Routledge Ethics, Misconduct and the Financial Services Industry: Towards a Theory of Moral Business (Finance, Governance and Sustainability)

This book explores how ethics and the moral context of business have evolved historically in inf luential management theories and concepts. It looks at how managerial thought accommodates morality, values, and ethics and demonstrates the emerging patterns of ethical conduct to illustrate how moral aspects of management and organizational practice can become peripheral. The author examines a diverse range of data sources such as the most seminal books in management and academic papers published in the mainstream academic literature. The readings selected in the process are subject to critical analysis and are complemented by an exploratory study of the financial services industry, based on semistructured in-depth interviews. The uniqueness of the proposed approach comes first from the consolidation of many perspectives such as management, organization studies, and business anthropology rather than focusing on one particular subdiscipline; second, from using a mixed methodology, combining literature reviews with empirical, exploratory research based on interviews; and third from including a narrative context in the analysis and proposed future theory framework. This book will appeal to students, researchers, and scholars who teach ethics in the fields of economics or business. It is useful for advancing theory and research on moral management and as a resource for management practitioners looking to create business practices fostering moral sensitivity. Those interested in setting future development directions may also find the proposed consolidation of theoretical and empirical evidence valuable for the design of future policies. Review "The book aims at developing a new analytical as well as historical framework for understanding and enhancing our corporate civilization. Barbara sets out her vision of moral behaviour and discusses the changes needed to using business as a force for good. Managers need to embrace a sense of purpose beyond making profits and to find new business opportunities to meet society’s needs. The emerging proposal advocated by the Author is to favour the transition from Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Civil Responsibility. Companies, in fact, are not purely private associations, rather they are little governments created by the State legislation to advance public ends. Barbara provides corporate executives clear evidence that taking ethics not just as a constraint to their behaviour, but as an argument of their objective function constitutes the surest path to success, especially in such turbulent times as the present ones. This is a book for the realist with conscience." ― Stefano Zamagni, Professor of economics,University of Bologna and SAIS Europe, Johns Hopkins University About the Author Barbara Fryzel is an economist and Associate Professor of Management at Jagiellonian University in Krakow. She is a laureate of the Foundation for Polish Science for the postdoc fellowship at the University College London as well as a management practitioner with business development and corporate advisory experience in multinational firms. Her research interests cover corporate social responsibility, behavioural ethics, and organizational culture.