The Moral Case for Profit Maximization argues that profit maximization is moral when businessmen seek to maximize profit by creating goods or services that are of objective value. Traditionally, profit maximization has been defended on economic grounds. Profit, economists argue, incentivizes businessmen to produce goods and services. In this view, businessmen do not need to be virtuous as long as they deliver the goods. It challenges the traditional defense of profit maximization, arguing that profit maximization is morally ambitious because it requires businessmen to form normative abstractions and to cultivate a virtuous character. In so doing, the author also challenges the moral basis of corporate social responsibility. Proponents of CSR argue that businessmen can do good while doing well. This book argues that businessmen already do good by maximizing profit, drawing upon the histories of the wheel, the refrigerator, and the shipping container, as well as the biographies of J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Thomas Edison to demonstrate the role of values in the creation of material goods and the role of the virtues in value creation. The author challenges readers to rethink the relationship between profit, value, and virtue.

The Moral Case for Profit Maximization considers the moral status of profit maximization, arguing that profit maximization is moral when businessmen seek to maximize profit by forming values and cultivating the virtues.

Seumas Miller provides an exciting new philosophical theory of contemporary social institutions and the ethical challenges they confront.

The Role of Business in Global Governance offers an empirically rich analysis of the new political role of corporations in the co-performance of governance functions beyond the state. Within comparative case studies, potential explanations of the political role of transnational corporations are systematically tested.

Global diversity and inclusion management practice is in a state of arrested development. Leaders and practitioners are caught in grooves which are no longer effective, if they ever were. In Dismantling Diversity Management, Dr. Jude Smith Rachele takes a big leap in propounding that businesses, given the incredible complexity of the world’s social, economic and political fabric, must embrace morality and not just seek to act merely for reasons of legal compliance or profit. It presents a joined up system of diversity, which also extends beyond human resources into the wider fields of organization and leadership development. The book emphasizes the vital importance of ethical and values-driven leadership and of living, not just spouting out, corporate values. Jude provides a valuable contribution to the international field of diversity management as she highlights the key flaws in traditional diversity management thinking, and presents to the reader a clear picture of the barriers in place which make it difficult for practitioners, leaders and all of those committed to social justice to achieve desired outcomes within organizations. This book is a courageous and refreshing look at diversity. It not only provides a bold critique of how corporate structure has co-opted people into a diversity management model which perpetuates, rather than, transforms the status quo, it also maps out how to break this ineffective cycle. Dismantling Diversity Management will be of interest to organizational development professionals, diversity and inclusion practitioners, senior executive officers and human resource and talent management professionals.

Kathleen Touchstone applies the philosophies of Objectivism, rule-utilitarianism, and neo-Aristotelianism to strategies of risk management. She proposes a risk index model which accounts for probability, virtue, and consequences, utilizing philosophical insight into the gauging of success.

Transcendent Development contains morally courageous, creative storytelling prose offering paradigm shifts, empirical evidence and surprising “antenarratives” that explain how a harmonious Africa may be realised, starting in the Mother Continent’s Southern-most tip.

This book explores the relationship between philosophy and business ethics. Academics and practitioners often muse about the ethical and moral aspect of management and business actions, but these studies can lack a deeper philosophical grounding. Contributors to this volume challenge this gap by applying different philosophical paradigms and theories to business management issues. The territory covered by the contributions collected in this book spans from the foundations of business management literature itself, to the role of philosophy in new business models and technology; from the way philosophical theory can explain – and encourage – ethical firm behaviour, to the political stance that an organization takes. Contributors take a holistic approach to business and management, bringing together real-world examples and rich academic theory, creating an interdisciplinary volume, with international authors. Covering important topics such as corporate social responsibility, sustainability, leadership, and stakeholder relations, this book will be of interest to academics working in the field of business ethics, philosophy and management studies.

"The essays by Joseph Heath collected in this volume collectively present a program in business ethics that he calls the "market failures" approach. They develop a theoretical framework that lies between two opposing positions in business ethics -- on one hand the "stakeholder" theory, which identifies moral obligations within an organization by identifying its key groups, and the self-explanatory "shareholder primacy" theory. Heath's "market failures" approach lies between these approaches and argues that firms should be guided by the ideal of a perfectly competitive market, and that ethical behavior in this context consists primarily in refraining from taking advantage of imperfections in existing markets. Heath's approach puts particular emphasis on the market as a competitively structured interaction, with different duties owed to individuals inside and outside the firm, and explains why business managers cannot have fiduciary responsibilities toward every stakeholder group. His theory draws on recent work in adversarial ethics, welfare economics, agency theory, and the theory of the ferm, in order to provide an account of business ethics that can be integrated with recent thinking about corporate law and the normative basis of state regulation of the economy"--