tool is the correct size Phillips screwdriver; no other tool solves the problem better. If we routinely apply ethical theories we will consider and choose a theory as we grab the appropriate tool for the job to be done. However, the application of ethical theories is more complex and more complicated, due to the many variables and complexities in real-life business situations. (pp. 31-32)
This makes it seem as if ethics are not only to be treated as considerations in various situations for the businessperson but are meant to be treated like buffet options, each individually incomplete, but together can address the whole of human actions. This is a disservice to students in an introductory textbook on ethics.
It is also unclear why Meinhold considers environmental ethics to be one of his “big five” ethical theories. Virtue ethics, deontology, and utilitarianism are all established normative ethical perspectives that cover entire sets of criteria by which we may judge the morality of an action: the virtues of the actor, the merits of the action, and the happiness its consequences promote, respectively. Care ethics is a relatively new field, focusing specifically on compassion in interpersonal relationships as a foundation for goodness, but it falls in the same category as the others.
Environmental ethics on the other hand is not a normative theory that defines how to look at good, and it's not incompatible with any of the other four; its subject matter encompasses all ethical concerns that treat environmental protection as an ethical end. That distinction seems lost in the presentation and initially gives the erroneous impression that environmental ethics is incompatible with the other four.
However, acknowledging that business ethics is most concerned with identifying “the many goods at play in a contested situation and [realizing] as many of these goods as possible,” (Koehn, 1995) the specifics of theory are not of quintessential importance, and the book still succeeds at its primary aims. The discussions of the business ethical considerations of technologization and marketing will be of significant value to contemporary students living in this social media age and are likely representative of the sorts of decisions they will have to face in their careers. Meinhold's intentional decision to present positive case studies rather than mere negative warnings will exemplify for students how to handle these situations and inspire them to always think with sustainability in mind.